Category: 2018 Middle East

Today is our last day in Jordan.  We started the day by walking down to the Dead Sea.  We didn’t have our bathing suits on so we just waded in the water.  Unfortunately Rick slipped on some rocks, almost fell in, and cut his foot.  The lifeguard had a first aid kit and got him all patched up.  Not surprisingly the water felt very salty, almost oily.  There were people in the water and you could see that they were very buoyant.

Mustafa picked us up at 11 because we had a number of stops.  We started off by going to Bethany Beyond the Jordan which is the site where John the Baptist baptized Jesus.  It is right on the border with Israel.  The rope you see in the picture is the border.  There were a lot more people on the Israeli side, with some people getting baptized.  I put my feet in but I didn’t go all the way in; the water was very, very muddy.

Then we went to Mt Nebo, the place where Moses was granted a view of the Promised Land before he died. Unfortunately it was pretty foggy so we couldn’t really see Israel.  There was a church with beautiful mosaic floors.

Our last stop was Madaba, a town close to the baptism site and Mt Nebo that is famous for it churches which contain Byzantine and Umayyad mosaics.  We visited the Burnt Palace, Martyrs Church, and Saint George Greek Orthodox Church, which houses the floor map called the Madaba map.  Here are some pictures.

After going to three churches we headed back to Amman.  Our flight left at 2:30am so we had a hotel room until then.  We said good bye to Mustafa.  Here’s a selfie of us.

We got checked into our hotel, went to the grocery to get some dinner and just hung out in the room until midnight when we were picked up to go to the airport.  We managed to stay up until the flight and then got some sleep on the flight to Frankfurt.  An interesting thing happened in Frankfurt, they tested my knitting bag for explosives and it came back positive.  Yikes!!! The security agent said they get a lot of false positives.  The police interviewed me and let me proceed when they saw how innocent I am ;-).  The flight from Frankfurt was uneventful and sleepless.  We are still recovering from the jet lag.

We were up early to watch the sunrise.  It was a little hazy. Here are some pictures.

Mustafa took us on a desert jeep tour after breakfast.  Our first stop was the rock structure across from our camp. He explained that it consisted to two types of rocks, volcanic on the bottom and sedimentary on the top.  Rain water gets trapped between the two layers.  Bedouins knew this and would look for a few plants that typically grow at the interface.  There is often an underground pool of water trapped in a cave.  We climbed a little ways up the rock structure and sure enough plants and a cave with water.

Next stop was a corridor, similar to “The Siq”, which had drawings scratched into the rocks.  I’m pretty sure they were new to augment the tour, but it was cool climbing into the slit in the rocks.

Then we stopped at a rock bridge.  The scenery throughout our drive was beautiful.  I love the desert!

 

Last stop was a sand dune.  Some people were climbing up and trying to snowboard down it, but it didn’t work very well.  I climbed it to take some panoramic pictures, Rick had a cup of coffee.  Unfortunately the blog doesn’t support panoramic pictures so you will have to take my word about how beautiful the scenery was.

We drove out of the desert and headed to Aqaba, a city on the Gulf of Aqaba.  We parked the car and walked down to the water.  From there we could see Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and of course Jordan.  I put my feet in the water so I could say I’ve been in the Gulf of Aqaba.

We had a nice lunch in Aqaba and then drove on to Dead Sea.  It was dark by the time we got there so we couldn’t see much.  After checking in to our hotel, a Movenpick, we went exploring.  The Movenpick Dead Sea is one of the biggest properties we have ever stayed at.  It has several pools, 9 restaurants, and a beach.

Just a note:  In the last year we have been to the lowest point on earth and the highest point on earth (although we didn’t stand on the highest point).  That evening we had a pizza at the Italian restaurant and watch a belly dancing show.

 

 

We were very excited today because we were going to Petra, definitely one of the highlights of the trip. Petra is believed to have been settled as early as 9,000 BC, and it was possibly established in the 4th century BC as the capital city of the Nabataean Kingdom. The Nabataeans were nomadic Arabs who took advantage of Petra’s proximity to the trade routes and established it as a major regional trading hub.  Most caravans could not make the entire journey between Africa and Europe or Asia, so Petra became a caravan meeting/resting place where goods could be exchanged for the journey to their destination.

The trading business gained the Nabataeans considerable revenue and Petra became the focus of their wealth. They were particularly skillful in harvesting rainwater, developing agriculture and carving stone.  The area is visited by flash floods, and archaeological evidence demonstrates the Nabataeans controlled these floods by the use of dams, cisterns and water conduits. These innovations stored water for prolonged periods of drought and enabled the city to prosper from its sale of water. Petra was at its peak from about 200 BC to about 200 AD.

Petra is approached through a very dramatic, narrow rock corridor called “The Siq.” They had water channels running along the side of the corridor that were at a 2% grade, the optimal grade to keep the water moving freely.  Periodically there were deeper pits which functioned as filters.   Here are some pictures of the siq.

Most of what is left today are tombs.  The wealthier members of society created bigger and more impressive tombs, craved into the mountain sides.  In the larger tombs one level was for the tomb and a second level was a funerary hall.  It varies which was the first floor and which was the second floor.  The people lived on the hills in free standing homes which have been reduced to rumble.  We walked/climbed around and into some of the tombs.  The carving on the tombs was amazing.  They carved from the top down to remove any evidence of the scaffolding they used. Not only were the tombs beautiful, but the rock itself was amazing.  The most famous tomb is called the Treasury because at one time is was believed to be a treasury.  Today it is believed to be a tomb.

There was an amphitheater as well as some later period temples and churches with beautiful mosaic floors.

 

We hiked up to the Monastery which was a tomb that had been converted into a monastery.  We ran into Ben and Vivien on our way up.  We saw them several more times at Petra.  They are really nice people.  We hoped our paths would cross again.

After resting a bit at the cafe in front of the Monastery we walked about 1 1/2 hours back to the car.  We walked almost 11 miles that day.  We planned to spend the night in a Bedouin camp in Wadi Rum and wanted to watch the sunset from there.  We made it to the transfer site just in time.  We loaded our suitcases into a pickup truck and climbed into the back.  We had a wild ride (translation: very fast) to the camp, but made it just in time for the sunset.

We are staying in tents which are pretty basic.

That night we had a Bedouin meal which consisted of chicken and vegetables that were cooked in a pit in the sand.  It was very good.

We went to bed early because we were tried from all the walking and we want to get up early for the sunrise.

Mustafa picked us up at 8.  His office staff was trying to find another guide to finish the tour so Mustafa could go back to his embassy job, but no one was available.  Mustafa told the embassy he had an emergency and he would not be in for the rest of the week.  Lucky us.  He arrived with some delicious snacks, pita bread stuffed with a little oil, goat cheese, and thyme.  

Our ultimate designation is Little Petra but we had several stops along the way.  We drove on the King’s Highway, considered one of the Middle East’s most scenic and ancient routes along the rift valley. It is very arid, but beautiful.  There was a dam which created a lake.  Unlike any other landscape I have ever seen.

Our first stop was Al Karak, a Crusader castle.  This area had been inhabited since Iron Age.  The castle construction started in 1140AD.  Because of its position east of the Dead Sea, Karak Castle was able to control Bedouin herders as well as the trade routes from Damascus to Egypt and Mecca. It transferred hands between the Muslims and the the Crusaders several times and was reinforced and modified over time.

Our next stop was Al Shobek, another Crusader castle from about the same time.  Here are some pictures:

And views of the landscape from the castle.

After exploring Al Shobek we headed to Wadi Musa, home to Petra and the Nabataeans.  The Nabataeans were nomadic Bedouin tribes that roamed the desert.  They discovered Wadi Musa and developed a “caravan rest stop,” now known as Petra. As you have seen from the pictures the land was quite arid so they developed a lot of technology to collect and manage water.

Once arriving at Wadi Musa, Mustafa took us to a Nabataean well.  Here are pictures of the well and the landscape around the well.

Then we went into Little Petra.  Little Petra, which is northern part of the Petra Archeological Park, is believed to have housed visiting caravans.  We saw areas that looked like dormitories. One area even had frescoes.

On the way out of Little Petra Mustafa showed us a vat for crushing grapes to make wine.

It was a beautiful sunset that evening.

We got checked into our hotel and decided to wander around the town and look for a restaurant since we’d skipped lunch.  We ended up in the Movenpick Hotel.  We had a drink in the bar and then went to check out the Mediterranean restaurant.  There was another couple who had a reservation and the wait staff told us that the restaurant menu was the same as the bar menu, so Rick and I went on to check out the buffet.  We ended up going back to the bar and who did we see but the other couple, whose names we later learned were Ben and Vivien, who had had a reservation at the restaurant.   Obviously they decided they would rather eat at the bar.  They invited us to join them and we had a delightful dinner with them.  They were from Holland and were staying in the hotel.  Here is a picture of them.

 

 

 

This morning we met our new guide, Mustafa.  He was not our originally assigned guide, Malek.  It turned out that Malek had a conflict which was really lucky for us because Mustafa was one of the best guides we have ever had.  We learned he works in the IT department at the US embassy in Amman.  He is also licensed tour guide and the owner of our tour company.

Our first stop was Jerash.  On the way to Jerash Mustafa gave us a lot of information about Jordan.  Jordan is home to 10 million people, 1.2 million of which live in Amman.  Almost 70% of the people live in urban areas.  Jordan’s economy is based on phosphates, potash, and their fertilizer derivatives; tourism; overseas remittances; and foreign aid.  The main obstacles to Jordan’s economy are scarce water supplies, complete reliance on oil imports for energy, and regional instability. Just over 10% of its land is arable and the water supply is limited. Rainfall is low and highly variable, and much of Jordan’s available ground water is not renewable.  Jordan is about the size of Indiana.

Jordan’s population has increased significantly over the past 50 years.  Mustafa also told us that originally the Palestinians carried Jordanian passports.  Eventually Palestine started issuing their own passports, but not before many Palestinians immigrated to Jordan.  Jordan has also taken in about 700,000 Syrian refugees who are mostly housed in camps near the border.

Trade routes played a significant role in shaping Jordan’s history.  Jordan is a gateway between Africa and Europe and Asia.  Much of what we saw was historical and the result of the trade route/caravan economy.  Jordan was captured by Alexander the Great.  After his untimely death all of Greece’s territories were split among Alexander’s generals. One general’s capital was in Syria and one in Egypt.  These two generals primarily remained in their capitals to consolidate power and Jordan was largely left alone. The overland trade routes became much less important when the Romans developed the technology needed to move goods across the Mediterranean by ship.

After a great overview of Jordan, we arrive in the town of Jerash.  People had been settled there since the Neolithic age but it really grew during the Greek and Roman periods as a result of the trade routes.  It is amazingly well preserved.  Here are some pictures.

After Jerash we went to Ajloun Castle, a 12th-century Muslim castle situated in northwestern Jordan.  It protected the trade routes and defended the country against Crusader incursions.  It was reinforced and enlarged over time.  Two major destructive earthquakes struck the castle in 1837 and 1927.

We headed back to Amman where we had lunch.  Mustafa was going to take us to a vegetarian restaurant but at my request we had lamb mansouf, a Jordanian favorite and quite yummy.

After lunch we when to the Amman Citadel.  There is evidence that this area has been occupied since the neolithic period.  The Citadel of Amman is considered to be among the world’s oldest continuously inhabited places. Most of the buildings still visible at the site are from the Roman, Byzantine, and Umayyad (a Muslim empire from 661 – 750 AD) periods. The major buildings at the site are the Temple of Hercules, a Byzantine church, and the Umayyad Palace.  Here are some pictures.

From the citadel we could see the roman theater which is from the 6th century and has a capacity of 6,000.  It dates back to when the city was known as Philadelphia.  It was built into the hillside, oriented north to keep the sun off the spectators. After walking around the citadel we went to the roman theater.

Mustafa dropped us off at the hotel.  We ate the rest of the food we bought yesterday and packed up because tomorrow we head towards Petra.