Author: Kathryn & Rick World Travelers

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.