With our time in Amman complete, we left the city on Saturday morning and headed south. Our first stop is Madaba, which is best known for the Madaba Mosaic and also it is located very close to Mount Nebo. It was a short drive from Amman – roughly an hour – so we added a stop a little further south called Wadi Moujib. This area is sometimes called Jordan’s version of the Grand Canyon. It’s a beautiful area – similar to the Grand Canyon, but without the diversity in color and not as vast.
While in the area, we stopped at Sami’s Best View café and met Sami. He has a great spot and we enjoyed tea for Sandy and Turkish coffee for me while visiting with him.
He told us about his life and we were inspired to give him some extra money even though we knew it was quite possible that he wasn’t being totally honest with us – and afterwards we are pretty confident he wasn’t being honest with us. That’s ok. Karma has a tendency to work things out and given the low numbers of tourists here, there is no doubt that he is in need of whatever extra he can get. After Sami’s we drove toward Madaba and made a stop at a bronze-age settlement to see the ruins and the views of the canyon before finding lunch at Carob House in Madaba. It was great and we could certainly have eaten more meals there. I had their braised lamb hummus and Sandy had their root salad. I had a hibiscus juice and brownies with carob ice cream for dessert. After Carob House, we checked into the Tell Madaba Hotel a little before 6pm and got ourselves settled. I watched the Florida State game while Sandy journaled and then we watched Frasier before going to bed.
Sunday was a busy day of sightseeing. We started with a very full breakfast buffet – so many options prepared by Madeera (mom from the hotel). And there were only four of us staying at the hotel. It is very sad to see how tourism (a big part of Jordan’s economy) has suffered due to the conflicts in the surrounding countries. I’m sure that will come up again in our journal entries – it’s heartbreaking to see. From the buffet, we had hard boiled eggs, fruits, pitas and hummus, cakes, pudding, tea, olives, and hot stuffed dough. We talked with Edward and mom for a bit and then headed out to explore around 11. The first stop was the visitor center and an overview of the heritage trail in Madaba as well as a short film about Madaba. They have done a superb job in putting together a plan for tourists to get the most out of the city and the area, including a red-brick trail to follow around the city. Very impressive.
Along the heritage trail, we stopped at a school that teaches the craft of mosaic-making. The students were working on a commissioned piece that will match the Madaba Mosaic – it is for a residence in Amman and the fee for the piece is around $7,000.
After the school, we stopped for fresh-squeezed orange juice and pomegranate juice. We toured several of the archaeological excavations right in the center of town, housing ancient mosaics within their structures (homes and churches).
The big site to see is at St. George Greek Orthodox Church and it is the Madaba Mosaic. It is 1,500 years old and is one of the oldest cartographic depictions of the Holy Land, with Jerusalem as its center point. Only portions of the mosaic remain due to earthquakes and natural decay.
We then went to the Beheading of John the Baptists Church and climbed the bell tower to get views across Madaba and went down into the tunnels beneath the church to explore rooms that were used many centuries before the current church was built – including a well that is 3,000 years old. The beheading occurred about 12 miles from the church. Several people encouraged us to take the time to go to Mount Nebo because it is so close – about 15 minutes away. Mount Nebo is where Moses brought his followers to look out to the Promised Land. We headed that way and we are glad we did. It’s an important Biblical site and it offers excellent views out to the Dead Sea and across into Palestine and Israel. We spent about an hour there and then decided we were close enough to drive down to the Dead Sea and check out the area. We made our way down the steep winding road and drove along the beach area for a little bit. Again, it’s just so sad to see how deserted these places are that should be filled with visitors. We got back to the hotel around 5:30 and mom had us try different kinds of breads she baked this afternoon – all delicious, although the one with dried thyme and olive oil was my favorite. For dinner, we walked to Ayola Café (found it in our Lonely Planet guidebook) and enjoyed Petra Blue lagers, kofta tahina, and fukharet Ayola chicken. Both dishes were awesome – the kofta tahina is a single, thin patty of beef or it can be made with lamb) covered in tahini sauce and the fukharet was made with chicken, vegetables, and cheese and covered with a thin layer of bread. The food in Jordan has been so good.
We walked home and then watched the lunar eclipse for a little while.
I wanted to see the USF game against Florida and the Bucs game, so it ended up being a late night. USF beat the Gators on the last play of the game and the Bucs beat the Falcons on the last play of the game so it was worth staying up for. I finally went to sleep around 2:45 on Monday morning.
Monday was another moving day as we made our way further south. Even though we were the only two at the hotel this morning, mom still made way too much food for the breakfast buffet. We ate similar to yesterday and we were on the road at 9am. We opted for the scenic route along the Dead Sea, which added about 30 minutes to our drive, and it was very much worth it as this was one of the prettiest drives we have made in Jordan. The harsh terrain and mountains in contrast to the water of the Dead Sea and the desert colors across the landscape was spectacular.
There are random police stops periodically, and we’ve been stopped a few times now – they generally just want to know where you are from or where you going and then they wish you a good journey. As we made our way south, we stopped at Karak Castle. This is the largest castle in Jordan and dates back to the Roman times and of course has additional history through the Byzantine Empire, Umayyad Dynasty, and through the Ottoman Empire.
We chose to have a guide take us through the castle – not something we would normally do, but the lack of tourists is really getting to us. Yassim gave us a nice tour of the large castle and then we stopped for lunch at the café just outside the castle. We each had a Greek salad, Sandy had mango juice, and I had strawberry juice. We are loving all of these fresh-squeezed juices. We left Karak at 1 and continued south – tons of semi-trucks travel this route and it makes sense. The port of Aqaba is at the southern end of this road, so many goods are shipped through this port and along this route. We arrived at our meeting point at Wadi Rum at 4:15 and Hamza met us at 4:30 to take us to our camp in the desert. We left Peggy parked at the gas station in town for the next couple of nights. Sandy was worried about our “luxury” camp because Hamza’s truck had a broken windshield, a loose bumper, and a scrappy couple of benches for us to ride on in the back of the truck.
It was less than ten minutes to the camp and when we arrived, we had tea and went through our options for things to do while we are here with Hamza. We are staying in a bubble tent and it is great. It lets in lots of light with the curtains open. Considering that we are in the middle of a desert, it qualifies as luxury – much better than the jeep ride here.
We wanted to get some movement, so we walked for about 20 minutes in the desert and then climbed the rock behind our camp to watch a beautiful sunset.
Ditha is from Egypt and he oversees the camp and cooks, but doesn’t speak any English so we make things work without the benefit of language. He made dinner for us at 7:30 and it was fantastic – once again, the food here is so good. Tonight we had chicken and yellow rice, potatoes, and vegetables. It was all fantastic.
When we went to bed, we were the only ones here at the camp, but then another couple did arrive later in the night.
We woke up yesterday to the sound of a hot air balloon floating by the camp – occasionally we would hear the fire and then complete silence.
Ditha made breakfast for us (again too much food) – we had hard boiled eggs, pita, yogurt, salsa, cheese, bologna, jam, tea, cucumbers, tomatoes, and pickles. We got to meet Waleed and Karla – they had arrived late the night before. Waleed is Jordanian and Karla is Romanian. They met each other while working in Maryland. We were happy that they were joining us for our desert jeep tour with Mr. Stone. Stone is what our guide’s name translates to in English. The jeep tour was 2.5 hours long and we saw the mushroom rock,
the cave from Lawrence of Arabia where Lawrence and Ali plan their attack on Aqaba during the Arab Revolt against the Turks/Ottomans,
a couple of natural bridges in the rocks,
and areas where Star Wars Episode Nine was filmed.
In one of the areas, we took turns yelling each of our names so we could hear the extraordinarily loud echo between the mountains. It was a bouncy ride, sometimes feeling like we were going to bounce right out the back of the truck. And one fast descent down a sand dune that felt like a rollercoaster drop. Upon our return, Mr. Stone took Waleed and Karla to their car – we were sad that they were already leaving and not hanging around for another night because they were a lot of fun to talk with. Mr. Stone returned from dropping them off with our lunch – breaded chicken in a roll with ketchup, fries, pickles, bananas, and apples. We worked on some online things during the afternoon and then went for a two-mile run/walk in the desert and made it back in time to go up the rock again for sunset. Tonight, we met and had dinner with Margarita – she is an experienced world traveler from Paraguay. We are so impressed with the places she has traveled solo. We got to have the chicken and rice dish again, which I was very happy about. After dinner, the three of us were walking back toward our bubbles and we saw an object flying across the sky west to east that looked different from a typical aircraft. A second later there was a big explosion. You couldn’t hear anything – just see the visuals. It took a minute to realize what we had seen – we had seen an Israeli defense missile intercept a missile that had likely been fired from Yemen. It was stunning to see. We had heard from several Jordanians that they have seen plenty of missiles fly overhead and they don’t worry even a little bit about it for their safety. It is likely that the debris from this interception fell over Saudi Arabia based on where we are and where in the sky we saw the explosion. Even with their reassurances that we have nothing to worry about here, that was a very unsettling thing to see. The great paradox for us is that we are in the desert in a place that feels so incredibly peaceful and quiet and then you have that event take place above. Wild. Mr. Stone came to get us at 8:30 and we headed out for our night-time stargazing tour in the desert. After processing the missile event and realizing that we really are ok, we had one of my favorite experiences. Mr. Stone drove us about 30 minutes into the desert and sat us down on a carpet. He built a fire and boiled Bedouin tea that he served with cream. It was still nearly a full moon so the stars weren’t quite as numerous as they would be on a dark night, but the moon with the rock/mountain silhouettes, the quiet, the breeze, it was all spectacular.
When it was time to leave, Mr. Stone jokingly told us to start walking and he would pick us up in ten minutes. So we started to walk in the moonlight back in the direction of our camp.
Once we got to the point where we couldn’t see him anymore, we stopped because we didn’t want him to not be able to find us. He did come to get us a few minutes later. I’m confident we could have found our way back if we needed to – it just would have taken three or four hours of walking. We got back from the experience around 10:30 and didn’t realize we needed to turn the water heater on, so we took coldish (the water isn’t very cold in the desert) showers and then went to bed around 12:30.
Today brought us another moving day. We had breakfast at 9 – same spread as yesterday and then said goodbye to Ditha at 10 and rode in the back of the truck to our car by the village. Before leaving Wadi Rum, we drove to the Visitor Center to see the Seven Pillars of Wisdom – a rock formation that was particularly inspirational to Lawrence of Arabia and then made our way to Aqaba.
Aqaba wasn’t on our way from Wadi Rum to Petra, but it was close enough to warrant the diversion. We are both happy we did because it is an area of Jordan that gives a totally different feel from anywhere else we have been. Aqaba is a beach town and very close to the Israeli border and the Egyptian border – you can see all three countries right here at the north end of the Gulf of Aqaba which is part of the Red Sea. There are tons of glass-bottom boats here to go out and see the coral reef. We didn’t take the time to do that but it’s certainly one of the main draws to Aqaba.
We walked along the beach and then had lunch at Mirwas Café in Arab Revolt Plaza. We ate upstairs and had a great view across the water. We both had salmon for lunch and fresh juices. They also brought olives, pickles, chips, almonds, tea and fruit. It was a lot of food. Having gotten a quick feel for Aqaba, we headed out at 2:20 and arrived in Wadi Musa at 4:15. We settled into our apartment for the next several days and then went to get some groceries. The hospitality of Jordanians continues as the guys at the grocery store wanted us to have some of their coffee and cookies and then when we were looking for fresh produce, another man told us to follow him in our car to the produce market. We were in for the night at 6:45 and Sandy got a load of laundry done.
Tomorrow, we start our exploration of one of the new seven wonders of the world and the place that is the reason Jordan is on our top 20 list to visit.
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