Wednesday 4/23/2008-Monday 4/28/08
Bahrain Air was a pleasant surprise with tasty food and excellent service, as we landed early in Amman, Jordan. We collected our luggage and waiting for our rental car company to meet us. Before we knew it, we found gentleman holding a sign with our names on it, and we were in a spankin’ new Peugeot 309 to start our Jordanian Adventures.
Our first stop was to Madaba to find our hotel before exploring the area. Unfortunately, 3 hours later (should have been 45 minutes) we realized we were a bit rusty on maps and hotel finding after our 8 luxurious, worry-free days in Bahrain…. After checking into the Madaba Inn Hotel, we relaxed and walked around town a bit before grabbing food at Bawabit Madaba and a sheesha to end the night.
Bright and early (okay, we started touring around 11:00am…) we toured the beautiful town Madaba in the daylight. For a little history, during the 6th and 7th centuries the town flourished with wealth and created many beautiful churches with elaborate religious mosaics. Sadly, during the 8th century, the iconoclastic movement declared all religious art should not include humans or animals, so many pieces of art were destroyed.
Luckily, they were sly back in the day, and many of Madaba’s priceless mosaics were simply covered with patches of blank tesserae. We visited beautiful mosaics in St. George’s church, Madaba Archeological Park, the Mosaic School as well as other churches and museums. We followed the mosaic map in St. George’s church and went to visit Moses’ burial site at Mount Nebo and Jesus’ Baptism Site.
Afterward of religious pilgrimage, we started our drive south to Petra, passing many signs for the Jordan Rally Car race taking place 24 April- 27 April. Not realizing that it would take….five hours to Petra, we arrived to Wadi Musa, and Katie fell asleep fully clothed at the Petra Palace.
On Friday, our initial plan to get up with the sun and explore Petra came to a crashing halt has we repeatedly hit the snooze button on the alarm. We were excited to see the 2,000 year old town, with temples, cave homes and markets all carved into beautiful sandstone rock. We made it past the entrance gate of Petra by 11:00 a.m., and we decided to walk the entire day instead of taking the option of a horse carriage, horseback or donkey back.
The entrance to Petra is a one km walk through a huge naturally formed narrow canyon, called the As-Siq. The view from where the canyon opens up onto the city of Petra, with a direct view of the Treasury, is breathtaking. The view was just as good as portrayed in the movie “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.”
The entire city was beautiful. It is amazing to see how intricately all of these huge rock faces were carved to make homes, temples, churches, amphitheaters and forts. We managed to cover about 75% of Petra in our 6-7 hours there (including a one hour hike to the Monastery….up 900 stairs!). It is easy to see why everyone says that Petra is an absolute must see if you are in Jordan.
We stopped for a much deserved drink at the Petra Palace Hotel after our long day of hiking and Petra-seeing. We then went to find the Bedouin camp we were sleeping at that night before the sunset. The owner was very nice and we were impressed with his ability to speak English, as he’s a Bedouin, living amongst the deserts in tents….. right? Well, we found out that he actually lived in the states for several years between Texas and Florida, so we realized that the world is just getting smaller and smaller.
We found our tent and then headed back to Wadi Musa for dinner at Red Cavern restaurant. We had the traditional dish of mansef (meat and yogurt with rice) for dinner followed up by an apple sheesha for dessert. We then headed back to camp and tried to fall asleep. A large group of French cyclists did there best to keep us up until around midnight as they had very loud conversations outside our tent. They eventually went to bed and we too fell asleep….around half twelve.
The next morning, we woke up to the sounds of children from our neighboring tent. We needed to get up early, so we were actually glad for the rooster call. We settled our tabs with the Bedouins and then got on the road to Wadi Rum.
The Bedouin Roads tour guides were waiting for us when we arrived to show us the desert made famous by Lawrence of Arabia. We packed up a day pack and then headed off with our Bedouin guide in the back of a pickup truck to explore Wadi Rum. There are no words that can do justice to the scenery that is Wadi Rum. You really have to be there to appreciate the geological wonders. We’ll let some of the pictures we took give you an idea of what it was like. We got to see a large portion of the park during our 7 hour tour. One of the highlights of the tour was having a 3 hour lunch (and mandatory nap) that was prepared by our Bedouin guide. It was so quiet and peaceful to rest in the middle of nowhere with nothing to bother you except for the chirp of a few desert birds.
We attempted to watch the sunset, but the weather gods did not abide to our wishes as the clouds “closed” the sunset, as our guide informed us. We headed back to the tented camp and met our neighbors for the night. There was one couple from France, one couple from Spain and one couple from England. We all got along very well over dinner and then all laughed as we watched some of local Bedouins try and provide “entertainment” for us. We were told there would be music, but none of them could play an instrument. They attempted singing, but either didn’t know many songs or had no confidence in their voices. Finally they tried to show us some “Bedouin Games” which were just sad attempts of amusement that even a child would be find boring. Being said, we did laugh and enjoy ourselves before sleeping under the stars in the complete darkness of the desert night.
We awoke with the rising sun sometime around 6:30 a.m. We managed to go back to sleep for about an hour, but then got up along with all our fellow campers. We had our typical Middle Eastern breakfast with tea and then got a ride back to the village in Wadi Rum. We settled our bill with Attayk and then got in our rental car and drove up highway 15 back towards Madaba.
We were tempted to stop along the way, but our desire the get to Madaba and find accommodation kept us going. Sadly, with the Jordan Rally Car Races, all of the Dead Sea hotels were overbooked and/or four times their ‘normal’ costs…. But luckily, even though the rally car fans have spilled over into Madaba, we booked one of the last rooms available at the Black Iris Hotel.
We decided to take the advice of our fellow travelers from the Wadi Rum Bedouin Camp, and go to the Amman beach for access to the Dead Sea. We met some a pair of Pakistani twins who were on holiday in Jordan. We took a picture for them, they took pictures for us and then we all tried on the Dead Sea mud. It turns out they are from Dubai and we’re going to try and meet up with them on our stay there. The Dead Sea was very interesting and one-of-a-kind experience. It was virtually impossible to sink in it (although, Katie’s Mom thinks she could….). After spreading the dead sea’s mud on your body, your skin was incredibly soft. It was like a free day of spa treatments for us. Katie couldn’t let the dream die, so she took some of the mud back in one of the plethora of plastic bags in her backpack.
We headed back to Madaba after our Dead Sea experience and ended up having dinner at the Madaba Inn Hotel. There were not many culinary choices in Madaba, so we settled on hotel food. We ended up sharing a buffet with a German Tour group that were highly entertaining. Sadly, they didn’t think we were apart of the group and we received our check. We splurged on our last night with buying a very expensive crappy bottle of wine. Hotels is the only place where tourist can buy alcohol, as many strict Muslims do not consume alcohol. We then headed back to the hotel and made it an early night.
Our last morning in Jordan was starting to get back on track with an early rise with the sun and our “complimentary” breakfast. Surprise, Surprise, the breakfast consisted of pita bread, yogurt, olives, boiled eggs, hummus and baba ganoush. Part of us was happy that this would be the Middle Eastern breakfast for a while.
After breakfast we decided to skip going to Mkawir and went straight to Amman to check out what it had to offer. Amman has an impressive array of ruins dating back 9,000 years during which Amman was first known as Rabbath Ammon, and later by the Romans as Philadelphia. We got to Amman no problem and stopped in at the very nice 5 star hotel, Le Royal, to get a map of the city. By pure luck (and perhaps a tad of Katie’s impressive navigating skills…) we happened upon a falafel shop that our friend Yanal recommended to us. The falafels, as he told us, were great.
We then headed into the old downtown section of Amman and checked out all the old Roman sites like the amphitheater and the citadel. We also so the world’s tallest flagpole from a distance. Driving around Amman in a car wasn’t exactly easy, so after seeing those sites, we decided to just head to a mall (very Middle East of us….) and kill time before we had to get to the airport. We had a snack in a coffee shop that had free Internet. Before we knew it, it was time to get to the airport. We checked in for our flight using the executive service thanks to Katie’s Gold Status on Continental. We then spent the next 4 hours in between Starbucks Coffee who had free electrical plugs and free Internet. We got a bunch of work done and were narrowing down our potential volunteering trips in Africa to a manageable list. Time flies on line…and it was time to board our flight to India!