Christmas in Jordan

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Scott and I headed out of London after a busy 2008. We were heading for Jordan on an 8 day whirl-wind tour; a few days of culture, a few hiking, a few by the sea and of course a visit to Petra. We arrived late Christmas Eve into Amman, we were lucky enough to finish the bottle of red wine on the plane, not sure anyone else was really drinking! Our ‘hotel’ was in down town Amman, right in the thick of things. We awoke to a raining grey Christmas Eve and set off on a walking tour around the city. Down town was gritty, we went past the souks, mosques, fruit & veg markets, along to the Roman theatre, and after a bit of lunch up to the Citadel for wonderful views across the city. After that we retired before heading out for Christmas Dinner in one of the fancy restaurants - Fakhr el-Din. It was a bit of a drama getting there with the taxi driver asking directions 3 times, calling the restaurant, and then demanding we pay double what we were expecting, but who cared, it was Christmas after all.

The next morning we set off to the Dana Reserve, but we had multiple stops on the way. The first stop was Mt Nebo, where Moses looked out to the Promised Land. There were great views to the Dead Sea and over to the West Bank, in fact Jerusalem was only 50kms away. After that we travelled to a town called Madaba, main attraction was mosaic map of the area in one of the old churches. Then we jumped onto the famed Kings Highway heading south. After a snooze we came to the first of many magnificent vantage points along the road, a gorge, or what is called a ‘wadi’. Then onwards to Karak where we visited a Crusader castle, very impressive and maintained in fairly good condition, they had a very modern and well presented museum. After another wadi, we arrived at a stunning view point over looking Dana Reserve and down to Dana village. At this point the hotel owner picked us up and we bid farewell to the cab driver from Amman. Dana Village is a stone built in the 15th century it hangs on the cliff edge at the end of the Dana Wadi. We were just in time to watch a beautiful sunset in the freezing temperatures - no exaggeration it was freezing, went to bed in sleeping bag, plus thermals, plus thermal hat, plus gloves.

The next morning it was chilly and windy but we could see the sun in the sky, so mid morning we headed off, with only our day packs, into the Wadi. Our aim was to walk to Feinan Eco Lodge, stay the night, and then meet a guide that would walk us out another Wadi to Mansourah. At which point someone should meet us with our packs and take us to the Bedouin Camp closer to Petra. Once we got to the bottom of the cannon the sun was shinning and we pealed off our thermals and longs. The walk was lovely through the long valley; we passed lots of Bedouin camps and goats. The lodge was fantastic appearing out of no-where. We watched another lovely sunset and managed to get a hot-shower in. As the sunset we watched a local man steal a poor camels dinner, on being discovered milled around pretending to feed it. The dinner that evening was superb, many delicious local salads, the lodge hires many of the local Bedouin who live in the surrounding area.
The hike out was going to take around 6-8hrs, we were ready to go at 8am, however after some confusion with the bags and the guide being late we ended up heading out closer to 9am. Our guides name was Mohammed a local young Bedouin man, always a smile and constantly trying to take our photos on his phone. He was trying to build up a portfolio as he wanted to start his own trekking business. He made the trek in regular work shoes and didn’t slip once, and there was me in high-tech hiking boots who fell a short distance into a stream scratching my hands and elbow - ouch!
Mohammed continued to amuse us along the 25km hike. When we sat down to have lunch and saw some wild donkeys off in the distance he started ‘eeeeh-o-ing’ like a donkey at the top of his lungs. Needless to say the donkeys took off in fright. As he was talking about his anti-virus software on the laptop he uses, he points to the right and says, oh yeah, that’s a Stone Age village over there, shows us some flint, then strolls off chatting away about the anti-virus. The craziest part of the entire trek was near the end, we were utterly exhausted walking through very deep cannon, a man right at the top of the mountain, started yelling down at us and pointing, Mohammed started yelling back. As it turns out it was our driver with the bags and we had to take a ‘short-cut’. That meant scrambling directly up the hill side. Half way up this hairy accent, Mohammed grabbed a huge rock and threw it down and said ‘look be careful’ as it started a mini-land slide we clung to the nearest shrub - nutter. We said good-bye to Mohammed at this point and raced towards Petra and our Bedouin Camp, home for the next few days. To my delight we found a fully functioning bathroom with hot showers!

Today was all about Petra. We took a less traditional route into Petra - hiking in the back way past local Bedouin camps, goats everywhere. The hike in was lovely, fantastic views down to Jordan Valley, sometimes known as Peace Valley. The first glimpse of Petra was of the colossal Monastery, a huge structure used for worshipping. Petra just blew us away, all the structures were huge and the pink colours, shades and patterns in the rock where beautiful. We caught a rather freaky person shape in one of our photos. You can see why people flock to Petra it is an amazing ancient city, very romantic, and set in such beautiful surroundings. The Treasury, famed from the Indiana Jones movie, was stunning and the traditional entrance to it is brilliant. A long Sqi or tight cannon no more than 3m apart in some places, but is stretched up about 50meters. Apparently this was made by tech-tonic plate movement rather than water. Walking out was a little scary - in this very confined space there were donkey’s, camels, and horse and carriages racing down at a million miles an hour. That evening we returned to Petra and the Sqi and Treasury were lit with 100’s of candles, it was a lovely experience. When we got to the Treasury the played some traditional Bedouin instruments and sung, it was haunting.

The next morning we headed off for some R&R at the Dead Sea. Our poor driver was racing along the Dead Sea Highway, no one around, apart from the highway patrol and he got a HUGE fine - it was about half the fare of driving us there. Our hotel was heaven after the camp, it was called the Kempinski Ishtar and only open a few years. We had brilliant views over the sea to the West Bank, heated pools and a very fancy spa - we had a pass and spent some time jumping in and out of the hot pools. We managed to get a bit of pool side action before the weather turned nasty on the last day of the year. It was a little surreal looking over to Israel / West Bank knowing there was a conflict and fighting over in Gaza only a few hundred kilometres away. Our new years eve was very quiet, so it allowed us to get up at 7am and take a float on the Dead Sea - I think we were the first to take a dip in 2009. After a champagne brunch we headed back to London for the big freeze.

Photos

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