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The Treasury
The Treasury took the cake for us. It was the first thing we saw in the morning as we emerged from the Siq and our last glimpse of Petra as we left in the evening. As I write this I can't believe that we only spent four days in Jordan...we got so much done, saw so much, and had such a great time. We are FOR SURE headed back to this travel destination gem.
We threw some extra days into Jordan when we shortened our time in Egypt. We had only expected these two Middle East stops to be quick, but we both agreed that Jordan deserves (and will someday get) much more time from us.
Originally our only goal for Jordan was to see one of the Seven Wonders of the World: Petra.
Petra got broad international notice when Indiana Jones found the Holy Grail there...we just found an amazing beautiful place and wonderful people.
We arrived in Jordan in the late morning and quickly got over to the Royal Jordanian Airline ticket office for a flight down to Aqaba, the coastal city on the Jordanian Red Sea.
We had a pretty long layover in Amman, but the flight was only 40 minutes. Jessica found a great hotel online (Al Cazar) and we just showed up and got a great room.
Aqaba is a port city/ tourist city and
They are Huge!
It was really deceiving to look at Petra's buildings from the ground. The closer I got the smaller I realized I was next to this giant. (look close to see Jessica at the bottom of this picture). really has a great small town feel, even with a population of over 80,000. We stayed in the heart of the tourist district and everything was so handy. The food was great, and the people were friendly.
Our hotel had a destination resort on the beach a few miles from the city, so we booked some dive time in the Red Sea.
We have not done as much diving as we had hoped due to the low US dollar -- and diving has gone up more than other travel items -- but we wanted to make sure we got to dive the Red Sea as we had heard so much about it. Although the truly great Red Sea diving is in Egypt, we were not disappointed by a wonderful reef, amazing sea life, and we got to see an impressive sunken ship. We saw two white morray eels, which I had never seen before. They are called "white peppered eels". The diving was off of the beach, easy to get to, but the water was colder than we expected and we were in full 5mm wetsuits. Overall a great expereince.
The meals were varied and cheap in
Aqaba Beach
The beaches on the Red Sea were really just a continuation of the sand everywhere else. We found the choice of swim attire a bit impractical...the two women in the center of the picture on the shoreline are going to have interesting tans. Jordan...and Aqaba had a nice casual nightlife.
It was also easy to plan out the rest of our trip from Aqaba as there are easy to work with travel agents around town. We truly enjoyed our time there.
The next morning we headed out at 6:30 am for Petra.
The drive north was different than we expected. For some reason I expected Jordan to be pretty flat...not at all. The scenery is desert, but really rough. Big valleys, jagged mountains, and beautiful desert views. Really, the drive let us see so much of Jordan.
Petra is everything you expected it to be and so much more. First, it is WAY, and I mean WAY BIGGER than you thought. When I say bigger, I mean both the size of the carved buildings themselves, and the area they are spread over. When you see pictures you don't have anything to compare the size of the buildings too. Take a look at the picture with Jessica at the bottom of one of the tombs...and that is not even the biggest building!
It is also a long walk just to get down into Petra...and then walking around from site
The Spring of Moses
This is where Moses struck the rock and water rushed out. It's been enclosed and as you can see they are taking water out of the spring - I'm sure to sell for an arm and a leg. to site is a truly wonderful experience. We hiked to the top of the rim rock twice that day, each about a 1000 ft. verticle hike. The second hike was to the "Monastery" and then a bit higher to the most breath-taking views of the deserts below.
The site is impressive today...we couldn't even imagine how beautiful it must have been 1700 years ago. We will try to post pictures, but I think the images of this "Wonder of the World" will turn out better on our videos (although our real suggestion is to get on a plane and see it for yourself).
Although the site is crowded in some areas, there were so many areas that we had to ourselves. It was a very nice day to soak-in where we were in the world and what we were seeing with our own eyes.
I would say that we kept a pretty good pace, and we thought we covered Petra pretty throughly in about 7-8 hours. Two days could be useful here...
We stayed the night in the Rose City hotel in Wadi Musa (the small town on the edge of Petra) and had a great
Acrobatics in the Dead Sea
The water was incredible. It felt like we were floating on a blowup mattress :-) local dinner of Kebabs and local salads. The next morning we got picked-up by our driver...but before we left Petra we went by the site of the Rock that Moses smacked with a stick and a spring flowed forth. See the picture of me at the Moses' spring, it is inside now...and they are still using it!!!
It was odd to think about being in an area like Petra where you know key biblical figures saw the same mountains, the same valleys and the same sites..it struck us differently than we thought it would. It is a totally different type of sight-seeing.
The next stop for us was the castle of Karak, a castle from the Crusades. But actually was the site of the the biblical battle between the King of Isreal and Moab 29 centuries ago (see: II Kings 3). Funny thing was that King Mesha (of Moab) left his own verison on a rock called the Stele of Mesha: a very different version of the same battle.
It pretty much seemed like it was in all types of major battles in history...and it was a Crusaders castle (1161 AD), which is what we really wanted
to see while we were in Jordan. Great history!
Our next stop was an afternoon at a Dead Sea resort for swiming and sunning at the earth's lowest point (1378 ft below sea-level) and is the second saltiest body of water in the world. Wow...you just don't expect that much bouyancy!!! You couldn't drown here if you tried! Take a look at our pictures...but you can have so much fun just floating around on the Dead Sea.
We had nearly 3 hours to enjoy the sun, the sea and the pool. What a great and relaxing afternoon!
We took showers and then headed out...our next stop was Mt. Nebo -- the place where God allowed Moses to see the "promised land" and then Moses died there. Again, it was humbling to be at the location that we have read about for all these years, a location that you read in the bible, but don't really put as a place on the map. We got there close to the 6:00pm closing time and got to enjoy the site nearly by ourselves. It was peaceful and beautiful.
The rest of our trip was headed to Amman where we
Indiana Jones Coffee Shop
We didn't stop for a drink, but we had to laugh at the marketing strategy. I have yet to see the 3rd Indiana Jones so I'm sure Petra will mean more to me once I see the film :-) overnighted in the airport and then took a 3:00 am flight to Istanbul, Turkey -- our final flight before our flight home on June 6th.
We cannot recommend Jordan strongly enough to travelers...easy, safe, beautiful, amazing.....and the people are just the greatest!
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AMMAR
non-member comment
thanx
i am AMMAR ATOURIST DRIVER I WANNA THANX YOU 4 YOUR LOVELY COMMENTS ABOUT JORDAN AND JORDANIAN THIS THE NATURE OF THE COUNTRY AND THE PEOPLS HOPE TO SEE YOU IN JORDAN AGAINE ANY ONE IN THIS WORLD IS WELCOM AMMAR