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Today was a massive day. We joined our tour group in the morning at about 9am at the Shepherd Hotel in Amman. They had all only just arrived from the UK at about 2am. We were the only people doing a land only trip so we were in a pretty good state compared to all of them. There were about 14 people on the tour and only one other man so Dave was in women heaven. Unfortunately most of the ladies who were on the trip were a little only ( a group there as a 50th b'day present to themselves).
We all hopped on a bus and then headed off towards the first stop of the day at Mt Nebo. Mt Nebo is supposedly the mountain where Moses died, within sight of the promised land (but which of course he never actually reached). There is a monastary and church on the top of the hill, however this was closed when we visited for renovations. We did however get to have a good look at the view as well as at some of the mosaics that were on the floor of the church. The cross that is in the
photo is something that was erected for a previous pope who wanted to come and visit Mt Nebo when he was on a visit to the Israel, but who felt that it wasn't safe for him to enter Jordan. So they erected this large cross on Mt Nebo and he stood on the other side of the valley in Israel and looked through binoculars and could then see where Mt Nebo actually was.
From Mt Nebo we all crawled back into the bus and continued onto our second stop of the day at Madaba. Madaba is actually the home town of our tour guide (Osama) and he took us to see another church where there is a very very old mosaic map on the floor of the church. The church was actually built around the mosaic and it is thought that the mosaic is from roman times. It is interesting as it is a map of the middle east during those times (see the photos).
At Madaba we first discovered that some members of our tour liked to shop. In particular two ladies called Patti and Allie. Patti and Allie had come on the trip with another friend
Caroline and these three ladies were exactly like the ladies from Ab Fab. Allie was Patsy, Caroline was Eddie and Patti was Saffy. We ended up having many good laughs with these ladies, but at this stage of the journey we were most dismayed to discover that Patti and Allie could spend in excess of 20 minutes shopping while the rest of us waited for them.
It reminded me very much of my darling mother.
Luckily we managed to gather them up in the end and continue onto the next stop at Al Karak. This was an old crusader fortress and was quite interesting. It was quite well preserved and our guide Osama took us on a guided tour of it and explained all the features of it to us. However we didn't seem to take many photos of this fortness so it either wasn't very photogenic or wasn't really all that interesting.
From Al Karak we still had a massive drive to get to our stop of the night, a camp site in Wadi Rum. Our day had been delayed somewhat by all the shopping that the ladies had been doing, as well as by our tour
guides inability to hurry people along when it was required. So we only arrived at our final destination at about 9pm at night, in complete darkness. The campsite was pretty primitive having only portaloos and no showers etc. However we did have a double matress in our tent, and we didn't have to all sleep in a communual tent, which Dave had been very very worried about.
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