24th - 26th April 2010 - Amman Jordan –I skipped last day in Sri Lanka but I will do it later

Amman – Jordan
We have flown in hours and hours over miles and miles of desert. Every now and then you see circles of green patches in the desert where it is being irrigated to grow vegetables but other than that the area approaching Amman is very barren. Amman is to the south east of Isreal. The funniest thing is that NO maps in this part of the world say Isreal; either the country is left blank or referred to as New Palestine.
The biggest surprise to me is that Amman is very cool. I was expecting hot and dusty instead we got cool and dry. It is impeccably clean in comparison to Sri Lanka which is hot, dusty and dirty. What a pleasant change.
Once again after we arrived we met with Bill and got our scores and our scavenger booklets. Lily and I placed second in the Sri Lanka leg. I am so proud of Lils. We plotted our plans and set off into Amman. The first thing we noticed is it the first place that we have been that there is zero signs in English and everyone we stop in the street to speak to cannot speak one word of English. We can't find an English speaking book store and basically we are spinning top in mud. Finally we decided to just fly by the seat of our pants and start the challenges.

Our first stop was to visit the Abdullah mosque in the centre of town. This is a new mosque (thank goodness we moved away from the Buddhist temples now we are in Muslim country)) this mosque is relatively new built in the last 10 years or so. It has a blue dome that can be seen from miles away. We attempted at first to just enter the building but we were quickly stopped by the guard, you see women cannot enter unless they are fully covered from the tip of their heads to the floor. They took us downstairs and gave us long black gowns with hoods to wear. When I say us I mean the women, there is no dress code for the en except to remove their hats while in the temple.

After this we set off for the ancient city of Jerash. What an amazing place. It is an entire Roman city that has been excavated. The people back then where definitely terrific architects. The city was well laid out and we had certain buildings and temples to find. Remember last night we walked Adams Peak. Everything is a little sore and needless to say the Temple of Artemis was the furthest away and guess what? It is up 100 steps. Once again I say. Thanks Bill. I say that but the temple is beautiful and so ornate I was glad that I was encouraged to walk and see it. We met some very friendly kids on the steps who were excited to practice their English.

Everyone in this country is so nice. I had some preconceived ideas about the people here. I knew they were of Arab descent and was expecting rude and arrogant people. I couldn't have been more wrong. They are so nice, gentle and helpful
We left Jerash and headed back to the hotel. Once there we changed TAXI's and headed out again. This time we set off for Mount Nebo (where Moses arrived with the Israelites. The place where he looked across at the Promised Land and where he was never permitted to see. Moses is actually buried on Mount Nebo. The view is spectacular and as I said it looks at the river Jordan, Israel and the Dead Sea.

Next we went to Madera to St. George's Church. To our disappointment when we got there the church was closed. Our TAXI driver had had difficulty finding this spot and we had arrived later than expected. Well to my astonishment the driver jumped out and started knocking on this huge metal gate. Suddenly the centre of the gate opened and a young boy/man peered out and asked if he could help, he spoke perfect English. We explained our predicament that we had to see the Biblical mosaic map. He invited us in and shepherd us into the dimly lit church. All of us were peering around to see if we could find this map and leave quickly so as not to disturb the boy any longer. Again to our amazement he bent over and rolled up the carpet on the floor and revealed this amazing map of the biblical lands that had been tied into the floor. Madaba was the home of the Moabites back in the Old Testament. As I told you these people are wonderful and are so delighted to help you out. We tried to give him a tip but he refused it so we dropped it into the collection box.

We went around the corner had dinner in the required Alloyah Café and tried to smoke the "Hubbly Bubbly" that was another challenge. We chose apple flavor and we all choked and coughed our way through the first puff. YUCCK!! It actually left me feeling nauseous afterwards. We headed back home to get some sleep. Tomorrow is another very early morning. We are off to Petra. Bill put a curfew on us, we had to be in the hotel by 10.00pm and we could not leave the hotel until 4.30 am so guess what we are off at 4.30…..

Day 2 -Started at 4.30am

Zoe is not going to scavenge today as she has a lot of work to do for the trial she is going straight into when she gets back to USA. It seemed unfair for Rainy to stay home when he had paid to be on this trip so we begged him to come out with Lily and me today. We are off to the lost city of Petra. This is a city that was completely carved out of a mountain. The buildings are made out of one solid piece of rock. I have only ever heard for Petra and we are excited to go and see. It is a long long drive to Petra and our rules say we have to travel on "the King's Highway" either into or out of Petra. The Kings Highway is the same route as was travelled by Moses back when he was leading the Israelites. He asked the King if he could travel on the Kings Highway but he promised he would turn neither left nor right off of it". This Highway is much longer and windy that the new highway. We opted to travel into Petra on the Highway and leave the Kings way. It was a lovely drive and I watched the sunrise over the mountains while Lily and Rainy caught up on their sleep.
We had to travel into 'The Treasury of Petra" by horse drawn carriages. These carriages supposedly look the same as the ones made back before Christ. Well we call them the shake and bake carriages. They travel very fast but they shake up your gizzards, there is no way to take a photo while on them because it would be a shaken blur. We hustled through close caverns and openings in the rocks to reach The Treasury.

When we got there it took your breath away. The Petra rocks are pink in colour and the craftsmanship and detail cannot be described. I thought the Roman city the day before was awesome but that was made out of different stones and put together. This place has no joins; it is all carved out of solid rock.

We meander through the old roads and made our way to the other end of the city where we had to ride donkeys up to the Monastery. Fool Bert here thought we were going to ride up on a mountain path. Well no such luck, the donkeys climb up over 900 worn down, broke steps and along the way on both sides of you are very far drop offs to rocks below. Up and away we went clinging on to the donkeys for dare life. I am thinking, donkeys are very sure footed animals and all will be well. Well what goes up, must come down so not only did we ride the donkeys up but back down as well!

The Monastry was another amazing wonder to see. It was enormous as Lily says when we took pictures in front of it we look like ants in comparison to the size of the structure.

Well if I thought riding donkeys up was scary well there is nothing to describe coming down. They actually "jump" over the rocks and steps. Yes I said jump and here I am struggling to stay on. Well again I comforted myself that these donkeys do this all the time so we are safe. So we get down the mountain safely and we are riding along on sand when suddenly I see Lily's donkey stumble and fall over and Lily is a heap on the ground. She was so brave she scrambled back up and assures all of u s that she was fine. She did not want to ride again, she felt sorry for the donkey but we were a far way from where we needed to go so after a couple of minutes she rode the donkey up to the Bedwin camp.
Then we set off for Wadi Ram where we had to ride camels like Lawrence of Arabia with headdress. So Lils tied her head up in a kaffiah and we rode camels.

Then we drove into the dessert to have some tea and cool water at the base of a spring in a Bedwin tent. What a neat experience. Out there is also the rock formation called The Seven Ancient Wonders. It was a long way to go but we had fun.

Our next scavenge was to go and swim in the Dead Sea and take a picture reading the newspaper while we floated. If we walked up Wadi Mujib Gorge we got more points. Well we drove for about 4 hours looking for this gorge with a TAXI driver who insisted on stopping at every vegetable stand on the way to buy sacks of vegetables. We came to the conclusion that he must have a vegetable stand at home or something. We were getting more and more harassed as he stopped about half a dozen times to barging and purchase these vegetables. By the time we were getting close to Mujib we had decided we were going to let him go (for rules purposes) and go on and try and do a few more scavenges. Well the travel imp had it in for us because in the middle of nowhere our TAXI broke down. Yes we had another broken TAXI but in the middle of nowhere.

We have the Dead Sea on our left and huge mountains on our right and an empty highway for as far as you could see. What next. Rainy and I had to get out and push start the TAXI. At the next stop the dumb dumb head turns off the TAXI and once again we had to push start it.
We decided after walking up Mujib Gorge to cut our losses. We went to a guest house along the Dead Sea. Begged them to call a new TAXI and we went "swimming" or should I say floating in the Dead Sea. Great experience with lots of laughs. By the time we could change, swim, paint ourselves in black mud, swim and get bathed and dress the new TAXI had arrived.

Last stop was we had to go to Allamby Bridge to see but not to cross. Well the trick to this is the Bridge is called Allamby Bridge from Israel to Jordan but called King Hussein's Bridge from Jordan to Isreal. Not much to see as there is immigration police on the border and we could not get close enough to even see the bridge. We went and did our eating scavenges and then rolled home tired and exhausted but thrilled with how much fun we had that day. I am absolutely dead on my feet.