Finally at the Dead Sea.

Wednesday 21st November was a really fun afternoon. I loved every minute of it. We drove past the Dana Bio-reserve and I know that if I ever go back to Jordan I will stay here. This little piece of paradise looked like a real gem in Jordan's crown!
We drove down to Wadi Mujib, a massive gorge, which cuts through the landscape like a massive scar.  Unfortunately it closes in the autumn and winter seasons so all I could do was walk down to the visitor centre.  It looked amazing...a really impressive  fissure,cut like a thin slice of cheese through the land.  It's the lowest nature reserve in the world. If I could have, I really think  I would have gone for a few hours of caving, white water rafting or even river rock climbing but unluckily the options weren't there and maybe that was a good thing; with my lack of coordination it would have been a disaster!

A sunny picture of Wadi Mujib taken from here

 The entrance of the gorge

 Me, I look different without my glasses (oh and thanks to my driver for creating the Bedouin scarf!)

I really loved it down in the Dead Sea area because the air was so good.  I was lucky too because in winter it wasn't incredibly hot. In fact it was pretty pleasant, even a bit cold on the cliffs above.
My first impressions of the Dead Sea were great...it was a weird body of water.  The waves didn't lap and there were white crystals everywhere. In fact it didn't really look like water, it was more like some kind of liquid you equated with an alien planet.  As it was windy I didn't see it at it's flat, silky best, but I was still mightily impressed by it.

 Above the Dead Sea.

Behind me was a pillar of salt, which locals believe to be Lot's wife. (She turned to stone in the Bible when she turned round to look back at her city of Sodom and Gomorrah.)  Yes, this ancient city of vice was most probably located near-by.

We then carried on to the sea.  I paid only about 5 quid to enter into a beach spa, I used their changing rooms...they were massive cubicles...enough for a family of 10 in the UK, with heavy wooden doors and massive wooden mirrors all around.  It really was quite atmospheric in there. I rubbed my few cuts on my legs from diving and snorkelling with Vaseline so the salt wouldn't sting them and off I went into the ocean.  I left my stuff with the driver...shit, it's really bad that I can't remember his name.
IT WAS SO FUNNY!!  The water was thick like cream and as soon as you were up to your knees you just couldn't stay upright.  You were totally buoyant   I LOVED IT and it felt absolutely great.  I really think my hour or so floating and paddling around in the Dead Sea were a highlight of my trip.  I could float so easily and I could also manouvere around really well by sitting up and moving my arms...like sitting on a high powered water sofa!  I also loved the feeling of the salt water in my ears.  It really soothed my frazzled ear canals!  The floating was so relaxing too. I would have liked a whole week of floating here, but the few hours had to do.  I also covered myself in mud from a massive bucket of the stuff.  It was so stinky..pure gone off eggs, but hey, I loved the gooey, pooey texture!  I know how much these treatments are in the UK so I was going to make the most of this!  I lost all my inhibitions and went to town.

 Relaxing.

.Getting stuck in at the high-class beauty parlour!

Being low season it was very quiet...it was cold (ish) too.  

For me it was fine but the mud didn't dry completely on my body.

 Sitting here in my little house now in Bicester it seems unbelievable that  I was here doing this just over two months ago.

It brings back great memories.   

Smelling (and looking) like a massive toxic egg I waddled back into the sea and tried to get the mud off. This was almost impossible on my face.  Just the smallest bit of Dead Sea in your eye is agony and when I was drying my hair with my towel I  got salt in my eye and  had to pour half a bottle of water into my open eye to swill it out.  But hey, I felt 10 years younger, my skin was smooth and I didn't smell that bad any more!
Oh, by the way I did taste the sea, just to test it out, and it was truly gross.

It was now getting dark.  I had had a great day.  Castles, gorges, a great driver for company..(.what was his name?!!!  It's driving me crazy)   and the true bliss of floating in the lowest place on earth with hardly any one around, oh... and covering myself in mud and prancing around like a lunatic.

About 40 minutes later I arrived at the hotel in  Madaba.  My welcome was really lovely and the hotel was the best I stayed in over my entire trip.  
The receptionist, Mohammed, was really friendly and I got a fabulous room.  Mohammed told me where the top restaurant in town was, so off I went for the best meal I ate during my whole trip. (Actually it was equal best with the fish meal I had in Tel Aviv)   I loved Haret Jdoudna restaurant.  It was the perfect way to end the perfect day!

   A reminder of my enormous starter with my birthday bottle of  Jordanian wine.

Crusader Castles.

Wow. Wednesday 21st November was a great jam packed day full of fun adventures. It was a great day. I got up really early and my new taxi driver was waiting for me. Damn, I've forgotten his name but he was an interesting ol' guy with a lot of stories and lots of opinions.
 After about half an hour of being on the road we stopped for boiling hot coffee (also so he could have one of his incredibly strong cigarettes)  he was telling me about his family, his kids, his adventures driving across Iraq in the 90s and also sharing his prolific knowledge of his country: Here are some snippets of things he said:
How Iranian tourists are  banned from travelling to Jordan due to the Sunni/Shia muslim rift and the number of Shia holy sites in Jordan which they can't visit.  
How Israeli politicians have sex with Palestinian politicians and then blackmail them.
How Jordan is taking in an unbelievable amount of refugees from Syria, Iraq and Palestine.
How Palestinians still don't have full rights in Jordan ( Over one third of the population of Jordan are displaced Palestinians.)


He kept saying that if political strife ever hit his country then where the hell would all the people go?
 "There is just no country free of strife anywhere around. Jordan has to try and keep itself politically stable, otherwise we are all completely f**ked."
OK this is a depressing picture but he was a jolly guy really who kept laughing through his cigarette induced coughing fits.

Shobak Castle,originally called Montreal.  It was built in 1115 by Baldwin I of Jerusalem but was quickly aquired by a French Lord who attacked the trade caravans which passed by.  He also planned to attack Mecca.  This news reached Saladin and of course he wasn't very happy about this so decided on a plan of attack first.

We arrived at Shobak Castle about 10am. It was all pretty desolate really. A massive castle ruin on a desolate hill with just a few villages below.  It was an atmospheric, yet creepy place not helped by the fact that I was the only visitor. A local guide said he would take me around for a quid.  That was money well spent, without him the whole place would have just been a crumbling, dark,creepy wreck.  But he bought the place to life.

 Crusaders kept wine in this storage area in the 12th Century.
The Muslims decided to just store olives (or so my guide said!)

 The remains of the Church from 1185

 Boulders thrown from  Saladin's catapults ..Really?!

Saladin's Islamic inscriptions on the crusader turrets from 1187.

Saladin sieged the castle for two years but unbeknown to him there was an escape tunnel for the canny crusaders.  It was dug through the basement of the castle,through the hill right out into the far plains below.  If I were a fit, brave woman, with no fear of heights and the dark and enclosed spaces, I could have descended into this tunnel as it is still navigable.  Ummm, I might travel alone but I still have strong survival instincts. So I kindly rejected my guide's 'kind' offer to take me down into the tunnel of hell.

We then left the desolation of Shobak behind.  The castle was in direct sunlight but these photos give an idea of the land around.

 Beautifully barren.

Me in the middle of nowhere. Shobak village is behind me and the castle is just to the left.

We then drove off to Karak. it was turning into a highly historical morning.  I've read about Crusaders and the might of Saladin  but now finally I was seeing the places with my own eyes...it was very exciting.

Karak castle was better preserved and obviously had more tourists and funding.  For me though, it lacked a bit of the atmosphere of Shobak but the history was still amazing.  This land had been home to the Moabites of Biblical times and the Nabateans.  But it was in the 12th century, when crusaders came and started to charge road tax  to traders, when the current fortress was first built high on the hill over the town.

Above picture is nicked from here  I never got to see the castle like this because I just arrived through a crazy traffic system which my driver seemed to know like the back of his hand.

The crusader Lord of this castle would throw people off the barricades with wooden boxes over their heads so that they remained conscious for a long time when they finally hit the ground below. Saladin really was fighting against a notorious bunch of money grabbing, sadistic bastards. He conquered the place in 1188 and that  was the end of the Crusader presence in this area of the Middle East.

 The museum was great and I liked that Japan and Jordan were working together.

 Churches which had been turned into mosques. It was so beautiful down here and I'm glad my guide had a torch.

The wall on the right was built by the crusaders over 300 years before the Mamluks built the crappy extension on the left. You have to give it to the Crusaders...they built things to last.

My guide was an old man but as as sprightly on his feet as a mountain goat. His pronunciation was poor but his knowledge was amazing. Here we are in the small prison cells when the castle was used as a jail in the 13th century.

A prayer niche shows the conversion of Churches to Mosques.  Saladin spared  everyone's life at Karak castle apart from the sadistic Lord, who he killed himself.

This was the kitchen.   There was still an oven, pestles and mortars  and a big grain grinder. I loved it.

In neither castle was there a great sense of 'doing things for the tourists'  There were hardly any signs or information.  Because I paid for guides I was fine and I really liked the rough and ready edge of these two castles.  I know it was quiet because I was travelling in low season but to be honest it all added to the creepy menacing atmosphere of these amazing castles.

It was time to leave. I had lunch with my driver and he told me how much he hates Karak because of the awful traffic in the town below.  Luckily today had been a good day and we had arrived early.  I told him it was my birthday tomorrow and he guessed my age as 50.  Cheeky bugger! I tried not to let this get me down and luckily my lunch was tasty enough for me to forget the insult. He told me to have get prepared, we were about to descend  over 500 metres and the  quick descent sometimes gave people headaches.  Yes, I was finally off to my birthday treat...floating in the Dead Sea.

Petra by Night.

Whoops! I forgot to update my first day in Petra.
 How could I forget my evening of  Monday 19th November 2012.

My first day in Petra had been amazing. But it wasn't over yet.  I said goodbye to Michael on the outskirts of Yaser's village and then got a taxi back to my hotel. Yaser had invited me to eat with his family but I wanted to get ready for Petra at night so we agreed to meet for a drink later.
So about 7.30pm we met up in one of the only pubs in Petra. Beer really is expensive in the Arab world, not surprising considering that true Muslims shouldn't drink the stuff. Yaser exuberantly told me about how he and his brothers go on trips down to Aqaba,( which is a tax free zone) and stock their cars up with tons of alcohol and then either sell it at exorbitant prices in Petra or  just drink the lot in an immense piss up in a cave. He then told me about his accident on a quad bike down on the Red Sea beaches of Aqaba...again fuelled by alcohol. His arm and hand were still in a complete mess weeks afterwards. Boys will be boys all over the world.
At 9pm we parted company and Yaser in his long flowing Bedouin robe floated off into the night. I headed back to the main entrance and walked back down the Siq which had been lit up by thousands of candles in brown paper bags. It was a dark night and the stars were shining down and it was all so romantic.  This was probably one of my only nights when I wished that I had had a partner with me to share the romantic atmosphere all around me with.  Unfortunatly my camera wasn't up to the task of taking any photos in such light but I had a go.  All I can say is these photos are genuine.

Wow!
And here is one from the Internet

And another

We then listened to a guy on a one string violin and another guy on a piccalo. it was  amazing and I loved every minute of it.  Walking back along the Siq to my hotel was breathtaking but I felt like I was sleep walking. I was just so tired! I felt really privileged  and will never forget my experience of witnessing Petra by night.

Petra Day 2

Tuesday November 20th 2012

I had my best sleep that second night in Petra.  I had been so exhausted after my awful desert nightmare in the tent,  my 1800 steps with Michael the donkey and my hours of walking the day before.
I grabbed another icecream from Movenpick and entered back into the magical world of Petra.

Today I didn't meet up with Yaser. He had given me his phone number but I wanted some peace and I decided to walk up to the High Place of Sacrifice on my own. It was a bit of a scrammble up these hewn steps but within an hour I was right at the top where the Nabateans used to have a sacrifice table and kill animals.  (No human sacrifices here unfortunately.)

Sacrificial Table at top of High Place of Sacrifice.

To be honest the above photo is nicked of the Net. I was suffering with severe vertigo by the time I reached the first plateau and couldn't quite make it up and there wasn't a soul around to help me.  One of the downsides to travelling alone.
But here are some of my photos...

 Nabatean training session before 9am at the entrance to the Siq

Some winter foliage as I wandered down the Siq

More Nabatean action.

Horse and carts were up and about early too.

Desert greenery...it had rained just two days before.

Ancient fountain in the shape of an elephant.  Unfortunately all the water has dried up now.

A tomb I came across on my wandering about.

The stone which made Petra.

I sat in a Bedouin tent with a young girl of about 20 and had tea..  She wanted me to buy junk off her stall too but I said no, I really didn't like her stuff that much.  But she was friendly.  She told every tourist to turn right...turing left was the way to  instant death.  A tourist a few months back had not listened to her and had turned left and ended up falling to his death down a cliff.  There are no signs or guided pathways anywhere in Petra really.  It's up to you to listen to the advice of the Bedouin or pay the price if you don't!

She  guessed the nationality of every person who walked by. Only a couple of people went by but she guessed correctly...Polish and Canadian.  She said she could even tell Ukrainian women from Russian by the shoes they wore.   She also told me that the Bedouin of Wadi Rum were the best looking men in the world...I think I must have got short changed there then!! Damn!

Once I set off again I got completely lost and had mad images of me falling off some cliff and being picked at by eagles when as if by magic some travel angels suddenly appeared.  A British couple who were wandering around lost too but who had an infinitely better sense of direction than me.  God knows what would have happened if I hadn't bumped into them. He was a bit morose...I think he wanted a quiet day with his wife in the Petra wilderness but she was so CHATTY and was telling me all about her job in Orange Mobile headquarters and how difficult the change over to EE had been.  It was all pretty surreal and weird listening to her considering the magical environment we were in.  I never even found out their names but without them I feel that I would never have found my way down from the high plateaus of the far reaches of Petra!
We saw a mad old woman right up high who seemed to be living all alone.  To me it looked like she had been literally banished to the hills.  maybe she got lost about 100 years ago and never found her way back down.  Tombs and carvings appeared around every corner but our maps were not really good enough to tell us what anything was.  All I can say is when the woman stopped talking about Orange Mobile it was 100% amazing.

Lack of tourists was due to the Israeli border being shut.
 No day trippers.
The Main Roman Road.

We finally ended up climbing down onto the main Roman Road and I said goodbye to my two navigators...we hadn't met another tourist for over 2 hours.  I had been so unbelievably lucky to bump into them!

I then went off to the museum.  It was pretty tiny and rubbish really.  I suppose it's not really needed, the history is just around you. I sat under a tree wrote some postcards, had some lunch and then headed back.

Interesting thing in the museum one:
King Abdullah of Jordan at the top.  The previous King, his Father Hussein on the right.
Actually pictures like this can be found all over Jordan. The King is everywhere.

Interesting thing in the museum two:
For anyone who wants to brush up on Jordanian historical periods!

Interesting thing in the museum three:
Nabatean artwork.  I liked it.

Outside the museum
Donkey having a good scratch

My goodbye photo of the Treasury.

I walked slowly back stopping off at coffee houses and reading and looking at more jewellery. I bought myself a birthday bracelet on my way out.  It's really gorgeous and was my treat to myself. I decided I was just too knackered to go into any more tombs and about 4pm I said goodbye to Petra and left.

What an amazing two days I had had.  I will never forget my wonderful time here. Made even better by the lovely weather; cool enough to walk all day and the total lack of tourists.

That evening I chatted to a a guy in the hotel from London who was really interesting and I then went out to meet Yaser for a goodbye drink. We met in the only pub in Petra and had just a couple of beers.  Travelling in Arab countries is good for my liver  A pint of beer is nearly 8 quid and incredibly difficult to find. I got home and packed. The next day I was meeting a new taxi driver at 7am and was excited about going to the Crusader castles along the King's Highway and down into the Dead Sea region.