Jeremy & Joanna Tour Europe!: The Middle East - Jordan and the Sinai. Yallah! Yallah!

Sorry everyone these next 2 posts are likely to be quite long... but I'll do my best to make it brief!

In the Middle East Jo and I decided it would just be so much easier to do it on a tour, this way we wouldn't have to worry about getting our own transport, finding accommodation and viciously having to haggle for everything we bought. But this was our first real tour (if you don't count those quick 3 days around the North of Scotland) and we weren't sure what to expect really.

The tour was to begin in Amman the capital of Jordan, but before the tour was to commence Jo and I had to see a couple of sites that weren't included in the tours itinerary. Apart from just walking around the city we spent one day hiring a taxi to take us around to different sites like the church and mosaic of Madaba, Mount Nebo (where Moses allegedly died) and the baptism site of Jesus by John the Baptist on the River Jordan, known as 'Bethany beyond the Jordan'.

Amman

View from Mt Nebo, of the Promised Land that God showed to Moses. Back in the day when it wasn't so hazy you could see all the way to Jericho and Jerusalem.

We also got to swim in the Dead Sea that afternoon too which was a fantastic experience! You couldn't have drowned if you'd tried! It's actually quite hard to keep your legs beneath you as all they want to do is float to the surface. This was fun for about an hour as for some reason your fingers don't appear to get pruney like in a regular bath (too much salt I suppose) But whatever you do, DON'T GET IT IN YOUR EYES!!! Oh and it tastes like Battery acid too :) I learned the taste one for myself but the eyes were courtesy of the guy swimming next to me and his very manly reaction to getting battery acid in his eyes... "ARRRGGH! *some words in Arabic, probably swear words*ARRRGGH!" In the end I didn't think it was wise to give it a try.

Jeremy chillin' in the Dead Sea

The next day we met up with our tour leader and all the others on the tour (8 including ourselves) and had an informative discussion about what we'd be doing in Jordan and the art of using squat toilets and how you can't flush toilet paper down any toilet in the Middle East, this took some of the newer travellers by surprise and slightly by disgust (not mentioning any names Rey!). The rest of this day however was free and Jo and I thought we'd head out to the ancient Roman ruins of Jerash... all I can say is they were probably some of the best preserved ruins I have seen in my travels, Ephesus was great and everything there was made of marble, but just the sheer size and number of columns still standing in Jerash was very impressive. The city itself also has a far more Hellenic design and architecture than other Roman cities we've visited like Pompeii and Ostia Antica, which are just made of small boring red bricks and laid out in grids.

Jerash

After seeing everything we wanted to see in Amman we set off for Petra, one of the "New" 7 wonders of the world. If anyone remembers the movie "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" then it's the temple that they are in when they find the holy grail, well really they only used the exterior of it for about 6 seconds in the film, but that is not the point. The particular temple used in the movie is known as 'The Treasury' but there is a very extensive network of similarly styled temples, caves and shrines for several kilometres through the valley. The Treasury happens to be the best preserved thanks to a gutter that was constructed above it to stop water running down the face of the building.

The group at The Treasury in Petra

The whole site is absolutely amazing, especially the seik (narrow river valley) than runs from the desert/town and leads into the valley where Petra is located. This was an excellent and natural form of defence against invading armies. At certain points we were able to climb up onto the clifftops and small peaks to get some spectacular views of the Petra Valley, one walk in particular took us through a very narrow seik and around the back of the main Petra valley where there were still many well preserved cave/temples carved into the rock walls. From there we were able to ascend a set of stairs that led to the cliff overlooking the Treasury (we did our best to be there in the morning while the sun was actually shining onto the Treasury) Simply brilliant!

The main seik leading into Petra.

Much narrower (and more fun to climb through!) seik leading into Petra.

View of Petra's Treasury from above.

Petra from above

The next main stop on our tour was a place called Wadi Rum, it's kind of like a desert National Park. Here we would be spending the day driving around in a Jeep seeing carvings and rock formations then staying overnight and camping under the stars. One of the highlights was sunset where some of us boys climbed up the nearby mountain (which due to the way the rock erodes makes for some very easy but exciting climbing) there we were able to watch the sun set over a huge piece of the Wadi... such a great view! Dinner that night was delicious too, cooked bedouin style, which basically means a big hole in the ground filled with hot coals then covered with sand! Really tasty... and only a little gritty :P

Joe enjoying tea at the bedouin camp.

Wadi Rum

Our next adventure was getting across from Jordan into Egypt on the ferry from Aqaba to Nuweiba, it really shouldn't have been as hard as it was, but it's only hard when your tour guide has to put her foot down and refuse to put our bags in the storage container that has pools of urine in the bottom... for some reason the crew thought they were doing us a huge favour by allowing our group to place our bags underneath the stairwell, go figure! Maybe they were just a little nervous as the same boat was also carrying about 70 Egyptians who were being deported from Jordan that day.

Luckily after such a busy day (which later required us to run around the Egyptian port of Nuweiba for 45 minuites looking in every building for the one that held our passports) we were able to head to our nearby beach resort where we would be relaxing for the next day and a half! while we were here Jo and I did a spot of scuba-diving in the Red Sea, basically just a 30-40 minute experience of diving where you don't have to learn anything except how to breath under water and you are taken around to see all the amazing fish! We saw so many types I didn't really know what any of them were called except for the Lion fish and the Clown fish that were swimming about one of the anemones . I was really amazed by how fearless the fish were, I was actually able to reach out and touch the clown fish and stick my finger in the Anemone (which felt funny), though I didn't try this with the lion fish... that could have ended badly :S

The next part of our adventure was visiting St Katherine's Monastery and climbing Mount Sinai, the one Moses climbed to receive the 10 commandments. Unfortunately the monastery is only open for 3 hours per day so when you do go its always packed with tourists! The importance of St Katherine's Monastery is that it was built to enclose the 'original' burning bush that spoke to Moses. You can definitely go in and see a bush though it appears to have completely recovered from the fire, but what is even funnier is that right next to the bush is a fire extinguisher!!! Just in case I guess!

Burning Bush and the fire extinguisher, just in case!

Well after our visit to the monastery we headed home and caught some Z's ready for our afternoon ascent of Mt Sinai in time to see the sunset. The walk was really easy and quite enjoyable, and a great view as well. Unfortunately the walk back down in the dark wasn't anywhere near as much fun :(