Jordan

After twenty years Rob and I are excited to be back in the Middle East! 

We began this next leg of our journey last week in Amman, Jordan. Although I'd only visited Jordan briefly many years ago, the climate and geography was similar enough to Israel that I was instantly swamped with a sense of nostalgia. I remembered the cypress and olive trees, the hilliness of Amman and Jerusalem and the particular quality of daylight of Israel in the early spring after the winter rains and before the really hot weather. It was lovely to be back in a more temperate climate after the heat wave of Sri Lanka. 

We spent our first day in Jordan in Jerash, a Roman ruin an hour north of Amman. The kids and I had watched a few videos about the wide reach and amazing building skills of the Romans before we left Sri Lanka and were exciting to actually see Roman ruins. Jerash is an amazing site, and much more vastly excavated than when I visited twenty years ago. Rob's favourite place was the hippodrome, but the kids and I were fascinated with the theaters, the giant meeting circle, and the cardo, which is a colonnaded road that stretches for more than 800 meters. You can also see the remains of baths, churches, fountains and many statues. The most amazing part of the cardo is that you can still see the wheel ruts on the stones from where the carts ran and manhole covers over the sewer system. The cardo road also had sidewalks,which is much more sophisticated than many places I've traveled recently. 

 

One other lovely part of Jerash that the entire site was covered with beautiful wild flowers, including poppies.

As you might imagine, we did a lot of walking that day, and a lot of climbing of stairs. Jerash is the kind of place you don't realize how much walking you are doing, until you wake up with sore legs the next day. According to my phone we walked 12.5 km and climbed 34 flights of stairs. 

Our second day in Jordan we attempted to explore Amman, but hail and heavy rain made this challenging. We briefly saw the Citadel, a Roman ruin, but spent most of our time in the museum. This was interesting (and dry). The kids were fascinated and horrified by the engraving on this 8th century brazier (to the right). A brazier is a kind of holder for coals or fire to cook over and the kids were perplexed as to why naked people would be on a cooking device. One of the MANY questions I don't have an answer for yet. Makaio added photos of the brazier, and of other naked statues from the museum, to his folder of 'naked people statutes' on his phone. 

The remainder of our day was spent traveling to Petra three hours south. It was a a windy, cold and rainy, afternoon, and we were happy not to be exploring. We arrived in Petra to the news of the bombings in Sri Lanka, and many emails from friends and family inquiring about our safety. We were extremely saddened that Sri Lanka, after ten years of peace, should experience this kind of senseless violence. Luckily no one we knew was directly harmed by the bombings, but it was hard to get the images of places we had visited just days before being subject to such violence. We are also still trying to understand the anti-religious violence that seems to be unfolding around the world. 

Our third day in Jordan was spent in Petra. In 1994 when I visited it actually snowed in Jordan and Petra closed the second day we visited due to flood warnings. I remember huddling in my hostel room with my roommate Rachel and some other friends for warmth. This visit, even though it was April, it was a frosty 3 degrees Celsuis when we woke up and the kids were happy to wear the long underwear they've been carting in their packs for the last 2.5 months. They were also amused to see their breaths in the air. (Our hotel, although not much fancier than my 90's hostel, was heated.) 

In 1994 there were maybe a couple hundred people exploring Petra on the day I visited. Not so now! I was told 14,000 people visit everyday and there is no low season. This is A LOT of people. (This seems to be the trend of our travels- the world is a lot more crowded than it used to be, and a lot more people travel.) Crowded or not, it was still thrilling to walk the downhill slope into Petra through the narrow canyon called the Siq and see the first views of the treasury. 

The Treasure- with tourists in the way of my shot

Petra is a fantastic archaeological site, with Nabatean carvings cut into the red rock. It is vastly more excavated than it was 20+ years ago, with many later sites from the Roman and Byzantine era. The boys had watched a National Geographic documentary back in Kingston before we left (I think I watched it too, but possibly I was sleeping, or frantically booking flights and buying insurance), and they had much to tell us about the ancient Nabateans, and especially their use of water that enabled them to create their desert oasis. They also had lots to say about the different styles of carvings,and took great joy in being able to differentiate between Greek, Roman and Nabatean carvings. 

View from somewhere up high that we climbed- a lot of steps! 

Petra is an enormous site and not only did we walk from one amazing carved site to another, we also climbed up many sets of stairs, wandered up different rock formations, and explored for hours. Makaio and I didn't last as long as Rob and Dassa who hiked up to the farthest point- the monastery. 

Oh yeah, Petra was also memorable because we discovered that Makaio is oddly scared of donkeys, of which there were many in Petra. (He's also not fond of camels, especially their lips which flap when they run.) Apparently this is part of a larger fear of barnyard animals, which I am blown away by because for years (literally years!) I've listened to him monologue about barnyard characters he's made up, and been forced to listen to songs about Moo-moo and Buck-Buck-Chicken. Dassa took great joy in making hee-haw noises for days after finding out about this fear, and I can't say anyone stopped him.  

Our final day in Jordan was spent exploring Wadi Rum by jeep safari. I was a little uncertain about this, but it was more fun than anticipated. Wadi means valley, and for two hours we zipped around to various sites in the beautiful desert. We stopped to admire a red sand area where The Martian and other films were shot, ran up and down sand dunes, saw ancient hieroglyphics, drank sweet tea in a Bedouin tent, checked out some tourist camels and visited the site where Lawrence of Arabia fought in the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Turks. It's also where the movie Lawrence of Arabia was filmed.  

Those are camel behinds in the background.

The little people on the rocks are the kids. 

Our final afternoon was spent in Aqaba, which is on the Red Sea. The beach isn't particularly nice there, but the kids were fascinated that you could see Eilat so clearly from Jordan. We spent a lot of time looking at maps and showing them how short the Jordanian coastline is compared to the Egyptian one, and where Israel was. We also ate some excellent food in Aqaba, which after the ruins, and the lovely people we met, was one of the best parts of our quick trip to Jordan. 


In Amman we ate in a local restaurant and enjoyed matabal, (eggplant salad), fattoush (a cucumber and tomato salad with baked pita chips), mansaf which is a kind of upside down casserole of lamb, potatoes and tomato sauce, and chicken with pitas and onions. It was all delicious! Although we enjoyed Sri Lankan food, the end of our stay was during the Sri Lankan new year and all restaurants, except at our hotel were closed, and we ate a lot of tourist fare: pizza, spaghetti, and chicken sandwiches. So, it was with great excitement that we had falafel for breakfast (with french fries!) and pita and hommis and mixed grill for dinner. Rob and I also had amazing Turkish coffee with cardamon and very sweet mint tea, plus my absolute favourite: za'atar on pita. Makaio was excited about a giant bag of dates we purchased (and are still working our way through), and everyone enjoyed baklava as well as hareeseh, a cake made of semolina. 

There was only one aspect to Jordan that I didn't enjoy. Every hotel we booked was close to a mosque that blasted the 4:30 am call to prayer with great gusto. This made for a lot of very early mornings and not a a lot of sleep. It was with some exhaustion, but also excitement that we arrived in Israel last week. I have lots to share about our week in Jerusalem in a future post.