Travelogue - Part 3

Red Sea

Our next stop was a little beachside resort on the shores of the Red Sea. Now, you'd probably think that the first thing we'd've been thinking would be "woohoo! beach! snorkelling!", and we were, but just about equally prominent in everyone's mind was "we can wear shorts!!". After a few days of wearing long pants in the sweltering heat, it was definitely nice to be able to get into some short clothes for a change.

We settled in to our small huts (one each, which was nice):

After that, we headed out to snorkel for a bit. The water was gloriously warm,and there was some nice coral and coloured fish to see. After that, we kicked back with a drink and relaxed while we waited to have dinner.It was a really nice change of pace. We ate outside the main hotel area by candlelight, and when our meals arrived, they had candles set in the middle of hollowed-out vegetables, which looked very cool. We'd been told that sleeping outside of our huts could be a good idea, given the heat, and this turned out to be good advice, although I settled for opening my door a bit and moving out into the middle of my room instead.

The next day I went scuba diving with some of the others in a reef area, which was good, esp as I hadn't scuba dived in a long time. There are apparently better places to go, but this location was still good, with plenty of colourful and interesting fish to see, along with the coral formations themselves.


Aqaba

After scuba diving came our crossing into Jordan by ferry. I've never been on the Sea Cat, but I expect you'd probably say it was somewhat similar to that. Fortunately, they give special treatment to tourists, apparently, and we were ushered past the long queue of locals waiting to get on, and given a special place to put our luggage down. The ferry itself was very comfortable, and although we couldn't see much from where we were sitting, it was a nice ride. We were actuallylucky, as apparently there can be big delays for the ferry, but we weren't left waiting very long at any point. After a short bus ride,we arrived at our Hotel in Aqaba, and went out to a nice restaurant for dinner. I decided to brave a salad for the first time, and see what happened!

The next day, we had the morning to explore Aqaba a bit, which is quite a nice city:

Some of us went to see to the fortress, which was pretty cool. It was also somewhat maze-like, which definitely added to the appeal!

Aqaba also has the world's second-tallest flag pole (which brings all sorts of comments to mind, really :P ). We headed back to the hotel, piled into another minibus and headed off towards Wadi Rum.

Wadi Rum

We got into two 4WDs driven by our Bedouin hosts whom we were going to be staying the night when we got there, and were taken off for a tour of the desert. The landscape was impressive, and beautiful, with both red and yellow-coloured sands.

We sat in a Bedouin tent and had tea,which was a mixture of sage, cinnamon, and cardamon. It was quite sweet, but nice (I don't usually like tea). I resisted the urge to buy a bag of it, knowing that it wouldn't travel very well in my luggage! After that, we went to see a large crevice which went a long way back into the cliffs, some carvings of camel trains, on an unusually flat bit of cliff face, a sand dune (which I had fun running down), and a small, natural stone "bridge" about 35 ms high (it was a bit of a climb, and it was kind of hard to feel completely safe while you were up there, too!).

We were then driven to a small camp, where we going to spend the night with our hosts. Before dinner, we hiked up the adjacent cliffs to the see the sunset, which was pretty impressive. There was also a rather cool rock formation (although the eyeballs have been added, I think!):

Dinner was good, and some of it was cooked in an earth oven (as in buried), which was quite cool to see. We all slept out under the stars, which was nice.

Petra

Our next major stop was Petra, which most people associate with Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, for the temple front carved intothe face of it. (It's actually the front to the Treasury, though, and sadly, there were no passages, traps, or grail rooms behind it!) It's definitely impressive to see, and didn't disappoint at all:

There's so much more to see of Petra, though. It's been named one of the new Seven Wonders of the World, and rightly so, if you ask me. Over the next two days my friend and I walked and climbed all over the place. There are squillions of tombs carved into the rock, ranging from the tiny and plain, to the huge and brilliantly coloured, temple ruins, and plenty of great vantage points to see fantastic views of the site, which is enormous. By the time we'd gotten to the end, I definitely had that "wow, I've been everywhere now" feeling, and a bit of a feeling of accomplishment, too. The icy poles that we had at the end of each day were two of the best I've ever tasted, too!

The Dead Sea

I was definitely looking forward to seeing what floating on the Dead Sea would be like, and on the way, we stopped to see a rather beautiful angle of part of its edge.

The place we went to was pretty much like any other touristy beach resort you've ever seen, so it wasn't so unusual in that. We all got changed, and were told to be very sure we didn't get any of the water in our eyes our mouths, as it wouldn't be pleasant!! Apparently, the only thing that can live in the Dead Sea is some sort of algae. I went into the water, (being very careful not to splash!), and tried to lie on my back. I'd originally had images of being able to float on myback quite easily once I got myself on top, but it was more like beinghoisted up to the surface by an invisible crane. It was really quite something. Floating on your side was very hard to do, and you tended to get turned to one side or the other pretty quickly unless you tried not to be. Moving through the water was so much easier than normal swimming: you could punt yourself with your arms almost effortlessly, and if you tried to "walk", you actually (slowly) got somewhere.

I'd heard you could get covered in Dead Sea mud, and thought I'd give it a go, just for the fun of it. I managed to get a tiny fleck of water in my eye on the way back in, and was very glad that was all,because it hurt quite a lot! I and another one of the people in my group got mudded up with what looked like thick, oily tar, but turned out to be not quite as oily as it looked, and fortunately didn't smell all that bad, either! It didn't feel especially unusual, apart from the fact that I don't think I've ever covered myself head to toe in black goop before. We stood around for a while to let it dry a bit and have a chance to take effect (it's supposed to be good for your skin). Naturally, some silly photos were in order:

After wandering back into the water to wash off again, and spending a bit of time in one of the pools (where it felt so much harder to swim, by comparison!), we headed off to Mt Nebo, where Moses is said to have been given a view of the Promised Land. (Unfortunately, it was very hazy in the distance when we got up there, and I haven't really got any good shots of it.) We then headed off to Madaba, the 5th-mostpopulated city in Jordan, with a population of about 60,000.

Madaba and Jerash

The main attraction here wasn't really Madaba itself, although we did see a rather nice Greek Orthdox church, complete with a partial mosaic map of the Holy Land, which was quite impressive. The major thing for me was the Roman ruins of Jerash that some of us went to the next day. They were very large, impressive, and we spent about 2 1/2 hour swalking through them. (I go gaga for Roman ruins, btw!)






We didn't get a chance to see see an arena performance, but I wasn't actually that fussed about it, esp. when our tour leader commented when we saw him later on that it really wasn't anything special. Madaba is quite a modern city, and actually looked rather cool at night (although this hastily snapped shot will probably only give you so much of a feel for it!):