Jordan

[I'm sitting in the lobby of a little hotel that faces Old Jerusalem as I write this, and the lobby is full of orthodox jews, many in the full get up, standing in front of the window facing the city walls and the temple mount praying and reciting things]

I love Jordan. I think its my favorite place we've been so far. Friendly people, amazing things to see, lots to do. I would definitely go back there and spend more time, we were only there for a couple days. We flew into Amman on Saturday - got in right around noon. Originally we were going to spend the afternoon in Amman, but we decided to head straight to Petra (or Wadi Musa rather) right off the bat so we could try to do Petra in the morning and get to Aqaba and dive in the afternoon. Main goal being to maximize the time in Israel.

Our hotel in Wadi Musa (the little city where the entrance to Petra is) lined up a taxi for us from the airport in Amman back to Wadi Musa, which is several hours away. Boy am I tired of sitting in the back middle seat in those little taxis! (As the only girl and a short one at that, its not even a question, I just climb in there straight away).

We got into Wadi Musa midafternoon and went and had probably the best meal we've had so far: hummus, pitas, falafel, chicken and rice. Best hummus ever and the meal was so cheap. One of the people at the hotel told us about the place and it aws a bit of a walk to get there but our whole meal was something like 6 Dinar. Closer to our hotel, the prices were WAY higher. Of course I took a picture of the meal . . .



After we ate, we got a taxi to take us out to Little Petra and wait for us for a little bit. It was already pretty late in the afternoon and it gets dark really early here, so we didn't have a whole lot of time, but it was definitely worth going out there.

I'm going to have a lot of reading to do. I want to learn a lot more about the people that carved all of this out of rock. The geography itself is fantastic. "Bubbly" rocks and cliffs all over.



You can see one of the stair cases in this one. They were all over. I'd start climbing stairs and end up on the top of some fantastic cliff looking down over everything. I could explore places like this for days.



Here's a view from a little higher after climbing one of the stair cases.



The next day was the real deal: Petra. We got up and ate breakfast about 6 and then headed to the entrance and entered the "park" around 6:30 or so, which meant we beat the majority of the endless tour buses of people. There were maybe 15 or 20 people total in there when we got down there. I LOVE early morning time. The light, the chill in the air . . . fabulous.

On the way you walk thru these rock cliff walls that are magnificent.



Then, as you continue, you see the beginnings of the treasury.



When we came back thru on our way out, there were HORDES of people throughout, and especially in front of the treasury. It was so awesome to be there nice and early with no one else there to obstruct the view or the pictures. Here's Brian, Ben and I in front of the treasury . . . taken by a Bedouin man who didn't quite line it up right. Oh well.



All throughout the park here there are caves and things carved into the rocks. Its very unique and very incredible what they were able to do.



You can walk thru most of them too . . . here's one tomb that had some colorful rock formations going on.



I have countless more pictures of amazing things in here, but we're about to head out into Jerusalem for the day and I want to get this up before we go. After Petra we got in another small taxi for another couple hour drive down to Aqaba where we went diving in the Red Sea. My first time diving. WOW. I wish I could have had a way to take pictures of what I saw. But more to come on that later, gotta go!