Jordan Day 4

Our last day in Jordan, the land of Ammon, Moab and Edom...this is a pic of a Crusader Castle that we stopped the bus to look at, similar to the the castle in Karak, where we spent our last night in Jordan.

This is our hotel in Karak, and it's right next door to the Crusader Castle.  That's our bus parked out front. The Karak Rest House was not a place I would ordinarily stay at....noisy parties, no hot water, very minimal amenities, did I say no hot water?? etc...but according to Dr. Wright, if we want to see the Castle, this is the only option of a decent place to stay in order to work it into our itinerary. It did have some character...

This is the lovely lobby of the hotel...notice King Abdullah II's pic...I told you his picture is EVERYWHERE!! I feel like he's a buddy of mine by now.

Here's the view down into the valley from the Castle. In 1 Sam. 22:3 it talks about how David brought his family to Moab (that's where we are) to keep them safe while Saul is chasing him. It says he came to 'Mizpeh of Moab' which means 'lookout', then he went to the Stronghold, which is Masada.  It's very possible the place we were standing was the lookout, because on a clear day, you can actually see Masada. So David was in this vicinity before he became King. After he became King, he actually came back and conquered Moab for Israel.

Here's a picture of the kitchen of the castle.  I can't figure out what they were baking here...

This is a small replica of a catapult.. Because it's made of wood, you don't find these remains, so this shows you what it looks like, and...

These are the actual carved round stone boulders that were flung by the catapult..these are as big as bowling balls....made me think of Fred Flintstone.

Here's an 'arrow slit'...with this little windows you can see your target to shoot the arrow at them, but they can't see you.

Well, we are leaving Karak, and King Abdullah II is smiling at us all the way!!

Hmmm..the view was nice..I don't know about best choice, but it was our ONLY choice.

A few pics out the bus window...Here's a couple Jordanian men, now look whose picture is hanging outside the shop....yup, the King!!

 Most Muslim women don't cover their faces, but some stricter sects do.. This woman only has her eyes exposed.

 I don't want to gross you out, but you can't believe how you see meat hanging all over the place in the markets, with flies buzzing all around it. We were passing this truck, and I noticed an upside down cow's head in it (sorry, but I'm trying to give you a cultural experience:)

 So for something a little more beautiful...This is the national flower of Jordan - the Black Iris.  It only blooms for a couple weeks in the spring, and only blooms in a small area near the Arnon Gorge, which we are about to see.  When Dr. Wright saw them beside the road, he stopped the bus so we could all take a picture of these flowers which few people get to see.

 So here we are at the Arnon Gorge...a huge canyon cut by a river. This is a dammed up portion of it.  Moses camped near here with all 2+ million Israelites on their way up north past the Dead Sea...up to where they (Joshua, etc)  crossed into the promised land, over the Jordan River.  It was hard to imagine this as a good camping place, very desert-like, but at least they had water.

 Posing with some of my girls at the Arnon Gorge.  Our bus literally had to go down to the bottom of that gorge and then all the way back up to the plateau on the other side.  Lots of switch-back roads, believe me. It was quite a sight going down and then back up.

 We are up on the plateau on the other side, at the ancient site of Dibon which is on the Medeba Plateau, just north of Moab. Moses conquered this area and gave it to Reuben, but they couldn't hold on to it.  Mesha was the King of Moab who fought and lost against King Ahab (you know - Jezebel's husband). He paid big taxes to Ahab to leave him alone, but as soon as Ahab died in battle, Mesha took control of the Medeba Plateau again. Anyway, Dibon was Mesha's capital...and these sheep don't even care.

 Now we are at the city of Madaba...there's a very famous ancient mosaic map of the middle east.that was found here. This is a poster of the entire map that was found. It gives alot of information of place names and roads, etc, in the ancient world. A Greek Orthodox church was built over the map in the 1800's

 Here's the class looking at the mosaic map on the floor of the church.

 I know it's hard to see, but the big blob at the top is the Dead Sea, you will see a boat in it, and see the Jordan River coming out of the top (left) of it. The sort of oval you see is Jerusalem, the long street is the Cardo, it actually has the gates of the city on it, etc. It is hard to get the idea, but this map is full of information about many places in the time of Jesus.

 Walking to the church of the Map, we see the King of course, but you haven't seen his wife yet...doesn't she look like the princess in whatever that princess movie is called??

 The Church of the Map...class waiting outside for everyone to get done looking at it.

Lunchtime...Clara and I have matching shirts on today....Someone said I was mustard and she was ketchup.

 I know you aren't tired of seeing pictures of King Abdullah II (right?!)  He's the one in the middle. Notice it says 'Nuts shop' on the sign.

 Our final stop for the day...up on Mount Nebo!  It's not really a mountain, but it is high lookout point. And this is where Moses came to peer into the Promised Land and was told he wouldn't be going there.  It was a hazy day, couldn't see too far. Dr. Wright preached a great mini-sermon here about how we all see our promised land, and it may look hazy, not sure what's over there, and yet we still cross over, etc. Was a great end to our tour of Jordan.

Well, this is the last pic of me in Jordan.  I am so ready to go back to Israel now.  It seems Jordan is a really nice place to visit, but Israel feels like home.

Jordan Day 3 - PETRA!! LOTS of pictures and videos,,,get ready for this:

 Finally!! This is the day I got to see PETRA, one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world!  Petra is in the barren wilderness of southern Jordan, and was inhabited by the Nabataeans. They were a gifted tribe of Arabian people, originating from the Arabian Peninsula. They were part of the caravaneering business in the 1st century BC and AD, masters of the southern trade routes, and particularly profited from levying taxes on caravans coming up the spice routes from Arabia.  So this was a thriving city of people at the time of Jesus.

We are walking along the ancient main entrance to Petra. An impressive 1200 meter long, deep and narrow gorge of stunning rock cliffs.

Some of the first rock-carved buildings we saw. Everything you are about to see is carved from the native sandstone. This was a tomb, upper and lower. The bottom tomb had a 3-sided triclinium table that you could use to have banquets in the tomb of your deceased relative (hmmmm, I think I'd rather book it somewhere else)

 Still walking along the entry gorge.  It was an amazing site to see all the colors and striations in the rocks.

 It seems we were never going to get to the opening we were waiting to see. This entire entry walk was all sloped downhill as well....down, down, down...

 Here it is!! This is the famous first glimpse that we have of what is called the Treasury!!  You can see 2 camels and a Bedouin at the entrance. We got there early, and I was able to get this photo without hoards of tourists in the picture.  You'd better click on it to enlarge it, to get the sense of how magnificent this carved-out-of-stone building is.

 There it is!!  The Treasury! This structure is 43 meters high (how many feet is that?), carved in the 1st century BC as the tomb of an important Nabataean King, perhaps later used as a temple. It took genius to carve this thing, it is just breathtaking. The amazing thing is, now they have discovered a whole other floor below what you are looking at...when you get up close to those columns, you can look through grates and see the door opening below it. So this was even much taller in those days.  We were not allowed to go in this, because sandstone can be destroyed by the throngs of tourists.

 Here's a group shot in front of the Treasury...I am in the black sweater, white pants, carrying a blue bag in the front row to the right of center.  Notice the black young lady in the blue shirt in the middle of the front row. Her name is Beatrice, she is a student from Ghana, and I am going to tell you more about her in a bit.

 Looking up at the Treasury...astounding.

 Well, there is no staying on ground level with our group. We just have to climb..so we have just started up a 600+ step climb up to the 'High Place of Sacrifice', a place for pagan rituals...oh, boy.  Here I am looking down from where we just started the climb, you can see lots of doorways of dwellings.

 UP, up, up we climb...the ultimate stair master. I am twice the age of these kids, but I kept up somehow. I wasn't the first to the top,but I wasn't the last either:)

 Phew...I am resting on a rock, near the top, the view is spectacular.

 Those kids are at the top...and I am almost there!!

I MADE IT!!  Here I am passed out on the altar of sacrifice.  It actually felt good to lay on the cold stone, I was hot after all that climbing.   Hmmm, Clara used to work at Cold Stone Creamery, boy, does that sound good to me right now.

 I have to show you this funny video...While we were resting up on the High Place, I decided to teach Clara how to run my video camera, because I knew I was going to ride a camel today, and I wanted her to know how to take a video of me riding a camel. This is just hilarious.

So now we need to climb all the way down, but a different way. Along the path, I see these rock formations that look for all the world like scoops of rocky road ice cream to me...can you see it??? I want ice cream so bad, and this wasn't helping!!

 OK, this just isn't funny anymore...this scoop actually has nuts sprinkled on it....oh, I'm in pain now....

 Passing by a rock cliff, just look at these beautiful all natural colors in these rock formations!!

 Rachel is a little ahead of us...I yelled up to her to take her pic.

And  John and Laurie are a little behind us...I yelled back to them...note the flock of goats down and to the left.

 There were carvings all along the way. There seemed to be no end to it. This one was labeled 'The Garden Tomb".  I am not sure why. I sure couldn't see a garden.

 More tombs.  I don't know what their houses looked like, but their tombs were pretty fancy.

 Tombs, tombs, tombs...

 That's Clara...we were working our way down from another path, and decided our feet were tired and we just had to go find a camel to ride.

 Along the trail down...somebody is using this ancient carved dwelling as a garage..well, why not?

 I found me a camel.  He is still sitting on the ground, so it's not too difficult yet.  oh, I don't know about this.

Now we are up, this dude is tall, and all I have a little post sticking up from the saddle to hang on to. Clara's job is to take a video of me...she is riding a donkey next to my camel, and trying to fulfill her mission.This first short video is when the camel is holding still...that was easy for me.

This second video is when the camel starts walking, and I just can't stop laughing. I felt like I was gonna fall off if I let go of the little saddle horn.

 We finally get in a rhythm, I got it now...it's just I am gripping that saddle horn for dear life with 2 hands, and it is hard to take pictures at the same time.

As we are sauntering along, me on my camel, and Clara on her donkey, we come upon this ambulance. Obviously someone got hurt. And sadly, the next thing we hear is Rachel yelling up to us that Beatrice fell off a cliff, that she almost died, and that she broke her legs.  They were just loading her into the ambulance, there was nothing Clara and I could do for her, so we just began to pray hard.

 Here is the view from up on the camel..that's Rachel in the blond hair, and you can barely see Beatrice's neck (in a brace) and her two hands as the paramedics hover over her.  What happened was she took a wrong turn on a trail, trying to catch up to some of the group, she ended up on a ledge, and when she turned around to get back up, the ledge gave way and she fell 30 feet onto rock, and tumbled some more. Some French tourists saw her fall and got help, because none of our group even realized she had fallen when it happened. The good news is, they took her to a local hospital. She broke one leg, not two, she had a lot of cuts, scrapes, bruises, but no significant internal injuries. The doctors were amazed that it was not worse or fatal. She spent the night in the hospital, we picked her up in the bus and brought her back to Israel, and the next morning she flew to meet her family in Boston, and is likely having surgery on her leg as I am writing this. Please pray for Beatrice, this was so traumatic, is so painful, and she needs a quick and thorough healing. She is precious, always singing and smiling, and loves the Lord with all her heart.

 On a lighter note, in case you've never sat on a camel, this is what you see from up there.

 There's Clara on her donkey...she paid $7 and I paid $20 for a camel...I guess that's the going rate.

 Ok, so my camel is being ornery, this isn't funny, I feel quite unstable and I am trying to take a video here...I asked them for a gentle camel!

 Well, I finally got off that beast. Here's his face...his owner is climbing on to ride him back to the other side.  We parted as friends, but only because he didn't spit at me. I think I did seem him snarl, however, and I felt the same way about his behavior.

 Here's my last picture at Petra...that's me with arms raised. I loved seeing this spectacular site. Hope you enjoyed the view, too.