In March we took a trip to Jordan. Just north of Saudi Arabia, it was a very quick and inexpensive flight. Technically, this was my second visit to Jordan, but this trip went much more smoothly than the first. If you're going to visit Jordan, which you DEFINITELY SHOULD BECAUSE IT WAS AWESOME, here are my top 3 things to do:
#1: Petra
Of course. One of the New Seven Wonders of the World, no trip to Jordan would be complete without a visit to the ancient city of Petra. Only 15% of this site has been excavated; yet this small percentage is a HUGE area! We only had one day to visit Petra, so we tried to see everything we could in that one day. This equated to over 10 miles of hiking and climbing, which left us sore for days.
The walk up to the Treasury was about a mile, through a high and narrow gorge called the Siq. At the end of the gorge, you turn a corner and see the entirety of the Treasury (which you might recognize from an Indiana Jones movie!).
The Treasury is the most famous building in Petra. We started very early in the morning and had the place almost entirely to ourselves.
Just us, a few camels, and a few workers.
These guys were clearly amused by our jumping pictures.
We continued our hike past the Treasury and found lots of ancient ruins of buildings.
We made the long trek to the Monastery. It's not nearly as famous as the Treasury, but it was much more massive, and much more empty.
Just a lonely donkey by the Monastery.
Just past the Monastery was a high viewpoint where we stopped for a snack. We met this curious kitten that wanted some snacks too.
He was a very friendly cat though I think he only liked us for our food.
We met one other hiker while up on the viewpoint who kindly took our picture. You can also see our kitten friend.
Brian saw some of the Jordanian Desert Forces and really liked their outfits. He asked this guy in Arabic if he could take a picture with him and the man obliged. Actually he asked, "Can I have picture please?" but apparently that translated well enough.
Our last big hike of the day was to the High Place of Sacrifice, a rocky cliff overlooking a valley. Other than a local lady playing a flute (badly), we had this place all to ourselves as well.
#2: Wadi Rum
Jordan's largest wadi (valley), Wadi Rum, was a great trip. We took a long camel ride then a sketchy safari vehicle into this desert, which was quite beautiful. The sand had a unique reddish color, which has been used to represent Mars in a number of movies (most recently, The Martian).
It was a bright, beautiful day for a camel ride into a desert!
Brian and I with our camels, Foo Foo and Soo Soo.
Our camels were actually very sweet and seemed to be well taken care of by their teenage handlers.
The camels stopped often to nibble at some of the dry branches along the way. There was a particular weed that they really liked, but couldn't reach because it was so close to the ground. The handlers also stopped often to pull up these weeds and feed them to the camels.
Everything was going well until........
Brian's camel, Soo Soo, made it weird. He started making this choking, hacking noise that really freaked us out. The handlers didn't seem worried, but I thought the camel was dying. By an amazing stroke of luck, it happened during the time we had stopped for pictures so we actually got what was happening on camera .
I zoomed in on the picture to show you... Brian's camel had this weird pink sack coming out of the back of his throat and hanging out of the side of his mouth. We started shrieking (okay, maybe it was just me) about what in the world was happening to this camel. Brian was amazed and said "Wow, that's so crazy!!!" The handlers, who had spoken ZERO English words to us at this point, responded with, "No crazy." Apparently they were not concerned. When we reached our destination, our guide told us that Soo Soo was ready to mate, and he was trying to attract a female.
After our interesting and educational camel ride, we jumped in our safari vehicle, which turned out to be a pickup truck with couches welded in the back. To be fair, the tour operator had warned us about the quality of the vehicles. They were quite rustic!
Wadi Rum had very few big dunes, but the driver took us to one that we got to run down. The problem was that to run down it, you had to get up it first, which was exhausting. I didn't edit this picture at all; the sand dune is really that color!
We had a good time climbing up to this natural bridge as well!
Some of the rock formations in Wadi Rum are very unique.
One of the best parts of the day was seeing baby camels! The two in the center were only a few months old.
#3: The Dead Sea
Located between Jordan and Israel is the Dead Sea. As most people know, the Dead Sea is one of the the saltiest bodies of water in the world (almost 10 times saltier than the ocean!), and because of this, two neat things happen. One, there is no sea life. No fish, no crabs, not even algae! Two, you just float near the top of the water. You don't need to tread water or anything; you can just sit back and relax.
Floating in the Dead Sea is so easy!
A shot of us floating upright (just standing, not even treading water). No matter how hard you tried to go under, the water kept you pretty much chest level.
We had a few cocktails at the outdoor bar with this view.
So clear!
Enjoying a little reading while floating...
So those are my top 3 must-do things in Jordan. A few bonus recommendations:
Amman city tour--Amman is a HUGE city with a lot to see. There was also a lot of really delicious food to eat. Get a guide who appreciates good, cheap food and will wait in a line 30 people deep so you can try his favorite dessert.
A view from the citadel of just a small part of Amman.
Our local guide at the citadel really liked taking pictures of us in front of ruins, so we did some fantastic senior portrait style poses. I think he was confused by us.
This is a local sweet called kanafeh. In Saudi we have them but they're often dry. This one was sooooo much better. Warm goat cheese covered with crispy fried vermicelli and doused with a sweet, honey-like syrup. I inhaled over half of it before I thought to take a picture.
Jerash--an ENORMOUS historical site north of Amman made up of ruins from the Greeks and the Romans. It was far bigger and more impressive than we originally thought it would be.
A lot of the buildings are fairly well preserved and reconstructed.
Just one of the big theaters in Jerash!
A view of the colonnade and some other buildings in the background. This is only a small part of this site!
Baptism site--The baptism site of Jesus at the Jordan River was interesting to see, but the men who run this site made our visit a bit frustrating. We waited needlessly for over an hour to access the site, and once we actually got a guide, he was wholly uninterested in actually guiding us. The site itself is worth going to see, but don't expect much from the guides!
One of the churches at the site.
The River Jordan. The side we were on was in Jordan, and there were about 7 visitors (including us). Across the river was Israel, where there were many more people! There were soldiers on each side to prevent people from trying to swim across.
Where archaeologists and historians actually think the baptism of Jesus occurred. The river doesn't actually run through this area anymore.
