Day 1  Jerash and Ajloun (around Madaba)

I’ve been to the coliseum in Rome and the hanging gardens of Babylon.

I think what makes your jaw drop is that it is just a street in a town, but it’s a mile long with a huge gate at each end, ionian and corinthian pillars along much of its length, manhole covers for the sewers below at 50m intervals, water pipes, a crossroads in the middle, huge temples and two amphitheatres.
It’s like a modern high street 2,000 years before our time.

Our guide Dugan really brought the place to life for us.

It was also a bonus singing a gaelic song in the amphitheatre accompanied by bagpipes and drum and dancing a mini reel.
All within 12 hours of arriving in the country- that wasn’t in the guide book.

More photos of Jerash

Ajloun is a Saracen castle (not a crusader castle)

We were intrigued to see signs of water running through the building, but we didn’t have a guide to ask about why.

More photos of Ajloun

Day 2  Madaba, Karak and on to Dana

Madaba is at altitude in the north of Jordan so it’s relatively cool.
There are a number of Christian churches.
St George’s has a surprisingly accurate early map of the world laid out as a mosaic on the floor of the main part of the church.
The Church of St John the Baptist has vaults below it that we explored and a bell tower. The climb is terrifying.

More photos of Madaba

Karak is a crusader castle. Again we noticed signs of water running through the castle.
Raid the guide explained to us that they collected the rainwater in huge underground cisterns in case of siege.
A real bastard took over the castle by stealth and marriage, but he got his come-uppance in the end.

More photos of Karak

On the way to Dana we crossed the great rift valley- Jordan’s grand canyon.
This major fault line is the same one as the rift valley in Africa and causes huge earthquakes.

More photos of the Great Rift Valley

Dana village was flattened and abandoned, but is now re-opening as a nature reserve and the buildings are gradually being restored.

We arrived in the evening in sweltering heat and took a short stroll around then met some lovely people.

More photos of Dana

Day 3  Dana nature reserve and Petra by night

It was cooler in the morning and we walked round the nature reserve with a guide, Mohammed.
On our own we would never have dared take the route he used to get down the valley, but the rock had amazing grip.

He cooked us an excellent lunch from the contents of his backpack and what was to hand.

More photos of Dana

We drove from Dana to Wadi Musa (the service town for Petra itself) and when it got dark went to see Petra by night.
Thousands of candles light the 2km walk into this magical place.

More photos of Petra by night

Day 4  Petra

We only had one full day, so we walked about 15km in blazing sunshine and climbed about 2,000 steps carved into the rock and we still only saw part of the site.

The “Treasury”

Caves and the “Monastery”

These buildings are all hand carved from mountains. The photos can’t convey the staggering scale of what was achieved with hammers and chisels well before the time of Christ.
There are a couple of pillars at the top of one of the mountains each about 6 metres high and about 30 metres apart.
The pillars aren’t placed there- the mountain around them has been removed to leave the pillars.
Given that rock is roughly a tonne per metre cubed they must have chiseled away thousands of tonnes of rock by hand.
Imagine if they’d slipped and knocked off the last bit by mistake!

More photos of Petra

Day 5  Wadi Rum

Wadi Rum is a Bedouin village near the desert where David Lean filmed “Lawrence of Arabia”.
We drove around the desert and climbed things and finally saw a blue lizard.

When it got too hot to move, we slept in the afternoon in the shade of a cliff.
In the evening we ate food cooked in a Bedouin oven and Saleem played the lute for us whilst we all tried to play the Arabic drum.
I made a very poor attempt to play the lute and tried singing  an Arabic song with very little success.

We slept in a tent in the desert.

More photos of Wadi Rum

Day 6  Wadi Rum to Aqaba

Next morning this is the view that greeted us.

After breakfast we drove to Aqaba on the Red Sea.
We hired some masks, snorkels and flippers and spent the afternoon looking at fish and coral.
Saw puffer fish, lionfish, angel fish among many others. There were some flattened fish like lampreys that I don’t recognise at all.
We had an underwater film camera, so we’re waiting for the film to be developed before we can post photos- just like the old days.

More photos of Wadi Rum to Aqaba

Day 7 Dead Sea

On our way back to Madaba and the airport we stopped off at the Dead Sea for the obligatory tourist photos…………

More photos of Aqaba Dead Sea and Madaba

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