Petra

I knew before we came here that Petra was one of the places that you had to visit when you were in Jordan, but other than it being one of the places that Indian Jones was filmed and from what I'd seen on "An Idiot Abroad", I knew nothing else.

For the history buffs (this shows I was listening a little bit) - Petra is a city which has been created by carving buildings into the side of the rose-red sandstone mountains by the Nabateans over 2,000 years ago. 

We set off at 7am in the morning and having collected our tickets, we were able to enter the site. There is a long walk from the main gate down to the actual entrance to Petra. There are guys offering to take you down on an Arab stallion, but our guide Abdullah assured us that we should wait as there's much more fun inside waiting for us.

We had a full day walking around the various main points of interest. Here are a few photos of this amazing place. I've also uploaded a video of the surprise that Abdullah arranged for us.

The remains of a camel & trader carving

Our first glimpse of the Treasury

The Treasury

So, according to Abdullah the best view of the Treasury is from above, but as a 'special treat' he'd arranged for donkeys for us to save our legs. I think Barry's donkey drew the short straw!

Can you see the camels' head?

The Monastery

A little glimpse of the donkey ride

Dead Sea

One of the main tourist attractions in Jordan is the chance to swim in the Dead Sea and was one of the first things on the list of places we wanted to visit since we came to the Middle East.

The Dead Sea gets its name because of the high salt content and the inability for fish and other animals to survive in it. It is however known for the "magical" powers. With this in mind, we had to give it a go.

With the exception of a small public beach, the coastline can only really be accessed through one of the luxury hotels. We booked into the 5* Holiday Inn as a little treat as it has its own private beach with fresh water showers for cleaning off after  swimming.

On arriving at the hotel, we quickly headed for the beach. All the guide books advise not to shave and cover any cuts before heading into the sea and I have to admit that they say this for a reason. After only a couple of minutes in the water your body starts to tingle.

Due to the high salt content of the water, your body naturally floats. It is a very weird and quite an indescribable feeling.

The mud in the Dead Sea is also reputed to have healing powers and be good for the skin, so we had to give it a go. The hotel kindly provides a bucket of mud on the beach to save you the trouble of hunting for it. So, when in Rome and all that, we caked ourselves up. We were quite content to sit and wait for the mud to dry but the hotel guy on the beach told us that the best way to do this was to bury ourselves in the sand. Well what an opportunity this was to bury Jenny in the sand. I'd dreamed and planned of this moment on many occasions - only joking!! So after slowly cooking in the sand for about 10 minutes it was time to wash off. When we stood up, we looked like the inside of a crunchie bar.

I have to admit that putting mud and sand on the face was probably a bad idea. When trying to wash it off it would start to run into your eyes. The natural reaction is rub water into it. However, this is the worst thing to do. I don't know how many times Jenny did this and had to run out of the water blind to get the salt out of her eyes.

Interesting facts about the Dead Sea

1. The Dead Sea is approximately 400m below sea level.

2. The water is approximately 33% salt, which is about 8x greater than ordinary sea water.

3. The unusually high salt concentration provides natural buoyancy

Jordan

So one of the many advantages of living away is the opportunity to travel and explore places that you wouldn't normally go to. When we first decided to come to Oman, Jenny and I sat down with a map  and picked the places that we'd like to visit. Now there's still lots to do an explore in Oman, but it's always good when you have the chance to get another stamp in your passport. The first place that jumped out at us was Jordan. It's close by (relatively), it came highly recommended and it wasn't on the Foreign Office's list of countries to avoid!

In desperate need of a wee break, we booked flights for September. A very good friend of ours who we met in Chicago, Barry, quit his job last year and has been globe trotting ever since (link to Barry's blog http://www.awolpaddy.com). He was currently travelling round the Middle East and we were able to tie down dates and meet up with him in Amman.

We arrived into Amman in the early hours of the morning and the first thing that we noticed was the temperature. It was considerably cooler than Oman, which doesn't seem to cool even at night. For me it was a refreshing change, but for Jenny the opportunity to moan that she hadn't even packed a jumper never mind a coat. It honestly wasn't that cold, but you know women!

From the little bit of research that we'd done, we understood that there wasn't actually a great deal to see and do in Amman. We booked into a little hotel on Rainbow Street (which is apparently the place to be) and spent a relaxing morning before Barry arrived. We had a great afternoon and evening reminiscing, but we'll keep the details for another day!

Mount Nebo

The second morning we set out for the Dead Sea. Our first stop on the way was Mount Nebo. This is an elevated ridge which according to the Bible is where Moses was granted a view of the Promised Land. It was a nice opportunity to take some photos, but other than that, just a nice view. After that we drove straight onto the Dead Sea (see separate post).

After a nice relaxing evening, we headed on South towards Petra, making a couple of short stops along the way.

Dana Nature Reserve

The Dana Reserve is Jordan's largest nature reserve. The road to Petra gives spectacular views of the Reserve from an elevation of about 1,500m so we just stopped at the top for some photos.

Shobak Castle

Our driver was very keen to stop at Shobak castle. Coming from both the North and South of Ireland we've seen our fair share of castles. We humoured him with a quick walk around, but at the end of the day it was really just a lot of old stones.  We were more interested in the old Citroen outside which had been converted into a bedroom for someone.

Little Petra

Just a short drive away from Petra itself is a small village which is commonly known as Little Petra. Here buildings have also been carved into the sandstone, but the rock is a lot paler in colour.

Cave Bar

We booked into the Petra Guest House as it was really close to the entrance to Petra - handy for the early start to our trip. One of the highlights of the hotel was the Cave Bar - it was a bar in a cave (a 2,000 year old tomb actually)

New Year's Eve 2013

What better way to bring in the New Year than a black tie dinner on the beach with friends and Barry!

It also gave me the perfect chance to play with my new helicopter toy, but as this was its first time out please excuse the not so smooth video recording.