Introduction to Jordan

We arrived at Queen Alia Airport in Amman via Royal Jordanian Air quite early in the morning and were met by our Tour Director, Rabbi, and our driver, Samla. The tour coach was not quite large enough to comfortably hold 16 people plus all of our luggage (which was piled rather precariously on the back seats of the vehicle instead of inside of a luggage compartment in the rear or underneath). There weren’t any overhead bins either. So Rabbi arranged for a larger coach to meet us at Madaba. Then he threw out the planned itinerary for the day, which was to have included Um Quais (ancient Greek ruins), Bethany (supposed to be the actual site where John the Baptist baptized Jesus), and Lot’s Cave (where Lot and his daughters lived after fleeing Sodom) as we made our way to Petra.

I have had tour directors on other tours switch a schedule around or add something in as an extra treat. I have also had them substitute something when we couldn’t go to what had been planned. But I’ve never had anyone just throw out the entire schedule. Instead we headed for Mount Nebo (which was on the schedule for our return to Amman after visiting Petra). Since Madaba was also on the original schedule for when we came back up to Amman, it appeared at first that we were just traveling in reverse. But that proved not to be the case as we never did see the first day’s sites and also didn’t see a few that we should have seen coming back up either.

I am awfully glad we went to Mount Nebo. This was the mountain where Moses was shown the Holy Land and then died before he could enter it. Jericho can be seen straight out from the point where Moses supposedly stood. They say that Jerusalem can also be seen on a clear day. I could see Jericho, which already existed at the time that Moses was up there. Joshua and the Israelites had an adventure there not too much later. On Mount Nebo, there were some churches, a museum and a memorial to Moses. The memorial was closed due to renovations when I was there in 2010 and was reopened in 2016. We spent some time in the museum before heading on to Madaba.

We rendezvoused with our new transportation shortly after having lunch. Then set off for the church that has a 6^th century Byzantine mosaic map of the Holy Land on its floor. The church is dedicated to Saint George and has a very large painting of him slaying a dragon on its wall. The painting is similar to the hand-painted icon I had purchased in Bulgaria in 2009. Madaba is known for its mosaics and the map is quite famous as it is the only surviving 6^th century map of its kind. Scholars worldwide refer to it when studying that era. I managed to get a couple fairly decent photos of it.

Since we weren’t going to the Kerak Crusader Fortress, Rabbi said he would take us to the Shobak Crusader Fortress instead. It was built in 1115 by Baldwin I of Jerusalem and was captured by Saladin in 1189 after a long siege.

We began climbing in the mountains on a very narrow road with nothing to stop anyone from flying off of the mountain. As we rounded one “corner” where the fortress came into sight, a car came zipping around from the other direction. Our driver veered quickly to keep from a collision and we ended up quite perilously on the edge. One of the wheels was barely still on terra firma. This scared the portion of the group that wasn’t already scared quite thoroughly. Then we found that we weren’t actually going to visit the fortress. This look across from the mountain we were on to the mountain it was on was as close as we were going to get.

We continued on our way down to Petra and checked into our hotel. For maximum time at the ancient Nabatean site the next day, we were going to have an early start. We would be one of the first groups there in the morning when they opened. We would be spending the entire day in a very beautiful and mysterious place.