Jordanian Vacation

I just spent the last three days traveling around Jordan on a little vacation. There are so many contrasts between Dubai and Jordan. Dubai is moving so quickly to have every modern luxury that its culture has been covered up to tourists. In Jordan, thousands of years of culture can be seen around every corner. We ate traditional Arab food and even spoke to a Bedouin.

The first day we spent driving around Amman, Jordan's capital city. From the two construction sites we visited the city stretches for miles in all directions. Everything is built from the same, sun-bleached sandstone. The city definitely looks like the typical Arab city you would see in a movie. From Amman we drove to Jerash, an important Roman city from over a millennia ago. The ruins of the city were the best preserved I have ever seen. I thought it was more awe-inspiring than even Rome itself just because the land around it has been relatively untouched and you could see Jordan the way the Romans did. Their building technology was so advanced for their time. Some of the columns still standing were even built to sustain earthquakes. Ironic, because the rest of the city was leveled by an earthquake.

On Friday we drove down to the Petra. Petra includes the temple-like structure in Indiana Jones and Transformers 2 built right into a cliff face. The whole gorge is littered with ancient tombs from 2000 years ago. It is hard to imagine the amount of work it took to carve these tombs into the cliffs without any modern tools.

Yesterday we finally had at least part of a day to relax. In the morning we drove to Mt. Nebo, where Moses first saw the Promised Land, and then to Jesus' baptism site. Directly across the Jordanian baptism site was the Israeli viewing point. It was interesting to see the border, divided by only a slow, murky river that couldn't have been more than 20 feet across. There was no armed guard or concrete wall like elsewhere along the border.

Our final stop was the Dead Sea. We spent the whole afternoon relaxing at a resort on the Sea's edge. The Dead Sea is something everyone should visit to experience. It is so salty that it is literally impossible to sink. The Jordanian side is very rocky and some cliffs drop straight into the sea. Across the way in Israel there are huge salt flats leading down to the water. It is very cool to say I've been to both sides.

Pictures from Jordan will be up soon.

Tom