Feb. 11 From Israel to Jordan

 

Feb. 11 From Israel to Jordan

After a good night of rest, we got up an hour later (yay!!) and had an excellent breakfast.  Today we were going to see the Red Sea (Gulf of Eilat or Gulf of Aqaba depending on which side of the border you live), see the city of Eilat, transfer into Jordan, and make the trip to the Petra region.

On our way to the Underwater Observatory, we passed by the border crossing into Tabah, Egypt.  We have a picture, but don’t tell the Egyptian authorities (I guess we weren’t supposed to take it).  The Underwater observatory was a lot of fun.  The water is so clear!  I hope that one day I can come back and do some snorkeling and scuba diving.  The pictures from the observation tower are of the Jordanian coast, the Saudi coast, and the Egyptian coast (Sinai Penninsula).

Our border crossing was uneventful, except for waiting on Pastor Matthews to clear his video camera.  The found night vision on it (something that is common on nice, high tech models) and were trying to figure out why a pastor would have something like that.  For some reason they weren’t sure what to think about it.  At least the delay gave us some time at the border crossing rest station.  We were able to shop and found some entertainment with a bird.

George, our border representative, moved everything along and put us into the hands of our guide, Omar, our driver, Mahaleel, and our tourist policeman, Eddie (I can’t spell or pronounce his real name).  Omar took us out for a Jordanian lunch which was excellent.  I had the mixed plate with chicken, lamb, and beef.  The bread and hummus was a good appetizer.

After lunch, we drove through the city of Aqaba.  We looked at the ports and got a quick snapshot of the old port/fort of Aqaba.  There is such a distinct difference between Jordan and Israel.  The architecture is much more Arabic.  Jordan is very much Islamic which will also have a distinct difference from the culture that  we have seen up until now.

As we left Aqaba, we got a closer look at the Mountains of Edom.  The dark color stripes that you see in the pictures are bands of copper that run throughout the mountains.  They don’t mine it because it is too expensive.  I’m kind of glad, it makes for some really cool scenery.  We continued into the Wadi Ram region where you can see that the rock formations are much different.  They show that at some point a great body of water existed there.  Omar said that it probably existed 25 million years ago; I’m pretty sure that he was off by roughly 24,994,000 years, give or take a few.  The Wadi Ram is also known for Lawrence of Arabia and for the film being shot on location there.

As we left the Wadi Ram, we ascended to the King’s Highway.  This was a route used by Abraham, possibly Jacob, and Moses.  This same route goes through the land of Midian.  We drove through the mountains and saw some villages until the low clouds covered us.  That was a little scary, but Mahaleel did an excellent job of getting us to our hotel.  It is located on the side of the mountain and each room gets a panoramic view of the mountains of Petra.  It is beautiful! 

We did find out that one of our tour members is afraid of spiders.  I was not able to get a picture of it, but take my word for it, it was one of the bigger ones that I have seen.  I can’t say that I blame them for running out of the room screaming.  Thankfully, a brave porter was present to squash it with a broom.  If you want to know who it was, just ask Valerie Dircks.

We are now awaiting supper and will get some rest tonight for a huge day at Petra.  Hopefully they will get the internet service up and running so that I can post this before bed tonight!