Day 16 - hot (29degC) dry, windy Big road trip today - after a super size breakfast at the Dead Sea Holiday Inn. Started at Shunet in the east side of the Jordan Valley just in front of the Gilead Hills, where Bert and the NZMR struggled to clean out the Turks in 1918. Fertile, irrigated farmland now, still a small village. Couple of pics then onto Mt Nebo where Moses saw the Promised Land and then promptly died. He never made it over the River Jordan. Mt Nebo ar...

Day 17 - sunny, hot (32degC), dry as. It was up at 6.15, ablutions, breakfast etc and off walking 200m from hotel to the start of the spectacular historic sandstone city that is Petra. Heard and seen plenty about it over the years and it didn’t disappoint me - nor any of the 100s of tourists that went on the same day - even saw a couple of policemen on horseback - pingy decent size Arabs (16hhigh). It was downhill into the Siq (the narrow bit where all the fam...

Day 15 - getting toughened up to traveling - finally. No snivels, coughs, diarrhoea, and all present and packed for the 8.00am start. We headed out into the Judean Hills (the Biblical Wilderness) and it quickly got VERY dry. Saw a few Bedouin tending their flocks of goats and living in ramshackle temporary shelters. The land looks like it could support only about 1 goat to 50 acres and there is always some kid with them. We plunged down and down well below sea le...

Day 14 - cold and clear, good driving weather for a trip down to Bethlehem with a new guide Khalid and driver George - both Christian Arab residents of the Occupied West Bank. Bethlehem is close and the ever expanding Jerusalem will soon swamp the the town in the next few years. Most families here have about 6 kids!! So the population is increasing rapidly. Jerusalem is becoming more religious as the ultra-orthodox Jews are drawn to the place while those who are...

Day 13 - 9.00am start on a sunny cold morning. First up The Temple on the Mount - seems you need to get there early to avoid the crowds, and we did. We stormed through the Jaffa Gate again, following Allenby’s footsteps, through the market, turning neither right nor left, past the Western (Wailing) Wall and up the Gentiles new staircase to the Temple Mount. It was huge, spacious, not many people, very peaceful. Non Moslems are not allowed to go into the El Aqsa...