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OK to start a little background on Jordan. It is surrounded by Egypt, Israel, West bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. So you might think that it is an unfriendly dangerous place, but that is quite the opposite, most everyone is very nice to us and they all try and help us out, even when we dont need help. It is maybe a little cooler in Amman than Florida, especially at night, but down at the Dead sea it is always 10 C (25 F) hotter. There are only 6 million people, and most people live in Amman (4M). It is very mountainous around Amman, but the rest of the country is Desert, except for near Iraq where it is swampy and there are many lakes. It has McDonalds and KFC, and extremely good hummus.
OK so the day we arrived we just walked around the city as we are staying in downtown. Again everyone loves to see Amys forearms and shins. I have grown a beard to try and look scary but it doesnt seem to work. The people at the hostel are great and have a lotof information, it is also fairly cheap ($8 pp) and it has free internet. Also you can pretty much use Amman as your base and see the whole country from here. So that is why we are staying.
The first night we were having tea with the Manager, a Canadian, someone from Oman, Czech, Bulgaria, and we were all speaking English. Anyway we decided to go with the Canadian to make things cheaper on a trip around the area. In the morning we ran into a taxi driver at breakfast and he wanted to take us to all these places for a price very similar to what it would cost us if we rode the bus, so we saw this guy we meet the previous night from Slovenia and asked if he wanted to come to to make it cheaper and he said sure. So we left by taxi.
The ride started out fine with us getting a good view of the endless square white buildings/apartments. Every single house/building is made of white stone, I mean every single one!!! Anyway we were cruising along and the car started to splutter like it was having a gas problem. Eventually we pulled over as something was obviously wrong. We waited a while while he tried to fix it and eventually he had to call another taxi to come take us evrywhere. We were out in the country and there were a bunch of kids around and once they say Amy they all started playing a game of trying to walk as close to her as possible even though they had to zigzag through the rest of us. Luckily a shop owner invited us into his shop for tea to get away from the kids.
The new taxi showed up and we continued south to a town called Madaba which has a church called St Georges which contains a mosaic from 200 AD that was a map of all the ancient places, like Moses death place, jesus baptism place etc. To be honest i didnt realise that Jordan has so many Holly places. From Madaba we drove to Mt Nebo which overlooks the dead sea and Israel. If you are good with your christian history (Cathy Hahn) then you would know that this was where Moses climbed the hill and saw the promised land and then died at 120 years old. So now there is a memorial for him. No one knows where he was buried but they think it is near Mt Nebo. It had fantastic views of the Dead Sea and Jericho, on a clear day you can see Jerusalem. It was just strange as you are kind of on a mountain which is not really that high above sea level but because the dead sea is almost the lowest point in the world, just north of the dead sea is, it seems like a large mountain.
After that we drove down toward the dead sea and had lunch at a random restaurant. We had some fantastic hummus and fried bread and also a kebab, which I realise now was not so good. Between the four of us it should of cost 11 Dinar but the owner charged us 18!! Some sort of tourist tax we thought. The owner spoke English when we arrived but not when it was time to pay, strange huh. We then headed off down the road and the taxis front tire burst!! So we had to wait while he changed it. So we figured the Slovenian was bad luck as he said the last time he was in a taxi it broke down and he had to walk for an hour to get to the next town.
We then drove to Jesus's baptism site on the Jordan river. This whole area was a Jordan Army base until 1995 when Israel and Jordan made an agreement to develop then land. So Jordan has developed their area first as it has that is where the baptism was. They have a nice little tour where they tell you some history and you get to walk around the Jordan river and see some of the ruins where churches were built to celebrate the baptism site. Also there is a spot where every religion can build a church to celebrate the wholly land. The spot where he was baptised was on a stream, that has sinced dried up, off of the Jordan river. The pope came in 2000 to officially say that it was Jesus's baptismal location. At a different locations we got to about 5 feet of Israel, well the West bank, and you can see where they are developing their side of the river which they will use for baptism's.
Finally we went to the Dead sea. What an experience I can say. First of all you have to pay money to enter the beach as it is only developed in certain areas. Also you have to have showers to wash all the salt off you or in case you get it in your eyes. So we got changed and of course Amy wasnt sure what to wear as the dress code is kind of different here. She choose a one piece as there werent many people around, well Europeans I should say. We went straight down to the water and it is just such a strange feeling....no matter what position you put your body in it just forces itself our of the water. It was just so nice. Although by this stage it was getting hot, maybe in the 40's C. So we fooled around and got some photos. Then we went and got some dead sea mud and rubbed it all over our bodies and let it dry. I think if you were to goto any resort you would pay hundreds of dollars for that experience. It made our skin feel silky smooth!! Then finally some Europeans arrived to take the attention away from us.
We had a great time there and we cant wait to put some photos up, i guess worst case we will get some photos up by Japan at the latest. Sorry it seems they are still working on our new website. Maybe I will have to start again myself.
Then after a couple of hours we headed back to the hostel.
I mentioned above that maybe the Kebab's werent good, well i say this as 3 of us ordered kebabs at lunch and now all 3 of us have been backwards sick. I had it last night, and the other 2 had it today. They are still suffering but i think because of my great genes these things process through me quicker. Sorry to mention all that.
Later that night we went out with the Slovenian to dinner and they ate some food while i had soup. This time we got charged what we were suppose to of.
Today, Wednesday, was a quieter day as we hadnt had much sleep since we left the US and tomorrow will be a very early morning and late night, as well as Friday (see you soon Woody and Tomo). So we slept in as we were both a little under the weather. Then got going and caught a bus to a town called Jerase, which is north of Amman. Jerase use to be a very powerful Roman city back around 50AD to 300AD. Therefore there was a huge area of ruins which we explored for 3 hours. I mean it was awesome, even in Italy and Rome I didnt see such a large area of continuous ruins or complete structures. It must of span for at least a mile in all directions. The weird thing is they just let you walk wherever you want, typically these places are strongly guarded and roped. There was even a little boy walking around with a large heard of sheep. Once we had finished there is nothing else to see in the town so we tried our hardest to get back to Amman. Everyone was trying to help us just to hard, so much so that everyone was yelling at us as to the best way to get back when all we wanted to do was catch the public bus. Eventually we ended up on some bus for the same price as the public one but typically it doesnt leave until it is fill.
We eventually got back to the hostel from the main bus station via a white taxi which is a shared taxi with a fixed charge. It is the same price as the bus. Then we went and got Amy some medicine and i she is relaxing while i type this. Tonight we will have hummus and bread with the manager.
Tomorrow is Petra!!!
I hope you all dont mind my bad spelling and inconsistant puntuation. Be well more on Friday.
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