After the relaxing day at the Dead Sea – today was full on! Our first stop today was Mt Nebo, where the Bible says Moses lived out his remaining days and viewed the Promised Land which he would never enter. It was completely crowded with tourists – so wasn’t really our cup of tea!

Our driver then took us to El Mekhayyat (Al Makhiyt) where the church of SS Lot and Procopius was opened especially for us – and we were able to view a stunning mosaic that was almost intact.

With guide at Al Makhiyt

A feature of this place was the damage caused by fires lit by people cooking and making tea – before they realised that the mosaic was even there! There were absolutely no other people here, aside from us, our driver and the guide. Much more like it!!!

From there, we stopped at a place that makes mosaics and sells other touristy trinkets. Our guide, Hannah, took us through how mosaics are made: both the ‘old’ way and the ‘new’ way (which involves superglue). We wandered around and made a couple of small purchases.

Next stop was Madaba – and we firstly visited the archaeological and folklore museum. Here we saw an old original Madaba house, some more ancient artefacts, and more mosaics. Again, the place was deserted – which suited us down to the ground. The next stop was the archaeological park – which was uncovered recently when some people were doing renovations to their house! What was uncovered was really amazing – a colonnaded street, and yet more mosaics!

Since we weren’t finished viewing mosaics, we went to the Church of St George church where the most famous mosaic forms part of the floor. The Mosaic Map of Palestine

Mosaic Map

represents the Holy Land and its surrounding regions, and shows a number of key locations mentioned in the bible. We just beat a tourist bus here – so again, we had the place to ourselves. Last stop in Madaba was the Church of the Apostles – which is little more than a very large room with the remains of an impressive mosaic floor, and an over-zealous guide. Once again, our driver stopped on the side of the road saying he would be 30 minutes. He came back a couple of minutes later with some Jordanian bananas (which are very small and our driver calls them “ugly bananas”)!

From there we had a long drive down to Wadi al Mujib – which was one hell of a drop down a steep winding road. There is a dam at the bottom – which our driver told us he had never before seen water flowing over. The views in this area were stunning – the place resembled a huge canyon – we wonder if it was as big as the Grand Canyon?

Wadi Al Mujib

Karak Castle was next on the list – we could have easily missed it – or been blown off the edge. The winds were extreme – and we reckon worse than Wellington on a bad day. It was actually very unpleasant, so we were pleased to join our driver for Turkish coffee at Kir Heres Restaurant (which is mentioned in the Lonely Planet). It also happens to be the only place in town that sells alcohol, so we thought we’d relieve the owner of a couple of bottles of wine!

We drove through yet another steep valley: Wadi Al Hassr. An unusual feature of this valley was a black volcanic mountain which certainly stood out against the surrounding barren, brown countryside.

Bedouin Camp

Here, there is a concentration of Bedouin as the government has provided a school nearby.

The last major stop for today was at a bedouin cave (replete with TV and fridge) that has been turned into an antique/souvenir shop. The guy had some really interesting ancient roman coins… Karla was very tempted… but we moved on to the top of Shawbak castle – then headed on to Petra as it was starting to get dark.

By this stage, we were famished, and we asked our driver to take us somewhere local. What we got was a whole cooked chicken (nothing like what you get in a supermarket at home), some salad and the best darn baba ghanoush that we’ve ever tasted! We checked into the hotel – ready for a very early start tomorrow. The aim is to beat the hordes… we’ll just have to see how successful we are!!!