Complete set of photos from Madaba and the Eastern Desert
After a fitful nights sleep for some with mozzies and the cold and the noisy heater (I managed to sleep ok somehow) we assembled for breakfast of humous and warm pita bread which is standard in this part of the world and delicious. Sarah got quite addicted to morning dukkha as well. We got the punctured tyre fixed for about $8 while we waited then headed to the only tourist attraction we could see in town, which luckily is a beaut, the Azraq fort built by the Ayyubids in the 13th century. This impressive black stone structure was used as a base by T.E. Lawrence and we saw his room above the south gate, roof blackened from centuries of fires. The roof was built differently in this fort with large rock beams across the top forming a base for other rocks to be placed. You can see why everything was built with rock around here. They lie scattered across the landscape, it’s just a matter of cutting and stacking them (I say it like it would have been easy).
We clambered over the fort for 30 minutes or so then we had to hit the road again back towards Amman, stopping briefly at the Qasr Amra era bath-house on the way. The restoration team was working away when we got there with scaffolding up in front of the wall mosaics depicting, scandalously, bare-breasted women among other scenes of nature. Cleaning and restorative painting was underway which was interesting to see. The bath-house was relatively small in size but had a sophisticated well with room for a beast of burden to pull up buckets, a storage tank and underfloor heating. It would have been just the thing on a cold winters day.
Our main destination that day was the Dead Sea so we skirted around Amman and stopped briefly in Madaba for more incredible mosaics. The town has built a tourist industry for itself out of mosaics so there are a plethora of shops selling mosaics. For some reason a spotted camel was a popular design. Coincidentally the guy who sold us tickets for the mosaic museum also gave us a free tour which ended at his shop. Jackie bought a very distinctive ‘tree of life’ mosaic which is a famous symbol of the area.
The museum was very cool. There were reproductions of mosaics from the area but the museum was centred around an old church which has an incredible original mosaic on the floor. This being Jordan the layers of history have impacted on this mosaic with a later wall being built right through the middle of it but you can still get a sense of the original Byzantinian design. Each corner has a representation of one of the four seasons and the middle of the mosaic contains a plethora of fauna. The guide kindly wiped part of the mosaic with a wet cloth which really brings out the colours by getting rid of all the dust. This being Jordan, no tourist site is complete without some kind of Roman ruin. The church is sitting on top of a Roman road, part of which has been excavated. The rest of the road disappears off under the nearby houses making us wonder how much other stuff is buried under here. The layers of history in Jordan in general is amazing. The country has been on a trade route for centuries, so where the goods and money are travelling through, so come the empires to try and control it. Wave after wave of conquerors have left layer upon layer of buildings. To top it off the nearby Greek Orthodox Basilica of Saint George has the oldest mosaic map in the world, which is a very specific claim to fame. The maps shows the holy lands with Jerusalem at the centre but is unusual for showing land to the east of the Jordan river as well as the west..
One u-turn later and we were heading out of town towards the Dead Sea, but wait, the sights aren’t over yet. On the way we passed by Mt Nebo where of course we had to get out and take a look. It is here that Moses is said to have died. The story goes (I believe) that when he was 120 he came out of the cave he had been living in and walked to the top of this mountain to take in the view before he died. I apologise if this rendition of the story causes offence but I didn’t go to Sunday school and am somewhere between agnostic and atheist in religious persuasion so this kind of stuff only holds a passing interest for me. It sure pulls the crowds though. Bus-loads of Asian tourists were taking the short walk to the top with tour guides yelling at them all the way. The view was a bit of a let down to be honest. The Dead Sea generates a mist which makes the horizon hazy, so while it had potential the site didn’t really wow us. If we had been there in the start of the day the room with a mosaic floor the size of a basketball court would have been amazing but by this stage we had become mosaic snobs so it mustered a polite “very impressive” before we moved on.
The drive from the top of Mt Nebo to the lowest point on earth (that is not underwater) is fantastic. A twisting road through the rocky desert studded with floppy-eared goats and their minders. We stopped to take a photo of the goats, but left quickly lest baksheesh be demanded. At another stop to take a photo of the view I choked on some potato chips so had to hand the driving over to Sarah while my watering eyes recovered. At the bottom of the mountain road the Dead Sea was before us. A the t-intersection it seemed that we should turn left, but the sign to the Dead Sea clearly pointed to the right. The Jordanian road system had got us a beauty – we were now heading in the wrong direction back to Petra and of course could not do a u-turn for another five minutes. Thankfully this was one of the better roads so we cruised on down to the lowest resorts on the planet. There is no budget accommodation in the Dead Sea which I think everyone was looking forward to, Jackie especially. We still went to the cheapest resort which was massive, four pools and beach access to the Dead Sea, which is strictly speaking a lake. I overheard some Australians getting excited about the four bars in the resort, as if a pub crawl was just the ticket the night before swimming in incredibly salty water.
The rooms were great and after two tough nights in sub-standard accommodation we all sank gratefully into the soft beds, although Sarah and I still had earplugs in as it sounded like there was some wrestling going on upstairs, and that is not a euphemism. I suspect drunk Australian were larking about.
Complete set of photos from Madaba and the Eastern Desert
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