Middle East
7 adventures documented
JordanA short call at Aqaba, Jordan's one seaport, and a reminder of how glad we were to have given Petra a proper visit weeks before, while shipmates got only two rushed hours. Then four days at sea, down the Red Sea and out into the pirate waters of the Gulf of Aden: the Martini Bar that became 'our bar,' the crew's Covid stories, two fine couples, and a boat in the night that gave everyone a fright.
Read story
JordanThe last day in Jordan, and the one we'd had to wait for. Mount Nebo, where Moses looked out over the Promised Land he would never enter, with its ancient memorial church and Fantoni's serpent cross. Then Madaba, the city of mosaics, and its great treasure, the sixth-century Madaba Map, the oldest surviving map of the Holy Land. A mosaic table bound for home, and a warm goodbye to Hasan.
Read story
JordanSouth from Petra into the red desert of Wadi Rum, the Valley of the Moon, for a night in a Bedouin camp. A ride in the back of a 4x4, the ancient carvings of Khazali, a skinned leg and two good Samaritans, a fine desert sunset, and a very cold tent with no heat until next month.
Read story
JordanPast the Treasury, the canyon opens and the real scale of Petra appears: the Street of Facades, the great rock-cut theater, the Royal Tombs glowing on the eastern cliffs, and the temple of Qasr al-Bint at the far end. Most of the city is still buried, and getting back out meant a five-mile day, a long uphill climb, and a pair of donkeys.
Read story
JordanThe morning we had been waiting for. Petra, the lost city of the Nabateans, rediscovered for the West in 1812, with our guide Mariam, the first Bedouin woman to guide there. We walked down the long canyon of the Siq, past the dams and carvings, to the moment everyone comes for: the Treasury revealed at the end of the slot, the rose-red facade that Indiana Jones made famous.
Read story
JordanA tribal feud closed the road to Mount Nebo, so Hasan turned us toward Amman and the south. We climbed the Citadel for the Temple of Hercules and the Roman theater below it, heard a Muslim Brotherhood protest rise up the hill, then drove down to the Crusader fortress of Shobak, hidden in the rock, before a Palestinian feast on the way to Petra.
Read story
JordanThe Middle East had been on our list for years, and Janice finally built the trip. Flying first and business class out of Los Angeles by way of London and Cairo into Amman, we met our guide Hasan and spent our first day at Jerash, one of the best-preserved Roman cities anywhere, often called the Pompeii of the East. Then a Jordanian feast in Amman and a night on the shore of the Dead Sea, with the lights of Israel across the water.
Read story