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We left our wonderful place at Dana and headed north along the King's Highway (the royal family is hugely popular here.) We made our way to Karak Castle but didn't stay too long as it was still cold which wouldn't help John's cold at all. 

The landscape we drove through was so bleak! Rolling yellow/brown hills sprouted only power pylons, wind turbines and rocks. A few scrubby plants grew near the edges of the road where rare rains washed into them from the bitumen. Dusty villages appeared at intervals, preceded by plastic and rubbish scattered across the bare earth. 

The villages and even larger towns were generally very unattractive. Besser block houses squatted unceremoniously on the dusty ground with a few low trees, often eucalypts, scattered in-between.

In larger towns, people park anywhere they feel like - they parallel park, angle park and double park all on the same stretch of road. This causes all sorts of traffic movement issues. It's also an excuse for more tooting.....

We  drove through Wadi Mujib, another huge canyon like the one at Dana. It's one kilometre deep and four kilometres wide but the road takes 18 kilometres to wind down it then up the other side. It wasn't really beautiful but it was spectacular.

This video follows the road that we have to drive up.

There was a dam at the bottom but it looked like it hadn't seen water for a very long time. There were even buildings built below the level of the dam wall. This sign looked very out of place. The orange dirt on the right of the photo is the riverbed.

The view from the top of the far side, 18kms later.

Someone in a coffee shop at a lookout point had a sense of humour. 

Our next destination was the 'mosaic city' of Madaba. We found our way to our hotel and it was pretty good, thank goodness! We would be here for four nights and John had his cold for the entire time so he pretty much just hibernated. The weather was cold, wet and, at one stage, stormy, so it was a good place to just hunker down.

Madaba is one of those ancient towns that has been settled for gazillions of years. Excavations have revealed evidence of many different civilisations, each one built on top of the one before. It was the Byzantine period though that produced most of the now-famous mosaics here. Many of these mosaics were on church floors and the floors of the houses of wealthy families. Some of them are amazing! It's hard to imagine that most of these are around 1600 years old.

This mosaic is the most famous. It's a map of the entire Palestine area. It was created in 560 AD and shows all the major biblical sites in the area. There's Jerusalem, Bethlehem, the Nile and even Karak Castle that we just visited!

There were many sites around the town but my favourite was one that's known not for its mosaics but for the old buildings underneath the current church. It had a 3,000 year-old well inside which is still usable today. It was built by the Moabites and was used by every civilisation that followed. 

Steps led down into various tunnels and rooms. The whole area is still under excavation while a modern functioning church stands on top.

Coming up from the bowels of the church you could then climb the bell tower. I had to squeeze past the ropes that ring the bells and duck under the framework holding the bells in places.

The view from the top was amazing! It also highlighted the tolerance that has been here for centuries between the Muslims and the Christians. This town has a much larger Christian population than most towns in this largely Muslim country. The mosque was only a short distance from the church. The Christians here are mostly Orthodox so Friday is the special day for both religions. Apparently it's a cacophony of bell-ringing and calls to prayer on that day!

The path around the top of the tower was really narrow and the railing looked quite precarious. I made myself do a lap around it but I was careful not to put much pressure on that railing!

There were old photos inside one of the buildings and I saw this one where animals are grazing on the grass around the town! Have things changed that much since then or are we just here at a dry time? There's certainly only bare earth here now.

At one site, the attendant pulled me aside and took me behind the ropes! I was careful not to step on anything (unlike him) and got a good view of some amazing mosaics - for a small tip of course!

Some buildings were quite large. It was good to see the mosaics being protected under cover.

The details in some of the mosaics was amazing! This one is about four or five metres wide.

In 726AD, an emperor declared that depicting living creatures was banned so the people and animals in this mosaic were carefully removed! What a tragedy. I have no idea how the two birds in the middle survived though.

I found this small mosaic remnant unprotected by a roof. The rain had removed the dust and brought out its colours. Apparently, the mosaics that are still protected under the soil have stunning vibrant colours.

In two separate but nearby sections of the town, an old Roman road runs through. It just makes you wonder what's buried between the two locations and just about everywhere else!

Walking along the busy streets was interesting. A mish-mash of shops lined the roads and produce was piled on the footpaths. I passed groups of shoe shops which, judging by the ancient but still-functioning sewing machines in front of each shop, also do repairs. Men lounge about in front of the shops waiting for customers - most of the people on the streets are men. Car horns toot relentlessly through the day and well into the night.

A coffee-seller.

John started to get better at last and was able to see a couple of the key sites with me on our last day but was still struggling. I was about to test him for covid when he started to improve. It was obviously a flu virus of some sort though.

We had wonderful meals here, mostly at one particular restaurant. We kept underestimating serving sizes though. The best dish was a vegetable dish that we were told had a sauce and cheese. What appeared was a huge pie cooked in a ceramic dish. Inside were vegetables and super-stringy mozzarella and the whole thing was toped with a pita bread as a pie-top. It sounds weird but it was delicious!

Unfortunately, it was the same day that we ordered a special dish at the restaurant at our hotel for dinner. I say 'unfortunately' because we were still full from lunch! I had asked the lovely lady at our hotel where to get a special local dish called Maklobah. She said the best one in all of Madaba was the one cooked by her! At 5.30 on the appointed night we went to the kitchen to watch her prepare the dish. She had already cooked everything and just had to put it together as it's a dish that's layered. She placed slices of tomatoes in the bottom of a large pot. She then layered on deep-fried eggplants and cauliflower. Chicken that had been cooked up in special spices then went on top then it was all finished off with rice. The stock from the chicken was poured over and the whole things simmered for about 45 minutes. It was delicious! However it was served with bread, two types of houmous, a salad and something else that I can't remember. Then desert followed afterwards. We sure don't starve here!

The people at our hotel were the best we'd come across so far. They were all so friendly and smiling. Our room was good but the neighbours still banged doors all night and I'm sure most weren't Jordanian. Bloody tourists!

We continued our journey north and headed to the town of Jerash.  We followed the Dead Sea Highway for a while but we didn't go to the Dead Sea as we had been there before in Israel 35 years ago. I love the exotic names of these highways!

We chose a place that was a bit like a farm-stay here. The owner was Jordanian but had lived in Australia for a while so we were looking forward to meeting him and maybe getting a better understanding of this strange country, however he was away while we were there. We had a fabulous two-bedroom house on an olive and citrus farm. It was so good to have some peace and quiet but the house wasn't very clean. It was also quite isolated but it wasn't too far to most of the places we wanted to visit.

The air was hazy most days and sometimes we could smell burning plastic. It was wonderful to have a rural view though.

John still wasn't well so we just went for a stroll around the area on our first day. Much to our disappointment, this pile of rubbish was just nearby.

A car pulled up beside us. The man was wearing a suit and a fancy watch and the car was a flash one. He was a neighbour and introduced us to his mother in the passenger seat but didn't mention his wife in the back. Both women were fascinated with me. The wife sneaked photos of me while we talked and the mother wanted to invite us back for a meal, although nothing came of that.

He also mentioned how safe it was around here. It hadn't occurred to us that it might not be as we have felt very safe in all of Jordan. Then we started noticing things - our house had security bars on all the windows plus three security lights that stayed on all night (which drove us mad!). A high fence ran around the whole property with razor wire on top and the main gate was locked at night. During the day it was shut and every time we drove up to it to enter or leave, the security guard would run out and open it for us. Hmmm, it makes you wonder! 

Olive picking was in full swing here and every olive grove had people of all ages inside. These two young men took one look at us and raced down to take a photo, only John had to take the photo of me with them! 

A short distance later, some more olive-pickers called us in. A couple of ladies sat on the ground sorting the olives. They tried to chat but they knew no English and we only knew a work or two of Arabic so we smiled a lot, admired their olives and moved on. They were very cheerful.

Some of the olives here were so large and dark that they look like plums!

The main attraction at Jerash is the old Roman city. Jerash was abandoned for a very long time, so the old ruins remained unusually intact. Now the modern city has grown around the ruins but they remain magnificent.

The entrance gate. Clearly the Romans were into making good first impressions!

One of my favourite features was the hippodrome. It's the smallest, but most complete one, still in existence. The horses and chariots started the races under these arches.

Then they raced up the track, did a sharp turn at the end then raced back through the arches.

The very impressive main street started at an equally impressive column-lined large oval area.

Columns lined all the main streets.

The main road was dead straight and you could see ruts created by countless chariot wheels. Cool!

On one side road, broken tiles had been added to the surface for grip. This tile travelled a long way!

Some facades were decorated with incredible detail.

Not everything was as it seemed though. Is this ancient Roman reo sticking out of the stone?

There were a couple of gorgeous old theatres. We were looking at one when, much to our amazement, a Bedouin started playing the bagpipes!

But wait, there's more!

They were after tips so John asked if they could play ACDC's "Long Way to the Top". Seriously, this is a song every good bagpipe player should know! Haha.

The new town runs right up to the edge of the exposed area of the ancient city. It must be astonishing what lies underneath the new town.

We had to buy groceries and were told of two malls to go to. We tried them both. They were both supermarkets only and were dirty, grungy and unappealing. At both places we parked the car in a litter-strewn carpark and picked our way through the dusty potholes. 

We ate most nights at a local Lebanese restaurant which had really good food. Apparently it's quite a well-known restaurant and many famous identities have eaten here, including members of Jordan's royal family. We loved the international celebrity list though. I wonder who Mr Bean portrays? Rowan Atkinson?

The next day we visited a national park to do a bit of walking. There was only one short walk that we could do without a guide and they charged us $12 a head for the privilege. It was interesting to see how tiny the parks are though. Both this one and one the next day were only about 12 square kilometres. 

We passed so much rubbish on the sides of the roads!

We were starting to have had enough of Jordan. In between doing the touristy things, I was talking to my mum a lot online. Both mum and dad have covid. While he had covid, dad slipped and cut his head open. He was taken to hospital and stitched up. He stayed for a few days then came home. Within a day he fell again, this time hurting his ribs. Back to hospital he went although mum encouraged the back to hospital idea as his breathing was really bad from covid.

After the falls, the discharge nurse started talking to mum about respite care. It was all very confusing and poor mum was still sick herself and didn't know what to do. We had really seen everything we wanted to see here and we looked at the possibility of going home early. We were due to be home in 10 days. In theory it was possible to change all our bookings but the reality was much harder, especially as it was now a weekend. We decided to keep going but really, both of us just wanted to leave and go home.

The next day we went to a nature reserve for another short walk. Again it was nothing special but it was good just to get out a bit and let John ease back into things as he slowly got better. As we were walking back to our car, we passed a group of about a dozen women going for a walk or picnic or something. As soon as they saw us they pounced. They surrounded me, not paying any attention to John. Between them they had a few words of English and we were able to say where we were from and yes, we were sad about the football (Australia lost to Argentina in the World Cup the night before). One particular lady was very outgoing and kept kissing me on the cheek. Even one of the ladies in the full burqa got involved. I can only assume it's my blonde hair that they're fascinated with as Muslim women here must cover their hair. Tourists are not encouraged to do the same as it can be disrespectful if you're not a Muslim, however we must cover legs and upper arms. It's strange how we are getting these reactions around here but nowhere else in the country.

On our last night we were treated to a wonderful sunset.

At last it was time to turn south and head to Amman, the capital city. We listened to a local English-speaking radio station on the way. The music wasn't great it was interesting hearing about Jordanian life. Two women run the breakfast show and on this day one of them was sick. The remaining woman gave a shout-out to her work colleague wishing her a speedy recovery and added that she knows her colleague will get better soon because her mother will look after her so well! You would never hear anyone say that about a colleague here, mainly because if they're a radio announcer they're generally not still living with their mothers!

We returned the rental car to the airport (they were so disorganised it took 45 minutes just to return the car!) and taxied into the city. Our first impressions weren't good as the city sat in a shroud of pollution. The air was thick and hazy with it. Yuk.

On the other hand, our hotel here was awesome! It was only two months old and was very modern. There are a lot of Christians in Amman and they were fully into Christmas mode. In our hotel foyer was a huge Christmas tree and three large-screen TV's showing things like snow falling and log fires burning. Classic!

We saw most of the sights of the city that afternoon. The old Roman city still sits atop one of the many hills here and it was good to explore although it wasn't as impressive as the ruins at Jerash. The old theatre stood right in the centre of town.

We then wandered through the busy souk area, which was cool.

John had read about a bar that serves good food and has live music so we headed there. We really enjoyed our non-Jordanian food but didn't enjoy the smoking that was going on around us. We had wine and cocktails and the feel of the place was good. The crowd started increasing and it was good to see Jordanian girls dressed up in clothes you would see anywhere in the world although none of it was revealing at all. The band started and they were ok. We were more entertained by the two young women in front of us who ordered a whole bottle of Vodka then ordered orange juices to drink it with!

The cocktails, wine and whisky kept flowing and we had a really good night. Things were not so good the next morning though. I had a hangover and John seemed to have picked up a tummy bug. We had a quiet morning then headed out in the afternoon. While looking for a bank we inadvertently explored quite a bit of the area. Some of the main streets here are pretty clean but the rubbish still accumulates in unused, derelict places - and there are many of these.

Strangely, for a couple of country bumpkins, we felt more at home in this big, polluted city than in most other places in Jordan. Many people spoke English and it was all a bit more comfortable I guess. On our last night here it rained! Rain in this climate seemed so out of place, even though it's winter.

As I write this, we have started the long journey home. Dad's now been moved into a nursing home just for a week to "get his strength back" after being in hospital although mum and I are both confused about exactly what that means. A later update - mum wasn't happy with the nursing home and dad's now home and all is going well. That's much better news!

Overall our trip was sensational! We spent most of our time in Georgia and Greece and had such a wonderful time in both places. There were so many highlights on the trip. We saw incredible scenery, amazing ruins, sensational places that looked like ruins but were still being lived in and many gorgeous sunsets. We went to places that are on the brink of modernisation and to others that have recently been ruined by it. We met so many wonderful people along the way, mostly staff of places we frequented but also other travellers and just people we bumped into. We caught up with quite a few old friends too which was fantastic. We hiked up mountains and along ancient trails. We swam in crystal clear waters and danced at festivals. John rode his bike to monasteries, ancient towns and the tops of mountains. And we ate way too much good food.......

It really feels like it's time to go home though. Thank you for sharing our journeys with us and we look forward to starting this blog up again next year!

'Til then, stay safe and have a wonderful holiday period.
Heather and John

Petra and Dana

Feeling a little better about Jordan after the good time we had at Wadi Rum, we headed north. The land continued to be bleak and desolate.

Weirdly, a lot of land was ploughed up. What on earth are they going to grow here?

Our destination was Wadi Musa, the town next to the famous ancient city of Petra. We drove into the town and it was horrible. The narrow streets were crowded with cars and one-way streets made navigation difficult. In Jordan in general, drivers toot at everything - taxi drivers toot at people walking down the street in case they want a lift and other drivers toot at anyone who isn't moving even if it's obvious that they can't move.

We found our hotel. When we book rooms, we always request a quiet room. We met the guy at reception and he handed us our key. "Is this a quiet room?" we asked. "Quiet?" he responded, clearly not understanding the English word. We knew we were in trouble then. As it turned out, the mosque was really close by and had unusually loud speakers. The call to prayer woke us at 5.30 every morning. The neighbours were noisy again. Jordanians just don't seem to have a sense of keeping quiet at sleep time. Our room was ok but it had an especially tiny bathroom. Anyone bigger than us would not be able to have a shower or sit on the dunny!

A bit about Petra: the UNESCO World Heritage listed site is an ancient city spread across a huge area. What remains of the city is largely its tombs, stunning buildings carved out of rock. Remember Indiana Jones galloping his horse through a canyon to the amazing building carved out of rock in the desert? That was Petra. 

Petra is an entire ancient city and it's possible to spend days exploring it. We bought tickets for three days. By the time we got our bags into the room we still had about 4 hours before Petra closed so we thought we'd get started as it's supposed to be quieter later in the day when most of the tour groups have gone. We drove to the car parking area and were shocked to see dozens of buses lined up alongside many, many cars. The street to the entrance was aptly called Tourism St. That about summed it up. Our hearts sunk.

It's a long walk into Petra. It's about 15 minutes to the start of the famous walk in through the canyon then another 20 minutes to the first, and most famous, monument called The Treasury. There were a lot more people coming out than going in so we thought it might not be too bad. 

We started seeing tombs before we even got the canyon.

We soon came to the 'siq', the incredible canyon that leads to Petra. Even with lots of people in it, the siq was spectacular.

Finally we turned one last bend and there it was - the famous Treasury! - plus hundreds of people, camels and souvenir sellers. Nobody was up close to the building though. I assume that's because it's hard to take a photo from there. Even looking over the tops of people's heads, the building was strikingly beautiful. 

I don't like crowds but John hates them so we moved on. In a few hours we got a basic feel for the place. The longer we stayed and the further we got from the entrance, the thinner the crowds became.

There's an ancient theatre which was built by the Nabateans, the original builders of the city, then extended by the Romans.

The tombs are scattered along both sides of the canyon where it opens out into a wider valley. Sadly the later we got in the day, the duller my photo's became!

We mostly explored an area called the Royal Tombs. I don't think anyone knows if they actually had royalty interred here but they give names to all the tombs for convenience. The reason they chose this name is because the rock here is particularly striking. It has bands of different colours running through it. This is the ceiling of one tomb.

This tomb was particularly elaborate.

By the time we left, most people had gone and we could see the Treasury almost uninterrupted. Sadly, but understandably, we weren't allowed inside it.

The siq was even better on the way back. The lines running along both sides of the canyon are ancient channels for carrying water into the town. They run along the whole length of the siq. We didn't like the concrete base of the canyon but understand that you can't have thousands of people a day scrambling over rocks and injuring themselves. Also, they drive horses and carts and golf buggies along here to carry tourists.

Back at the entry gate, some places unashamedly used whatever promotion they could.

By the end of the day we felt that we had seen quite a bit in that time which was just as well as it turns out that we wouldn't be coming back! We had a terrible sleep thanks to banging doors, loud conversations in the hotel passageways and the pre-dawn call to prayer. John had had enough. He wasn't going to go back to face more crowds at the main entrance to Petra. We had learned though that there was another way into Petra from what's called Little Petra. This smaller group of tombs is to the north of Petra and apparently there was a shuttlebus that could take people in that way. We drove there but didn't immediately see a ticket office or a bus so we started to explore Little Petra. It was really good! The crowds here were far less and we found that we could just keep walking into a stunning canyon. There were no horse-drawn vehicles or golf carts taking people through the smaller siq here.

This was the worst musician in the world. If tourists paid him he would play and sing - but it was the same five or six notes over and over.........

Many of the tombs here were just as striking as Petra. They just tended to be a bit smaller as the canyons here weren't as high.

One unusual tomb had Roman paintings inside of cherubs, grapes and leaves. It was so different to everything else. Apparently the original tombs were all painted but nothing much remains of that paint now.

Even though it was much quieter here, we still had to walk through souvenir stalls to proceed through the canyon.

Once we got past the canyon, it opened up and we had an amazing short walk through the wild, rocky landscape.

The problem was that by the time we did all this, the last bus had gone! I was disappointed that we wouldn't see any more of the old city but it was my fault as I wanted to explore where we were.

We had read about a famous bar that is inside a 2,000 year-old tomb. It's outside the park so I guess they're allowed to do this! I was sceptical at first that this would be ok but I realised that they weren't doing any damage at all. In fact, the reason most of these tombs are so large is that the bodies get interred in a small space at the rear of the tomb then the rest of the area is for banqueting. The grieving family would continually return to have feasts in honour of the deceased person. 

We sat in an area outside the main tomb/bar.

The inside was really cool. Individual tables were set up in the smaller spaces originally intended to store the bodies. Creepy!

One good thing about the hotel we were staying in was there was a restaurant nearby that specialised in a local dessert. The restaurant had one guy whose sole job was to make and serve this dessert, called kunefe. He first heated up cheese in huge trays. The cheese was then topped with a fine pastry and crushed pistachios then syrup was poured over it. It sounds weird but it was amazing!

One night there was a storm and the sunset before it was striking!

Again, we counted down the days until we could leave our hotel. We even tried to find somewhere else to stay near Petra but we had no luck. We did manage to drop one night off our booking though and replace it with an extra night at our next destination. We were in the unfortunate position of having booked all our accommodation and flights home so we couldn't really speed up our stay.

The weather had now turned cooler as it is almost winter here.

We were so happy to finally leave that town and soon were on the King's Highway heading north to Shobak Castle. This is an old Crusader castle, built in 1115. Like so many other historical buildings it was built on top of a number of times by successive invaders. 

Arrow slits were set in thick stone walls.

Numbered rocks for archaeological purposes. How on earth they figure out where they go amazes me.

There were also steps leading down to a prison. A sign at the top said not to enter due to danger. Check out how steep those steps are and there was no light. We didn't go down....

We were most looking forward to exploring an escape tunnel that runs under the castle but it was locked. 

The dry, bleak, flat land of Jordan is split at intervals by huge canyons that are even dryer and bleaker than the land around them. It was one of these canyons that Dana Biosphere Reserve is located in.

We had booked a room in the guest house in the park run by the national parks services and were relieved to find it was fabulous! The rooms were simple but nice and spacious and every room looked out over the stunning canyon. Even our shower had the same view! The first night was noisy with guests banging doors at all hours but the next two nights were fairly quiet. We could sleep at last!

The park lies beside the village of Dana, which is perched above the canyon. This village is hundreds of years old but was abandoned just one generation ago. When they started up the Reserve, people started to move back as there was now work here. There are now a handful of 'hotels' and a few little shops. It was a magical place. The old stones blended in with the surrounding landscape so well that it was often hard to see the village from a distance even though I was looking straight at it. More than half of the buildings were still abandoned so the whole place had a ramshackle, ruined feel but was still very much alive. The only way to tell an abandoned house from a lived-in one was that the lived-in ones had a roof. 

The cold and mist added to the atmosphere.

This was the walk into the village from our accommodation. John's coffee shop was in one of the buildings on the right. I loved that places like this had no signage.

A couple of young donkeys just lived freely around the town.

Each day men and boys would lead sheep and goats out to graze for the day. They would ride donkeys and the sheep and goats would just follow along until they came to a spot to graze. We would often see them heading out for the day as we walked into the village. Can you see a man and a donkey plus the herd of sheep and goats in this picture? Everything seems to just blend in here.

The sheep are a breed that we're not familiar with. They have long, droopy ears and fat tails.

It was cool and windy when we arrived on our first afternoon but we set out for a shorter walk. We headed out through what they call the village 'garden'. This was really the old terraces where crops have been grown for centuries. Old trees are scattered throughout the area - pistachio, walnut, almond, pomegranate and figs were some we could recognise. One of the nut trees was 450 years old! We even found spearmint on the side of the path. As romantic as all this sounds, it was ruined by the rubbish that was scattered through the whole area. Plastic bags were everywhere. It was such a disappointment.

Away from the village though, the rubbish diminished. The views as we walked were amazing and birds wheeled overhead.

We came to the end of the canyon and found a boy and his uncle just hanging out watching their stock. The boy spoke reasonable English so we got chatting. Soon they invited us to have a glass of tea! We had heard that this is normal Bedouin hospitality but we had never come across it before. We accepted, partly out of curiosity and partly because we thought we might offend them if we said no. They grabbed a few handfuls of dry grass and small sticks from the scrub nearby and soon had a fire going. Out came all the ingredients, seemingly from nowhere, including a small kettle and soon the tea was ready. They didn't drink with us but at least we had a nut bar that we could share with them. It was a really great experience.

Showing us the only lamb in the flock.

They told us that the uncle had about 50 sheep, 50 goats, two donkeys and five dogs. Dogs always trailed along  with the sheep and goats. I don't think they were there to help round up the animals - they were there to protect them. All their animals looked in really good condition. The donkey was gorgeous!

I'm glad that was so good because the next morning John came down with a rotten cold. We've actually kept ourselves fairly healthy while we've been away so I suppose we were due to catch something. As it turned out, the weather turned bad that day anyway. The previous night the wind had howled around our ill-fitting windows all night and it didn't stop for the next 48 hours or so. The morning John got sick, it started to rain. We took the opportunity to have a down day and spent most of the day indoors with the heater going. It was actually lovely! We could look out over the stunning view all day and we had wifi so we could catch up with things.

We ate breakfasts and dinners at our guest house but we found a wonderful place for lunch. A group of old buildings had been turned into a very basic hotel with a restaurant. Hmm, 'restaurant' isn't the word. Even 'cafe' is a stretch. Let's go with 'a few plastic tables and chairs where you can eat'! To enter the 'hotel' (again a very vague description) we went through a wooden door and along an open passage lined with stone walls and rooms. We turned into a very narrow stairway and climbed a few stone steps to the roof. We crossed over a short bridge over the passageway and onto another roof which formed a deck where the tables and chairs were. 

We looked down onto the rabbit-warren of stone walls around us. The closest '"room" had no roof and was full of rubbish though. We must have eaten at a similar time each day because every time we were there, the call to prayer started. The local imam sounded a bit rough around the edges and his call was a little different in that he kept the microphone on while he carried out the whole ceremony, rather than just having it on to call people in. The thing that struck us though is that he would often cough right in front of the microphone. So we would be enjoying our lunch when there would suddenly be this "harrcckkk" coughing noise! I got part of his call recorded, but not his coughing.

The food here was amazing! When we asked what they had we were told "meatballs with hummus and salad". What we actually got was a plate of each of the following: meatballs in tomato sauce, hummus, Arabic salad, a delicious grilled eggplant dish, some sort of wonderful vegetable curry plus more flatbread than we could eat! It was incredible!

On our last day I went for a longer walk, timing it between the rain showers. I walked past where we met the Bedouins and along the other side of the canyon wall. The views were spectacular!

I was surprised to see a bit of green growth after the rain.

I was wandering through a mob of sheep and goats on the trail on my way back when suddenly the herd's dogs spotted me and went berserk. One in particular was being very protective and would rush at me every time I turned my back on it to continue to walk through the mob. I could see a donkey partly hidden by a big rock so I waited for the boy or man to call the dogs off, which is what they usually do. Nothing happened. I realised that the kid wasn't there. He had left his stock on the track that people were walking along and wasn't close enough to call the dogs off! By scrambling off the path to get around the stock I got through and saw a group of boys having tea a bit further up. Grrrrr.

The communication here was better than it had been elsewhere. Ironically, a deaf/mute guy worked here and I could understand him much better than almost everyone else we'd met so far!

It was a truly wonderful place.

Heather and John