Israel (Jordan technically), Day 13: Petra

Today we made our way to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Currently under governance by King Abdullah II , Jordan is now on it's third king. King Abdullah's predecessors: his father King Hussein reigned from 1951-1999, and his grandfather King Abdullah reigned from 1921-1951.

The border entry gate between Israel and Jordan. This took us an hour, but it was worth it. I'd definitely go back to Jordan any day.

The King is held in extremely high regards in Jordan, his picture--along with the pictures of his father and grandfather are displayed prominently across Jordan. We saw at least 5 different displays of King Abdullah II on our way between the Israeli border patrol office and the entrance to Jordan. He was appointed the Crown Prince of Jordan only weeks before his father passed away from leukemia--at Mayo Clinic in fact.

The country of Jordan is a monarchic country, the monarchic family is the Abdullah family, descendants of the Hashemite family who ruled the Hashemite kingdom before and during the time of Mohammed. They family does have a direct connection to Mohammed, by blood and therefore have declared Jordan to be a Hashemite kingdom.

The sign welcoming us all to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. We had to present our passports a total of 5 times to enter the country, and 4 times to return to Israel. It was surprising, but understandable.

We went through border security, it took about an hour for us all to get through. The main chunk of time (about 45 minutes) is when we had to give up our passports for them to be inspected, stamped, and checked by the Royal Jordanian Military. We were then given the all clear to enter the country and make our way to Petra. As we started to head up the mountains it got incredibly foggy. After about half an hour of driving, we noticed this little sight:

Look very carefully at the sand on the other side of the road......

Yup. That's snow. It snowed in the desert... That says something about winter in Minnesota this year. They got about 4 inches of snow here in Jordan (it clearly didn't stay, but 4 inches of snow fell overnight and this morning), pretty sad considering Minnesota can barely keep any snow on the ground at all this winter.

After a 2 hour drive through the pea soup fog in the Jordanian mountains, we reached the city of Wadi Moussa--the city that surrounds the ancient city of Petra. Petra was discovered in 1831 by Francis Burkhart of Switzerland. During an exploratory mission through the Jordanian desert, Burkhart noticed there was a facade that was sticking out of the ground. He sent word back to Switzerland, where a crew was sent to start excavations around the facade. That's when they discovered this: a large temple/monument carved into the sandstone. After heavy research, the building was dated at over 1850 years old (now over 2000 years old).

The original discovery made by Francis Burkhart. He only found the top 5 feet or so, but  this is what was uncovered during excavation.

The ancient city of Petra stretches for miles and miles through the canyons and crevasses in the sandy desert in the center of Jordan. We were able to climb up some of the old steps of the city and get a panoramic view of the old city, which you can see stretches for miles in the distance.

After we were all exhausted from hiking down the canyon, to see one of the new 7 wonders of the world, we boarded the bus and headed up the hill in Wadi Moussa. We stopped at the Amra Palace Hotel--a 5 star hotel that over looks the city and the Petra entrance facilities--and had a wonderful buffet lunch. I had THE BEST dessert I have ever had in my entire life. It's called Om Ali. It's an Egyptian dessert--literally translated it means mother of Ali. It's similar to bread pudding. It usually includes phyllo dough, dried fruit--strawberries of cranberries, any kind of nuts, heavy whipping cream, and cinnamon. It's baked and served warm, and is absolutely amazing.

Om Ali, the best dessert I have ever had... ever!

After our wonderful dessert, we boarded the bus and all lapsed into a coma until we reached the border with Israel again.

Tomorrow we're headed to Beersheba, 'the capital of the Negev (desert)'. It's home to Beersheba University one of the largest universities in Israel, and is also located near the grave of Ben Gurion, considered the George Washington of Israel.

I'll have an updated on our excursion in Beersheba later tomorrow night, unless we don't have internet access.

Thanks again for reading everyone!

Israel, Days 10-11, Ein Gedi, The Dead Sea, Masada, and Eilat.

After an overnight stay at Kibbutz Ashdot Ya'akov, we headed south a little ways to the small city of Beit She'an on day 10. The city of Beit She'an is located just above an ancient city of Beit She'an, a former Roman empire city.

We entered the site and immediately saw the incredibly enormous size of the city. According to the census by the Romans that year there were about 50,000 citizens. The Romans, built all of their new cities with the same general plan, they made a North-South running road called the Cardo--the heart line road, and an East-West running road, called the Decumanus--the 10 workers line. It isn't known why these streets were called this, but that's what they're know by.

The city of Beit She'an (ancient). The street you can see is the Cardo--the heart line. The columns on either side were to support a roof over the adjacent sidewalks that led past shops and merchants.

The streets were often set up so that the city could be surrounded by walls and fortified so it was easy to defend, and each end of the 2 main streets was to end at a gate on one of the 4 city walls. These gates were entrance and exit points of trade for the city. People would then go to the city center or the acropolis to trade, buy, and sell their goods. Since the acropolis was built way upon a hill in Beit She'an, they lines of the main roads don't intersect at the top of the hill but at the bottom, so a city center was built which housed shops, contained sidewalks and streets, much like what a downtown might look like in America today.

Every Roman city also had a public bath house, since the Romans were obsessed with their cleanliness, they built massive public bath houses for places for people to bathe and keep themselves clean. There were extremely large rooms for saunas, hot baths, and pools. The first room was enormous and had walls that were 3 feet thick. They walls held the heat from the saunas in. The heat for the saunas was pumped in with massive blowers by slaves who blew hot air from furnaces under the floor of the sauna, this would then heat a large bowl of water.

The floor supports that left air room under the floor to allow hot air to be blown in, usually by animal or slaves. The hot air was blown in from the furnace, which was outside the sauna room through the small passages on the left wall.

After condensing on the ceiling, the water would wash down the walls into cisterns that would put the warm water into a large hot tub that had 'jets' usually human or animal faces that shot water out of their mouths onto a person's head or shoulders--like a modern jaccuzzi tub.

After we toured Beit She'an, we got back into the bus and we headed down the road to the Dead Sea. We drove along the sea and listened as our tour guide Amir explained to us about the Dead Sea Scrolls, their discovery and their eventual collection.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were found in caves around the Dead Sea in 1947. Shortly after having found a couple large pots with scrolls from the Torah in them, the Bedouin tribes that live in the area moved into the surrounding caves and raided the scrolls. Thinking they could harvest a lot of money from them, the Bedouins ripped the scrolls into tiny pieces and sold them to people all around the world. This created a nightmare for the people who had to reassemble them and try to decipher their meanings.

The majority of the Dead Sea scrolls were found in this cave. Located just steps away from the archaeological dig of a monastery that was supposed to find them. This cave was invaded by the Bedouins and the rest of the scrolls inside were taken and ripped apart to be sold world wide.

In the 1950's through the 1980's the Dead Sea Scrolls were slowly bought or gifted back and pieced back together to help try and decipher what it was these scrolls were saying. It was eventually found that they scrolls were original prints of the books of the Torah. We stopped for a while near the Dead Sea to have a look at the sight where they found the most Dead Sea Scrolls in one cave.

Then we drove all along the Sea to the town of Ein Gedi to stay overnight.

Today, we woke up at about 6 am in order to leave the hostel at 7am. Our plans today included heading to Masada, which is a very tall mountain that is near Ein Gedi. It is the location of an old, old Roman/Jewish city. King Herod chose this place, on a relatively flat mountain top, to be his palace because it was nearly impossible to penetrate.

The faint path you can see zigzagging up the side of the mountain is the path we took up. It took me 50 minutes to go up and 20 minutes to come down. What a great way to start the day... with an intense uphill work out! :)

It takes about an hour or a little less to hike up the side of the mountain to the top, and about 20 minutes to a half an hour to get back down again. I could have taken the cable car but 1) I wanted the exercise and 2) I didn't want to pay $15 to get up there, when I could do it for free.

We spent roughly 2 hours on Masada touring around. Afterwards we headed to the Dead Sea to go for a little swim. :) The Dead Sea is the most saline body of water on earth, it's also the lowest point on earth (1400 feet below sea level!). People with asthma can breath easier because there is more oxygen the lower you go on earth, and the salt water helps people's muscles and joints because it contains bromide, a commonly used substance for tranquilizing.

Me floating on the water! It's weird by it feels so good in the sun!

When you enter the water, you can immediately feel the difference between this water and normal lake water. This water almost feels like you're walking into a giant lake of olive oil, it's very slippery and greasy. It's good for your skin though, I can attest that I don't think I've ever felt my skin as soft as it is today! :D

After this short trip, we went headed our way down to the city of Eilat, the southern most city in Israel, and a large sourthern port. On our way there, we took a detour to the border with Jordan, which is interesting because it's not hardly fortified at all... all there is, is a small barbed wire fence that looks no different from a common barbed wire fence used to divide land in America. But there are signs signifying the danger of the possibility of lost land mines near the border fence.

Hundreds of greenhouses line the Negev Desert and grow crops year around. The greenhouses are completely computerized so as not to create any error in the cultivation the plants. Peppers, eggplants, and tomatoes are the main crops grown here.

Interestingly, Israel's largest agricultural region is in the Negev Desert in the south of the country. Irrigation and rich minerals help the plants grow quickly. The use of a mixture of aquifer water and salt water helps make produce more sweet as the plants over produce sugar to counterbalance the salt. A very creative and clever way to make your produce worth more!

After a short stop on the border with Jordan, we finally got to Eilat, where I have this view from my room, where I am sitting right now!

I hope you all enjoy these updates. I truly enjoy sharing my experiences with you all! :) Look for my next update soon!

Israel, Days 8-9: Kibbutz Gonen, the Sea of Galilee, and Kibbutz Ashdot Ya'akov

We began day 8, Sunday, with a trip from our stay at Kibbutz Gonen, located at the foot of the mountains in the Golan Heights, to the Golan Heights region.

These flowers are all over every kibbutz or moshav we visit. They're beautiful year around, which seems marvelously outrageous because we'd never have anything that could live outside all the time during the month of January.

We spent our day winding our way up the mountains to get a glimpse into Syria from the top of some high ridges. We heard briefly about the fear of the Israeli government that when the Syrian dictator, Assad, falls there will be a flood of Syrian refugees who leave the country for Israel. They're working furiously to protect the border so when/if it does happen, there will be no problems with illegal crossings.

We then stopped at a coffee shop at the peak of the mountains in the Golan Heights to talk about the war of 1967 and the continued mortar attacks against the kibbutzes along the border with Syria. The Syrians used to sit on the top of the mountains and fire rockets and mortars down the hill and they tried to blow up as many houses and civilians as they could, so the Israeli army, in 1967, decided to invade Syria (along with the West Bank, and the Sinai peninsula. They whole point of the invasions was to conquer land with which to trade back in exchange for peace and recognition of Israel as a state.

The sun cuts through the clouds making for a spectacular scene. It almost didn't look real to me!

After some time spent in the Golan Heights, we worked our way down to the southern tip of the Golan Heights, to the upper Galilee region. There we stopped at the small town (now a tourist site and excavation area) of Capernaum. The city's name interestingly means nothing, there is no work for it in any language. It was an attempt by the Romans to name the city based off of its Hebrew name, they just added letters and switched the meaning of the word so that it now means nothing.

Capernaum, or known to many orthodox/eastern Christians as the Capharnaum. The place where Jesus centered his teachings.

This is the city where Jesus met Simon (Peter). Jesus' main center for teaching the bible was here and he first met Simon here. The city sits right next to the Sea of Galilee (which is really just a lake--smaller than many lakes in Minnesota). The Sea is the only fresh body of water in Israel. It provides fresh water to all of Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, and parts of western Jordan. The legend is that Jesus walked on water here, when really, the lake is so shallow when it first starts out that one could walk the length of a football field and it would only be up to your knees.

We didn't spend too much time at Capernaum, so when we started going again, we stopped at the part of the Jordan river that is south of the Sea of Galilee, it looks much more healthy than the northern part of the stream. The lake acts like a natural barrier to much of the muck the river picks up on it's way down stream.

Another radiant beam of sunshine. When you don't see the sun for 4 days of vacation, when you do see sun it's amazing! :)

After seeing some live Jordan River baptisms, we decided to head to our hotel for the night which was Kibbutz Ashdot Ya'akov.