Wadi Rum/Amman
10 minutes drive from Petra is Little Petra, so we went there after getting home from Petra early. Situated in a canyon, it has numerous cave tombs carved from the rock and a couple of facades that are nowhere as intricate as Petra itself, but still amazing. One of the caves has some paintings on the ceiling, which were beautifully detailed. We spent about an hour here climbing in and out of caves and admiring the stone work.
Our bus back to Amman was due to leave at 5:00pm the next day, so we chose to take a day trip to Wadi Rum-a 1 1/2 hour drive away. Wadi Rum is a huge desert expanse with some incredible scenery. It was also the location of the Lawrence of Arabia movie and more recently The Martian. We hopped into the tray area of a 4WD Ute (with seats) and very bumpily headed off. The landscape was reminiscent of Central Australia in some ways with red sand, some sand dunes and lots of huge rocky outcrops. It also reminded us of Utah.
We drove around for three hours stopping at Arch Rock, Khazali Canyon, Lawrence (of Arabia) spring, a giant sand dune and a Nabataean temple. This was just a taster tour as you can do longer ones, or even stay overnight in a Bedouin camp. Unfortunately time was against us.
The four hour bus trip back to Amman was uneventful and we went back to Neil's apartment.
We had two days in Amman and used the first to visit Jerash looking at Hadrian's Arch, numerous columns, baths, churches and a couple of theatres. Jerash is one of the most well preserved Roman ruins in the world - and it's close to the city centre. Some of the churches still have 1500 year old mosaic floors showing amazing detail. For some reason there was a Jordanian playing the bagpipes in one of the theatres -the acoustics were great though. We spent about 3 hours wandering through Jerash before heading home.
Tomorrow the Dead Sea
Our bus back to Amman was due to leave at 5:00pm the next day, so we chose to take a day trip to Wadi Rum-a 1 1/2 hour drive away. Wadi Rum is a huge desert expanse with some incredible scenery. It was also the location of the Lawrence of Arabia movie and more recently The Martian. We hopped into the tray area of a 4WD Ute (with seats) and very bumpily headed off. The landscape was reminiscent of Central Australia in some ways with red sand, some sand dunes and lots of huge rocky outcrops. It also reminded us of Utah.
We drove around for three hours stopping at Arch Rock, Khazali Canyon, Lawrence (of Arabia) spring, a giant sand dune and a Nabataean temple. This was just a taster tour as you can do longer ones, or even stay overnight in a Bedouin camp. Unfortunately time was against us.
The four hour bus trip back to Amman was uneventful and we went back to Neil's apartment.
We had two days in Amman and used the first to visit Jerash looking at Hadrian's Arch, numerous columns, baths, churches and a couple of theatres. Jerash is one of the most well preserved Roman ruins in the world - and it's close to the city centre. Some of the churches still have 1500 year old mosaic floors showing amazing detail. For some reason there was a Jordanian playing the bagpipes in one of the theatres -the acoustics were great though. We spent about 3 hours wandering through Jerash before heading home.
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