Hollywood in Jordan

After a little scare in Cairo, we arrived in Jordan. We arrived at the airport at 6 a.m. in Cairo for our 10:30 flight to Amman, to find our flight was cancled. After waiting around for a couple hours, we were able to get on the next flight out, and arrived in Amman. We stayed one night in Amman, and headed to Petra in the south of Jordan early the next morning.

Petra is amazing! Some of you might remember some of the scenes from Indiana Jones that were filmed at Petra. Petra is also one of the New Seven Wonders of the World.

The Nabataeans constructed it as their capital city around 100 BCE. The site remained unknown to the Western world until 1812, when it was introduced to the West. We both think that Petra blows the pyramids of Egypt out of the water. We did two days at Petra, because the site is so big. The tombs, houses, and temples of Petra are carved straight out of the side of the mountains and cliffs. The multicolored cliffs are huge, and it is amazing that someone could carve these huge structures out of solid rock. We took a ton of pictures, so check them out at our Flickr page.

After spending two days in Petra, we took a tour to Wadi Rum which is probably most famous for the scenes from Lawrence of Arabia. We organized the trip through our hostel, and ended up having a very good group of fellow travellers. There were two brits, two Aussies, two Danes, one Swede and one Canadian...Aye! The were all great to travel with, and we had a good time, and learned to play a new card game (cribbage). We desperately needed a new game, as our ongoing Gin game is in the 7000's, and we were getting tired of it, even though the stakes are high. (loser does the dishes for 1 year after we return.

Wadi Rum is a desert, with crazy rock formations, and the sight of the famous "Lawrence of Arabia", played by Peter O'toole for those who have seen it. We visited the Lawrence spring, and Lawrence's house...both of which were unimpressive to say the least. The desert is the highlight of the trip for sure, and was beautiful. We rode through the desert by old Land Cruiser's, and I mean very old. The guide was nice enough to let us try and drive them after our lunch brake - Kristin was by far the worst driver out of everyone but got to drive the fastest and longest amount of time! The clutch and brakes barely worked, and no power steering in the desert doesn't help either. Not to mention the dashboard was missing, so they had to hotwire the car every time we wanted to start it again.

The sunset and stars were some of the best we have seen, and we both decided to pull our cot out of the tent and sleep under the stars on the sand. After hiking up and Kristin running down some sand dunes, that about capped off our trip to the desert, and we headed back to Amman for our next flight to India.

The flight, was the best I have ever been on. Royal Jordanian Air is an amazing airline. Ben did not want to get off the plane, since it was 4:30 a.m. when we arrived in India. Each seat had a t.v., with choice of movies or t.v. shows, or games. We both watched the new X-men, new Terminator, and half of the new star trek.....not to mention free BOOZE, which comes in handy at 3:00 a.m.

That was it for Jordan, overall it was a great country, much less of a hassle than Egypt and Morocco, and great sites....even if it was a little more expensive. That concludes our "muslim" part of the trip, on to India!