Tag: tourism

Above Chrissy at the Petra overlook. 

We climbed from the Jordan Valley up the ancient city of Petra.   It is hot in the valley, but it gets cool quickly as you gain altitude.  The landscape is very rough and the road winds around and up and down.  When donkeys and feet were the only means of transportation, this must have been a nearly impossible trek.  But people obviously made it.

Above is our driver Sami.  We met him in Amman.  He came down to the Dead Sea to drive up to Petra. 

Petra is one of the wonders of the world.  It is a whole city built into the rock face.  We will visit the actual site tomorrow and I will write more when I learn more.

The panorama in this part of Jordan reminds us of north-central Arizona. 

We are staying at the Marriott in Petra.  Marriotts are familar and I like to have some stability when traveling. Chrissy and I walked into down from the hotel to the modern Petra city center, about three kilometers.  The people were phenomenally friendly.  A couple of kids on the street gave Chrissy a part of a plant and me a piece of candy.  They wanted nothing in return.  Everybody was asking where we were from and shouting welcome.  Frankly, I don’t know why people are so outgoing.We went to a bakery and got five pieces of that great Arabic flat bread  and half dozen cookies for one JD.  We had some good kabobs at a local restaurant.  It is a pleasant city, but very hilly and hard to walk around.

Above is the wadi that leads to the old Petra sites.

I have traveled all around Europe and recently in Iraq, Jordan, Egypt & Greece.  I don’t notice that anti-Americanism we always hear about.  I am fairly obviously American and I am always very clear whenever anybody asks me.  I have always felt welcomed.  People approach me, ask questions, tell me about their trips to the U.S. or their friends and relatives there.

Below is me at the Petra overlook.  Same spot as Chrissy’s picture above.

I understand the sources of measurement bias.  Very likely those who take the time to talk to me are already more pro-American.  Maybe they just want my business/money or they like my smile.  But the way I figure it, if all it takes is a couple of dollars and a smile to counter anti-Americanism, the price is not very high.

I don’t trust those polls showing the world dislikes us and I don’t need to ask that question “why do they hate us?”  The general question is bogus.  I know it is as sweeping generalization to sweep all that off the table, but I have seen the polling data and I don’t think it is getting at the deeper realities. Most people in the world are probably indifferent to the U.S. most of the time.  When asked by an opinion researcher whether or not they like the U.S., the recall whatever recent negative news they have seen in the media and answer based on that.  It is a true opinion, but it is ephemeral and not deeply held in most cases.   An actual encounter with a friendly American tends to tap into an entirely different area of response. 

Put the shoe on the other foot.  Remember all the gnashing of teeth about France and the whole freedom fries crap?  Did you really dislike the French?  If a friendly French traveler asked you directions, would you mislead him or be angry with him?  In other words, did Americans’ stated preference really amount to a hill of beans?  The same often goes for others. 

We need to be less concerned with this supposed general opinion and concentrate on the specifics that often DO create troubles.

“And Moses went up from the plains of Moab unto the mountain of Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, that is over against Jericho.  And the LORD showed him all the land of Gilead, unto Dan…”

We went from the Dead Sea, 415 meters below sea level, to the top of Mt. Nebo, which is 656 m higher.   This was the place were Moses saw the promised land, as you can see form Deuteronomy 34 above.   Moses must have had better eyes than I do because I could not see beyond the escarpment over the Dead Sea.  Mt. Nebo was a pleasant place, however, with some trees and significantly cooler temperatures. 

From Mt Nebo, we went down to a town called Madaba.  It still has lots of Christian churches and used to have even more, so the town is full of mosaics from the late Roman and Byzantine times.  Even after the Muslim conquests, the native Christian communities continued to thrive. 

Jordanians seem interested in the Christian and other pre-Islamic heritage of their country and very tolerant of religious diversity.   At least they recognize the tourist value of emphasizing Christian heritage in the birthplace of Christianity.

It is interesting to speculate how different world history would have been if Islamic armies had not conquered this area.  There certainly would have been no Crusades and very likely the center of Western civilization would have remained in the Mediterranean, and even the eastern part, rather than shifting toward the Atlantic and Northern Europe.

It has been more than a quarter century since I studied Greek and forgot almost everything, but I can still put a few things together from a combination of looking at the pictures and tortuously making out a few words.  I was telling Chrissy re some of the pictures when a local guy overheard and in English told me how surprised he was that an American could read that Greek.  I didn’t tell him that I only made out something like three words and guessed the rest from the illustrations.

We went back down the hill into the Jordan Valley.  The river Jordan is a lot smaller than I thought.  In fact, it is really not much bigger than Genito Creek, which runs through our forest land.  It doesn’t look very clean either.  I think that Baptism in the Jordan would risk infection or dysentery.

A lot of the water has been drawn off for irrigation upstream and presumably it as bigger and cleaner back in the old days.  We went to the Jesus baptism site – the place they have identified where John the Baptist baptised Jesus.  The river has changed course, so the place is no longer actually on the flowing part of the stream, but the flood sometimes comes through and a spring keeps the basin full of water.   In ancient times, there were churches at this spot.  Now they are just ruins, although you can still see some of the mosaics.  Below is a more modern mosaic re the site.  Notice the webpage.

I enjoyed going to these sites, maybe because they were so unpretentious.  Not many people make the trip, since it is out of the way.  Notice the transportation.  It was hot out and it was sweaty, but that sort of added to the charm. 

Below is our bus to the baptism site.

We are at the Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth that is not under water.  The sign claims it is 415 meters below sea level.  Let me point out first of all that the idea that you don’t get sunburned here because the UV rays are filtered through so much extra atmosphere is a myth.  Maybe you get sunburned less, but you still get sunburned.

It is not a myth, however, that you cannot sink in the Dead Sea because of the high salt content.  As long as you arch your back, you can comfortably float like a little boat.  I tried to stand up, but you float up and tip.  I tipped face first into the water.  It is horrible tasting, much worse than seawater, and it kind of burns your lips.   The water has some bitumen in it besides the salts, so it smells.  People claim the mud is good for your skin and people smear it all over themselves.  I didn’t. 

Above – Chrissy came to meet me in Amman. 

The northern shore of the Dead Sea is now home to lots of really nice Hotels.  We are in the Marriott.  It is like a paradise and not very expensive.  We get the government/military discount because I am on official travel orders. 

Before development, it must have been like hell around here.  Imagine a person coming through the desert and seeing this “lake” for the first time.  He goes down to take a drink and gets that poisonous salt water.  If you drink a cup of it w/o rinsing it out with fresh water right away, it will literally kill you.   After swimming, you have to wash off. 

Saddam & Gomorrah were nearby.  Lot’s wife supposedly was turned into a pillar of salt nearby and lots of pillars of salt rise out of the Dead Sea.  Irrigation and people making salt by evaporating water are lowering the level of the Sea and making it even more salty.    There are proposals to bring in sea water to replace the water drained out of the Jordan for irrigation.  At various times in geologic history, this area was completely dry or an arm of the Mediterranean Sea. 

The Jordan Valley is part of the same rift that reaches into East Africa.  The continents of Africa and SW Asia literally are being pulled apart by the action of plate tectonics.  In a couple million years, this whole valley will be part of the Red Sea.  But until then it might be a major engineering feat to bring in that sea water.

Tomorrow we are going to visit some of the local archaeological sites.   We had planned a side trip to Jerusalem, but we learned that the border crossings are difficult and time consuming.  That, coupled with the distance, makes it unlikely we can make a successful day trip, so we will have to hold off the trip to Jerusalem for another time. 

Above is the view of other hotels from the Veranda.  It is sort of like S. Arizona.

The Jordan Valley should provide enough to do for now.  After this, we will go down to Petra.   

Above is Amman from the Citadel 

Empire is politically incorrect these days but the Roman Empire was a great thing.  It brought together disparate people under the rule of law.   The Romans controlled almost all the world they knew about and certainly all the territory they thought worth having. 

In our modern world, we are used to progress running in one direction.  We might suppose the past was more pleasant, but we never believe that people of the past could do more than we could.  This was not always the case.  For around 1000 years, people looked back on the ancient Roman Empire with a sense of envy.  The Romans had a better general organization than the states that followed them.  Cities fell into ruins after the fall of Rome and they sometimes stayed in ruins, with people poking around among them like some characters in a scifi book.  Amman did not regain its Roman size until well into the 20th century.   People could look at the ruins and wonder how those building came to be.

On left is the Temple of Hercules.

Jordan was at the edge of the Roman world.  Beyond here was that desert I know only too well.  The Romans were wise enough not to go very far away from the Mediterranean Sea (Mare Nostrum – our sea, they called it) very often.  When they did, they tended to come to bad ends.   Crassus, the associate of Julius Caesar’s,  was captured by the Parthians who poured molten gold down his throat in recognition of his status as one of the richest men in the world.   

The Mediterranean really is a paradise.  It is like California, northern or southern depending on where you are.  Jordan is like southern California.   It has been hot during the day, but not uncomfortable in the shade.  In the evening it is comfortably cool.  There is a fair amount of green.  There would be more if it were not for the goats and the general bad management of soil resources over the past millennia. 

Amman is quiet today because it is Friday.  I went up to the citadel.  Every ancient and medieval city of any size has a citadel or an acropolis.   Life back then was nasty, brutish and short.  You had to have a place to repair to during the inevitable periods of bloody disorder.   After a while, these places became the sites of public buildings so they usually feature interesting archaeology.  Beyond that, there is almost always a good view from the high ground.

As I sit here writing this, I can hear church bells ringing.  I have been hearing the Muslim call to prayer all day, so this is a change.  I understand that the Christian population was once significant.  It has dwindled in modern times, but is still here.  This is the holy land after all.   Tomorrow or the next day I plan to visit the place where tradition says John the Baptist baptized Jesus.