Author: sanborn

I got completely behind on the Israel-Jordan trip that I never finished this post, and I have two more to do. Stay tuned…

This is just a selection of shots at dawn and dusk of the desert near Petra. Enjoy!

The Nabataeans  used Petra as the hub in a huge trading network. It was an important and lively city, but from 106AD when the Romans annexed it until 1812, when Johann Burckhardt (who’s related to the famous Jacob Burckhardt, author of “The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy”) cheated to get access to the hidden city. Petra lies in this cluster of dense rocks.

Coming back from our sunset jeep tour. We flew up and down the sand dunes and wadis, but nobody fell out of the open seating in the back.

The big dome was where we ate meals. It worked fine but had a vivid echo. You could hear your voice travel along the curves and resound everywhere. Unsettling. Made us talk more quietly, which was hard. 🙂

This is our camp. I climbed up into the rocks in the early evening, just before it got too dark.  We stayed in the dark tents. The moonscape domes were a  bit larger. A group of Chinese tourists stayed in them.  Our “tents” were full cabins with a bathroom/shower attached. Very comfortable but small. 

This is a magical place. When the shadows lengthened, the colors deepened. Dusk and sunrise brought views of astounding beauty.

Dusk coming in after the sun goes down…

This is where the movie “The Martian” was filmed. They cut the branches or leaves of anything that was growing and covered it with sand so the ground looked empty. Watch the opening ten minutes and you can see this terrain. It’s truly awe inspiring.  

SUNRISE… I got up early and wandered out before dawn. It was cold, but I didn’t care about my stiff fingers because it was so beautiful.

And the day begins! Ochres and reds soak across the sands…

We rode along a busy highway. Lots of trucks that honked at us, mostly friendly I think. There were goats everywhere, including on the highway. No shepherd that I could see and certainly no fencing. I guess they figured out to stay away from the bigger heavier faster trucks. I didn’t see much roadkill.

The rest of the post are desert shots. I spent hours wandering through this terrain.

We stayed in a very fancy resort hotel in Aqaba. It had several pools and its own stretch of beach.

In the evening of the first night, we heard loud drumming in the courtyard. What was up? When my friends and I got there, we found a wedding procession underway.

A large group of men were singing and dancing to the tune of a drum that one of them was beating. Someone was video taking the whole event. I couldn’t find the bride until I went behind the procession. She was there, long white gown, completely made up, looking very serious, on the arm of a tuxedo’d gentleman. Perhaps even the groom.

There was a large group of women around her and another large group of to the side.

The Jordanian flag colors are what are referred to as the “Pan-Arab” colors: black for the Abbasid caliphate, white for the Umayyad caliphate, and green for the Fatimid. The red triangle symbolizes the Hashemite kingdom and the Arab Revolt against the Ottomans and has a star in the center. The Palestinian flag is the same but without the star.

Just inland from the beach and tourist walkways was a large patch of allotments. They looked well cared for and productive.

The shopping was pretty rudimentary. No fancy shops. Sometimes no actual shop at all.

You could buy any kind of pickled veggie…

And goat meat too:

Aqaba was an important trade hub centuries ago. We saw ruins of an older city and this castle. Beautiful in the afternoon light…

Some evening shots as we walked back to the hotel.

Mosques are everywhere in Jordan. Even tiny villages have something. Must have loudspeakers for the muezzin’s 5 daily calls to prayer.

And to finish: our bikes on the trailer ready for their bedtime. 🙂

We’re now in Jordan… I’m a bit behind on my posts.

The last place we stayed in Israel was an eco-kibbutz, complete with vegan food.

It amazes me how the Israelis can drop down into the desert and create a rich green space. This place has ponds, trees, a vast array of solar panels, and comfy cottages.

They had lots of goats and in the middle of their main camp, they had a show that looked very Hindu, but was a tall cooling tower. There are vents all around it just below the green top and the cooler air is piped throughout the village.

We rode along the wall a long time.

Some border crossings aren’t really open. As we rode past this one, I wondered what kind of lock they might have on the gate to match the strength of the fence.

Well, turns out they use a lot more than a lock. How about concrete blocks and barbed wire and more blocks?

After that we rode down into Eilat, on the Red Sea. The terrain became red and dramatic.

Finally we got to Eilat and had lunch in a mall. Talk about culture shock!

Then the border crossing…although you could also bird watch…

This is the view from my Aqaba hotel room. Jordan is a fairly poor country, with the vast majority of purple loving up north in Amman. Aqaba felt very third world: small shops with inexpensive plastic and tin his spilling out into the sidewalk, coffee stalls everywhere offering gritty Turkish coffee, very few women anywhere…

Even in the “empty” desert, we found something interesting every day. The last two days are no exception. Camels, tanks, border crossings, fences… Here are some signs we saw:

You can see the tanks lined up way over on the far right side. It certainly was strange to ride past rows of tanks. There were bunkers and checkpoints and always the firing range markers alongside the road. And barbed wire…

It wasn’t all military though. The first three stages of the Giro D’Italia came through here.

Here’s a typical rest stop for our trip, with my new friends Rich and Jill.

And we pass Bedouin or nomadic encampments from time to time. Here are some goats being herded. I think the donkey is helping.

Plenty of stunning scenery.

For a long stretch, maybe 25km, we rode along the Egyptian border with its high fence. Apparently this was built ~5 years ago to keep out the Eritreans who were streaming across the border by the hundreds.

And we were warned often:

Day before yesterday we visited a castle on a hill overlooking the incense route, also called the spice route, that went through the Negev Desert and finished at Gaza. Here’s wikipedia: Avdat is the site of a ruined Nabataean city in the Negev desert in southern Israel. It was the most important city on the Incense Route after Petra, between the 1st century BCE and the 7th century CE.

The ruins are visible for miles. It seemed to be in very good condition, so I wanted to see it..The road up was hard, but the site was amazing. There were the ruins of a Roman villa at one end, with a great view.

Further up on the top of the hill was a large compound with well preserved walls, columns, and arches. 365° views, plenty of rooms, even a wine press.

And we ended the day high up on another hill, at Mitzpe Roman. The views here are what you see if you look down into the vast valley. You can see the road we took out of town dropping down into the valley.

The desert can be so beautiful!

We’ve climbed up out of the Dead Sea depths, a ~3,000 foot climb. We’re at a small desert town that’s growing fast enough to get designated as a city soon. Lots of Orthodox Jews here. As a result, all the restaurants here have a tiny washbasin right in main room, even the small falafel cafe in town. This allows for ritual washing before eating.

We stayed in a simple but very delightful hostel in a “moshav,” which is an agricultural cooperative. There were some old wooden doors scattered around the place.

Efforts have been made to invest in the area, and lots of donations have come from Australia.

The day was all desert, dry, empty, lovely in an awesome way. The road for the steep climb was closed because some of it is in bad shape and maybe also because it runs through long stretches of military land.

Our hotel is a socialized experiment. It’s a lovely place, with desert style architecture, but the cool thing is that all its profits go into Yerucham’s educational system.

Must go to breakfast… Enjoy!