Jordan - H for Hommous!

Destination 3: Jordan. Objective of trip: To find the restaurant that serves the best hommous and felafel in the world (according to a poll in the middle east). Mission Status: Complete! Accomplished within 3 hours of touching down in the countires capital of Amman - would you expect any less of the McBryde's?

And so our trip in Jordan commenced with a high in terms of the pallette! We had read the Lonley Planet's recommendation of 'the best hummous in the Middle East' - a massive claim - and put it to the test! Well, the recommendation lived up to all our wildest hommous dreams and lifted our spirits for all that was ahead of us in Jordan.


Jerash

We spent our first full day exploring in Jerash - a city one hour north of Jordan's capital, Amman where there are amazing ancient Roman ruins of a full city . It was sensational - so much history and such a vast area to explore (exhausting too!). The highlight though was sharing the day with hundreds and hundreds of school boys who loved and adored the only non-hijab-wearing white woman in sight - Me! I've never felt more like a celebrity in my life with how many photos I had with 14 year old boys, all shouting 'Habbibi, habbibi' - my love, my love (John - Ren's also never been in so many spank banks).


Jerash - Stage of Rock

We then hitched a ride with two old farmers to see an old castle about 50 kms away who fed us bread and tomatoes relentlessly and tried to speak broken english/fast arabic. Trouble was they dropped us off in the town and we had to hike 5km uphill to actually enter the castle, all done in 30+ degree heat! When we finally reached the top we were agin met with 'Habibi, habibi' - the same boys from Jerash were there - and we watched them rush through the castle like a fire storm, screaming, shouting and scaring the shit out of tourists! In saying that though, Jordanians are definately some of the most welcoming people I've ever encountered!

As our first day involved taxi's, buses, and hitch hiking, we decided to hire a car for the remainder of the trip so that we could see as much of Jordan as possible. Now, driving at home is one thing but, driving in a foreign country, on the opposite side of the road, with lacklustre road rules and no incentive to go slow is another. Would we conquer the tailgating, beeping and no indicator way of driver survivor in one piece? We would give it a crack!

The drive began like a christian pilgrimage - we always seem to get on the religous path despite not really being religous - as we headed to Mt Nebo, the second highest peak in Jordan where Moses first saw the promised land. We also went to the site of John the baptist, where he baptised Jesus and the town of Madaba which holds the oldest mosaic map of the middle east (c. 300 BC) and it's territories.

THE promised land

After all this (4 hours) we were a bit religioned out so we headed to the Dead Sea for a swim in the saliest water in the world (9 times the salinity of the ocean) where it was utterly impossible and humouros to try to get fully submerged in the water or swim even a few stokes. John of course wanted to taste how salty the water was and dipped his tonuge in - idiot! He cried as his tongue practically dissolved in salty agony! Whilst laughing at him (John - The big G O D must have been watching, sucker!) I got water in my eyes - Karma can be abit of a bitch sometimes!!


The Red Sea and Ren - Pre Swim

After this we headed for (in our opinion) the most amazing castle in Jordan - Karak Castle. Lots of it is still intact and there was plenty of exploring to do including into the pitch black prison cells (John - For those wondering, we did play out the prison cell fantasy/night mare - We escaped!). We spent the night at Karak in a near by hotel (our first clean room in Jordan) and dinned downstairs at a great place that served yummy eggplant, spicy dips and... Haloumi! So in loyalty to the Haloumi appreciation club, we ate and toasted our homegrown haloumi queen Miss Kellie (John - McLeod).


Karak Castle

The following day we set out for the diamond in Jordan's tourist crown, Petra. One of the seven wonders of the ancient world, Petra was originally built (carved out of the mountain sides) by the Nabateens sometime BC, which was added to by the Romans in 300AD. Wow! The city is spread out over at least 8km squared and we spent a good two days, sun up to sun down, hiking and taking in these truly amazing sites - It was incredible!



Petra, yo!! - The Treasury


Donkey Love!!

On the 1st of May whilst the BIG engagement party was going on at home (John - Congrat's Mitch and Snoddy!), we were celebrating Johnny's birthday going on safari in Wadi Rum, where they filmed 'Lawrence of Arabia'. We started the day in the 4WD sand-bashing around the desert and hiking up rock mountains and sand dunes. After this we retired to our Bedouin camp...

To paint the picture, we were sitting in our camp, in the middle of Wadi Rum desert (John - Nowhere), with 9 devout muslim, Arabic speaking men... and then there was John and Renee. It was a truly comical, but rewarding evening filled with a roasting fire and incredible traditional food baked in the ground (similar to a hangi)! In lieu of traditional methods of conversation, talking, (there was a MAJOR language barrier) the guys played their Bedoiun guitar tunes into the evening. (John - I tried to play Nirvan's 'Come as you are' but it went down like a lead ballon as they didn't appreciate or know of Nirvana, in the grunge-band sense). Being female, I was not really ever directly communicated with and had to tell John to ask every question I had... which was incredibly hard for someone as inquisitive as me! The next morning we headed back to the village on camel, which left me with sore thighs and John wondering if we will ever celibrate fathers day - Maybe, we will have to be content with just being the babysitters of Baby Sly?


Sand, Trucks, Camels and Rock!!

After a few days without showers (personal hygeine, huh?) we headed to Aqaba, Jordan's portion of the Red Sea coast - the beach, yay! Whilst here we did a few dives in the Red Sea including our first ever ship wreck and Aqaba's marine life reef, which had some of the best marine life of any dive thus far - AMAZING! It was great to soak up some sun and recharge for our next journey to Egypt. But, before we went we had one last middle eastern dinner!

I don't think I will ever be able to have another piece of leb bread after this trip - is it possible the McBrydes will turn anti-carb???? Watch this space!!

Thanks for reading,
Ren and Johnny xox