The Road to Petra
Trip Start
Apr 28, 2005
1
7
15
Trip End
May 08, 2005
Madaba, Mt Nebo, Dead Sea, Karak, Shobak,
Jordan
Sunday, May 1, 2005
Another early morning start with the brother of the taxi driver from the day before, unfortunately his English was worst and so was his driving. We first drove the Madaba, which was only an hour from Amman. Madaba was a quite and extremely peaceful town, we had come here to see some of the oldest mosaic's in the world. Within St.Georges (a Greek Orthodox Church built over a Byzantine Church) we saw the oldest known map of Europe a mosaic of Lebanon to Egypt all written in Greek, with references to the Nile and Dead Sea. Not far from the church was the Archaeological Park. Here contained old mosaic from during an excavation of buildings in the earlier 1990's, all is under a modern roof for protection. Next stop Mt Nebo, only a short drive away, the mountain where Moses was said to seen the promise land and later buried. On top is the Moses Memorial Church first built in AD393 and reconstructed in the 1930's
Madaba Map
. Views here are amazing, with sites over the Dead Sea and across the Jericho and The West Bank. Another hour journey took us to one of the many Dead Sea resorts. The Dead Sea is a bizarre place. The water looked almost oily and you floated, it was so hard to even stand in the water. Clegg managed to get salt in his eyes and couldn't see through the pain. We stayed here for about an hour playing in the water, before leaving down the Dead Sea highway towards Karak. The journey was amazing travelling through the Wadi Mujib, a baron and rocky landscape. Karak is a huge we preserved Crusade castle from 1142AD 900m above sea level and site of many battles between The Franks and Islamic army of Saladin. We spent about 2 hours here there is loads to see. Stables, Nabataean Churchs, barracks and the plunging Glacis, a rocky slope were Renault de Chatillon would through his prisoners off. After a good feed we continued a drive south to Shobak. We really enjoyed Shobak, a crusade castle from 1115 AD built by Baldwin the first. The Castle is only semi preserved and over looked by many travellers, but well worth a visit. Only two other tourists were on the site, which is in the middle of nowhere, unlike Karak which has a town next to the castle. We spent another hour here before continuing are drive to Petra, where we stayed at the Petra Moon. We had a fairly early night in preparation for our early start. 
