Wadi Musa, Jordan

We took a private car to Karak, about 90 minutes south from Amman. As with almost all private cars we've taken on trips, it was an older Mercedes, but still in great shape.

Our driver explained the road we were taking was historically the route to Mecca for Muslims from the region and Eastern Europe. (In fact the road goes all the way to Sanaa, Yemen, which is on our list of places to see).

We stopped at a touristy roadside place for lunch (the "Petra Tourist Restaurant"), and arrived at Karak around 2pm. We looked at a couple hotels, and settled on the Karak Guest House, right beside the entrance to the castle.

Karak Castle is the main attraction in Karak, a sprawling castle in varying states of disrepair. After paying the JD1 entrance fee, and politely declining a couple guides, we spent the next three hours exploring the linked tunnels and vaulted rooms, some buried deep into the hillside. It was pretty cool. It wasn't as well preserved as castle in Tomar, but still fun to explore.

After we wandered down the main street, and saw lots of trades at work in their shops: someone working a loom (a loomer?), butchers, someone working with animal pelts (a pelter?). I bought a scarf cause it's getting cold at night (3C).

Had dinner at Kir Heres restaurant, which was really good. I really liked the fried haloomi.

We were back at the hotel by 7:30pm. I was exhausted, apparently not over jet lag, and was asleep by 8:30pm. Unfortunately I was also up at 2am and couldn't fall back asleep.

Heather was also up pretty early. The mattresses weren't the most comfortable, and it was really cold in the room, so we decided to get up and were ready to look for breakfast by 7am.

We found a local eatery and sat down for an excellent Jordanian breakfast of hummus, omelette, salad and deep fried eggplant and falafel, with a mint tea to drink. It only cost 6JD ($8 CAD) too!

We had originally scheduled a driver for 11am, but since we were up so early changed it to 9:30am. First was a stop at Shobak, another Crusader castle ruin. It's in more of a ruined state than Karak - the attraction of Shobak is its location perched on the top of a steep hill.

Next we were on to Wadi Musa to see Petra! It was less than an hour drive from Shobak.

We checked into the Petra Moon Hotel. It was one of the few places we had reserved ahead, because we weren't sure how busy Petra would be at this time if year.

There's a night walk to Petra along the Siq (that's the crescent moon in Raiders of the Lost Ark) three nights a week, fortunately tonight's one of them. So we'll be seeing Petra (or at least the Treasury) in a few hours!