Salt, Jordan

We needed a change from ruins, ruins and more ruins, so arranged a driver for a day trip to Salt.

It was harder than we thought to arrange the trip, because no one could believe we wanted to spend three hours in Salt. Salt? Why go to Salt? was the typical reply when we tried to ask for a taxi.

Even our driver tried to turn the trip into a different outing. What about Wadi Mujib? No, we want to go to Salt. Okay, but if you get bored, we go to [insert other more interesting place].

So we got to Salt, about an hour from Madaba. Our driver gave us one last warning about how we couldn't possibly enjoy three hours in Salt, and then we started exploring.

Salt is an old Ottoman city. As the Lonely Planet describes it, it's an undiscovered gem. The Japanese have contributed grants to save the architecture, and so Salt has excellent tourist facilities, but no tourists. It has the best-signed walking tour I've seen. The narrow streets and alleys and staircase shortcuts reminded us of Portugal.

Had lunch in a busy grill place. They get so few tourists here that they don't even have an english menu to pull out. We ordered by pointing, a half rotisserie chicken, and beef kebabs. It was one of the best meals on this trip so far.

Salt was a great day trip. I'd only recommend it if you are in Jordan for more than two weeks - there's too many big ruins to see otherwise. But if you need a break from ruins, Salt is great.

We had an early start the next day, so wrapped up dinner at 9:30pm, just as everyone was starting to go out for New Year's Eve. Fell asleep well before midnight on NYE, I can't remember the last time that happened.

Hammanat Ma'in, Jordan

Woke up feeling none the worse for all the rich food and drink yesterday. It was the opposite effect of going to a high altitude.

We had arranged for a driver to pick us up at the Marriott, and do an excursion on the way back to Madaba, so we didn't lose a day to travel.

First off was the hot springs at Hammamat Ma'in. Because after a day at the spa, it's best to go to some hot springs to relax.

We could feel the pressure lift as we drove up to sea level. It was more noticeable than going down. It really felt like I could breathe normally again.

Hammamat Ma'in is the best hot springs I've been to. Water at 45C (65C in the summer) falls into a shallow pool. We stood under the waterfall, which was like a giant rainhead shower. Behind the falls are some caves, where water flows through. Sitting in the caves is like a steam bath. It was more enjoyable than I thought (I'm not one for spas).

Back on the road to Mukawir, the castle of Herod the Great. It's a 15 minute walk uphill from the ticket entrance to the top. It's kinda neat because it's so alone and empty up there (the ruins aren't much to see though).

Last for today was Umm ar-Rasas, UNESCO World Heritage ruins. The ruins themselves are still in ruins, spread as far as we could see. The main attraction were the mosaics at the Church of St Stephen. We thought we were out-mosaic'ed, and then we saw these. They are amazing. One of the top highlights of Jordan. They're not on the typical tourist trail, but they should be. It looks like a giant carpet covering the church floor, but in fact it's a mosaic.

We spent about 45 minutes wandering around the rest of the ruins. We saw three other church ruins with mosaic floors, covered with plastic and sand until they can be restored. Some day this will be a great site.

We got back to Madaba, pretty tired considering we had been at the Dead Sea and hot springs.

Dead Sea, Jordan

Today the trip went downhill, to 423m below sea level. Along the way from Madaba to our hotel on the Dead Sea (we booked at the Marriott), we stopped Mt Nebo. Mt Nebo is where Moses is said to have seen the promised land. It must not have been a hazy day when Moses was here, because we couldn't see much. The church was under complete renovations, and off-limits. So I took a couple pictures of the haze and then we carried on. It was a long winding drive down to the Dead Sea. I was still recovering from my cold and so couldn't equalize very well. It was a trip of plugged ears.

We arrived at the Marriott around 11am, and got an early checkin. Wandered around the hotel (we needed a map, it's pretty big), and had lunch at the Italian restaurant. It was very good. Next was the reason we came to the Dead Sea, to sit in the salty water. Got our beach towels and beach slippers (plastic slippers so you don't cut your feet on the rocks). They actually advise you not to shave before going into the Dead Sea, cause it hurts if you have a small cut!

There was a sign explaining how to enter the water -- walk in backwards, slowly, until you can sit backwards. So we did.

It was pretty cool to float without moving.

After a few minutes that got boring, so we got back on shore and covered ourselves with mud, like all the other tourists. You can buy small amounts for facials for large amounts of money. But here at the Dead Sea, the hotel has a big bucket of free mud.

I think you're supposed to wait 15 minutes, but it was getting icky so we went back in the Dead Sea and washed off the mud.

Watched the sunset from the outdoor lounge. Not as colourful as I imagined, because the sun disappears behind hills before it sets. Still hazy so couldn't really see much of Israel.

Later we had dinner at the steak restaurant. It was excellent.

For those interested, some details about the Dead Sea when we visited:

Elevation -423m
Salt concentration 31.5%
pH 6.0
340 g/L total dissolved salts
Density 1.24 kg/L

Madaba, Jordan

There's not much going on on Fridays in Jordan (it's like a Sunday back home), so we decided to take a down day in Madaba today (the relaxing part that we didn't get to yesterday). So we've been spending time in cafés, catching up on reading and blogging. Right now we're in Dardasheh Café having a Philadelphia lager, listening to classics from the 70's. (Amman was called Philadelphia around 250 BC). We have a couple big days of going to a spa at the Dead Sea tomorrow, and then the hot springs at Hammanat Ma'in, so we want to be well rested :)

Madaba, Jordan

The plan for today was to do some sightseeing, shop for souvenirs and relax in a café. There's so much to see in Madaba that we never actually got to the relaxing part. It was still a great day though.

Started at St George's Church. It has a mosaic, created in AD 560, the oldest map of Palestine in existence. Most tourists stop in at Madaba on an excursion, see St George's, and get back on the tour bus. However there is much more in Madaba, better preserved mosaics that look nicer.

We did a little souvenir shopping, dropped them off at the hotel, and grabbed some lunch from a busy little take-out place.

Next was back to sightseeing. We followed the suggested walking tour in the Lonely Planet. You really get a sense of the history in Madaba. It's the longest continuously inhabited place in the world -- people have been living here since 4500 BC. There are a couple archaeological sites where you see layer upon layer of buildings from different eras.

The Shrine of the Beheading of John the Baptist was really interesting. The church itself was okay. But you can climb to the top of the belfry for great views of Madaba (in Jordan there's not many high buildings where you can do this). And then under the church are tunnels and the Acropolis Museum, which has a working Moabite well from 3000 years ago.

After our touristing, we called in at the Black Iris to plan out excursions for the remainder of our trip. It's getting a little busier tourist-wise, so we also made hotel reservations for the rest of the trip.

Went back to Haret Jdoudna for dinner. They had another live band. The singer for this band had really great stage presence - we were both impressed with him.

Madaba, Jordan

Today was a day trip to the Desert Castles. We met at the Black Iris. We met the other person, she was an Italian working in England.

The desert castles were built by the Umayyads around 700 AD. I hadn't heard of the Umayyads before this trip, but they had the 5th largest contiguous empire in history, from Portugal and Morocco to Arabia and Persia.

It was a two hour drive to the first castle, Qasr Kharana. Heather and I both slept on and off through most of it. Qasr Kharana reminds me of the gates to Qoth in Game of Thrones. Wandered about and took a lot of pictures. There were a handful of other tourists, that we saw at each of the castles (the desert castle route is a common day trip).

Next up was Qusayr Amra. It's famous for the frescoes on the walls and ceiling, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Last up was Qasr al-Azraq. This is on a busy road in Azraq, unlike the other two sites which were in the middle of the desert. It's made from basalt, which doesn't look as black as I thought it would. The doors are single pieces of stone, but still movable.

Had lunch at another roadside tourist complex. It was so-so, I'd rather have had a falafel sandwich somewhere.

It took over two hours to drive back through rush hour traffic. I slept through most of it.

We cleaned up at our hotel and headed to Haret Jdoudna for dinner. It was pretty good. They had live music, a couple guys singing Arabic tunes, which was pretty cool.

Madaba, Jordan

Our bus to Amman was at 11am so we had time to get up, have breakfast and pack without being rushed.
We debated taking a taxi (it's a seven minute walk to the JETT bus station), because we had our big packs, day packs, a bag of food for the bus trip, plus a big duffle bag of souvenirs. Also I was starting to come down with a cold. It was a nice day so decided just to walk to the bus.

The bus was a double decker, and like in Morocco the seat assignments were treated a bit loosely. The bus was only half full so it didn't really matter.

The evening before, we had stocked up on food for the bus ride: pitas (from the bakery I took a pic inside), triangle cheese, mixed nuts, and bananas.

There was a bit extra customs to load the bus because Aqaba is in a tax-free zone, but they didn't pay much attention to tourists.

We slept through most of the ride to Amman. I was starting my cold and so didn't mind sleeping. The bus left promptly at 11am, and arrived in Amman without stops at 3pm right on schedule.

We quickly grabbed a taxi (20JD) to the Mosaic City hotel in Madaba. The traffic wasn't too bad because it was Christmas, a national holiday here.

Our hotel was an excellent mid-range hotel. It's fairly new, it was very clean, good shower and the heat worked.

The plan was to use Madaba as a base for day trips around northern Jordan. The excursion prices seemed a bit high at our hotel so we went to the nearby Black Iris Hotel to book out day trips.

The Black Iris owner was excellent at helping us plan out day trips. He's really knowledgeable about the area. He had another guest who wanted to do the Desert Castle tour the next day, so we signed up for that (JD 45 for the car, split between the three of us)

Walked down to Haret Jdoudna for dinner. It's the top rated restaurant in the area. It looked good, except all the diners were having a Christmas sing-a-long. I suppose some people like that, but it wasn't for us.

Ended up at Adonis Restaurant. It had a good atmosphere. We had a nice Christmas dinner with a bottle of Jordanian red (from St George, right here in Madaba)

Aqaba, Jordan

I was up with my alarm yet again (what kind of vacation is this?) for a 2nd day of diving. Heather decided to spend the day relaxing around the hotel rather than snorkeling.  However she joined me on the short walk to the dive centre so we could book the overnight excursion to Wadi Rum from a travel agency next door.

There were only three of us diving today. The Norwegian guy wanted to see the tank (an army tank scuttled in about 5m of water, perfect for a safety stop), so we went to that site for our first dive. The sun was out today, and visibility is pretty amazing. Maybe that's why the Red Sea is so highly rated for diving.

Froze in the wind in between the dives. Just as I stopped shivering, we were back the water for the 2nd dive, this one at Japanese Garden. It was okay.

Got back home and warmed up with a hot shower. According to the Norwegian guy (he had all kinds of dive paraphernalia), the water was 23C, the coldest I've dived.

Heather and I walked around the souq, souvenir hunting. We found a shop selling the antique coffee grinders!  The price was much lower than we expected, and so didn't even bargain. It was the one-sided bartering like in the Monty Python movie, with the vendor arguing both sides.  Heather also bought some jewelry.

Bought our bus ticket to Amman for Christmas Day, from where we'll take a taxi to Madaba.

Had a drink at the infinity pool at our hotel watching the sunset over Egypt or Israel (I'm not sure exactly where the border lies) (Saudi Arabia is 14km south from us as well).

We had dinner at Ali Baba's again. We had two mains and a couple appetizers, everything was amazing again. Split a bottle of Jordanian red.

...

Slept in (!) for the first time this trip. We just had to be ready for 1pm for our Wadi Rum excursion. Caught the tail end of breakfast, packed up and checked out. With the souvenirs and our boots in plastic bags (so we could put them on quickly in Wadi Rum) we looked distinctly like non-Hilton guests.

Had lunch in the souq, and would have timed it perfectly to be ready at 1pm except we forgot about the free tea at the end of the meal (it would be insulting to turn down) and so we were a few minutes late.

The weather was perfect for visiting Wadi Rum -- about 18C, sunny, and no wind to kick up dust storms.

We switched from a taxi to a 4WD in Wadi Rum (a Toyota, the favoured vehicle everywhere I've been on excursions because of its maintainability).  Drove around the desert landscape (wadi means valley in Arabic, and rum is moon, so literally translates to Valley of the Moon). Took pics at all the appropriate places. It was cool, but I wouldn't rate it in the top 5 things to see in Jordan. I thought the landscape around Petra was more interesting.

Our camp was great, a tent with actual beds and comfortable mattresses!  We were the only two tourists (the camp can hold up to 100 people in tents) so had the owner's attention all night. Had an excellent dinner, and chatted about travel. Heather and I crashed around 9pm. The owner pulled out his laptop and surfed using a USB stick. As he said, welcome to 2013.  (Although, we did read on our iPad / iPhone before falling asleep).

We woke up a couple times in the night from the call to prayers. The Imams had excellent voices and the sound carried well in the desert. What didn't add to it was the howling of dogs off-key.

We got up at 6am to watch the sunrise. We were both comfy warm in our sleeping bags and a couple blankets (much warmer than our night in Karak!) but froze once we got up. It might have been 3C.

The sun was just starting to hide the stars. It was a great view to the horizon. Watched the sky change, at one point we could see rays from the sun like how a kid draws the sun. Finally we felt some warmth after an hour or so.

We had an excellent traditional breakfast. Learnt we were supposed to dip the pita in olive oil and then in the spice mixture. (We had had the spice mixture before, but didn't know what to do with it).

To emphasize that times have changed, the camp owner asked if we could give him a good rating on tripadvisor.

Our driver picked us up at 9am as arranged, and we returned to the Hilton.  It was odd, with our backpacks and dusty clothes and looking like we just spent a night in the desert, to be greeted with a Welcome back, sir at the Hilton.

Cleaned up and went for lunch at Al Shami. It was excellent grilled food, done perfectly.

Bought a duffle bag to carry our souvenirs (we don't normally buy so many things this early in a trip, but we don't think we'll get Bedouin stuff up north). At least we'll look more respectable leaving the Hilton tomorrow.

Now we're relaxing at the infinity pool again. We're yet again back to Ali Baba's for our Christmas Eve dinner.

Hope everyone has a Merry Christmas!

Aqaba, Jordan

It's a short 90 minute drive from Wadi Musa to Aqaba.  Heather and I fell asleep in the car for most of it.  We had decided not to include a day trip stop to Wadi Rum (of Lawrence of Arabia fame), even though it's along the way.

We checked into the Double Tree Hilton, for 89JD a night.  We're finding there's not much mid-range accommodation in Jordan.  Our criteria for hotels includes heat in the room, hot showers, and a comfortable bed.  The mid-range hotels (for what exists) don't meet all of those, so we may end up in higher end hotels for the rest of the trip.

Our room is pretty nice, with the hottest shower we've had on the trip so far (out of four places we've stayed).  It's the first shower we didn't have on full heat.  We also got a complimentary cookie when we checked in :)

Because we had taken a private car, we still had most of the day to tour around Aqaba.  Walked through the souq, which here is just the busy commercial area, and not like the souqs in Morocco.  Saw some cool antiques that we liked, especially some antique Bedouin coffee grinders.  Unfortunately these weren't for sale in the store we saw them in, but just "museum" pieces.  We think they were for sale, because they had Visa signs all around.  Anyways we're on a hunt for another one that is for sale.

We dropped by Dive Aqaba (I'm doing a couple days of diving with them).  Got some restaurant recommendations (one down side of staying at a Hilton is that they don't really know what we're looking for in travel -- we'd much rather find a street stall serving falafel than a fancy restaurant).  We had dinner at a seafood place called Al Moubrak.  It was good, but not great.  We stepped into a dessert place for something small, and they gave us samples which was all we really wanted.  But the samples were amazing so we bought a small platter of desserts for JD2.  Now we have enough desserts to last us a week.

...

Had to set my alarm yet again to get up for diving.  The breakfast at the Hilton was excellent.

We walked over to Dive Aqaba, just around the corner (the Hilton is very conveniently located in Aqaba).  Signed some disclaimers, got fitted for wet suits.  Heather was planning to snorkel, and I was diving.  They gave me two wet suits (a first for me) and dive boots.

The dive site was about 30 minutes out from the dive shop.  There was a couple from South Africa on the boat (he was diving, she was pregnant so was just snorkeling, so it worked out well with Heather diving too), and a family of three, learning to dive.

The first dive was just over coral.  I was a bit disappointed by the coral, it was mostly dead and not very many fishies.  Also the water felt darned cold, far colder than the advertised 24C.  We think it was maybe 20C.  The sun had disappeared behind clouds when we came up, so we were shivering for a while before heating up.  We were hoping for lunch before the second dive, but it was just a 45 minute break and then back into the cold.

The second dive was cool, it was a wreck dive through a tanker that had been scuttled.  We dove under the wreck (25m) and then through the ship, through some rather small areas.  I think the divemaster was using the first dive to gauge the South African's and my abilities, because it was a bit technical and I don't think everyone goes through the ship.  Anyways it was way cool.

In busy season I can imagine that the wreck is covered with divers, but with tourism down so much, there was just one other dive shop at the wreck.

Lunch was onboard during the slow ride back, and was excellent.  Although, I find anything excellent after diving.

The dive excursion took up most of the day -- by the time we showered and changed, it was already 5pm.

The South Africans were cool to talk with, they are similar in travel style to us.  They highly recommended Wadi Rum, so we've decided to give it a go.  We looked around for tour agencies in the tourist area, but didn't see any -- I think they're all affiliated with hotels. We're going to check out a cheaper hotel for the tour, because we don't want to book through the Hilton :)

Had dinner at Ali Babas, it was the best meal we've had on the trip so far.  We split a number of appetizers and a main (sayadieh - a local specialty of fish layered onto rice with tomato, onion and pepper sauce), and we liked every dish.  We want to go back for the sayadieh, because by the time we got to it we were full from the other dishes.  Heather tried a local Cabernet Sauvignon that went well with dinner.

From the looks of it we might be spending Christmas on a bus back to Amman.  Oh well, everyday is like Christmas when we're on vacation :)  Also realized today was the day the world was supposed to end.

I'm reading a book called Redshirts by John Scalzi that Craig recommended.  It's written from the perspective of the ensigns that get killed off in Star Trek episodes.  It's rather funny.

Well we're off for a herbal tea and some Jordanian sweets.

Petra Day 2, Jordan

We were up again early for breakfast at 7am and at the entrance gate to Petra by 8am. We walked through the 1.2km long Siq (it's still one of the highlights of Petra, even though this was the 5th time through). There seemed to be less tourists today, at times we were all alone. Took some more pictures at the Treasury, and then through the Street of Facades and on towards the Monastery.

We passed by a excavation in progress, and wandered up the stairs to see what it was about. It turned out to be an amazing roman ruin, built in AD 106. Most of the site is still half-buried in sand -- excavation only started in 1993. Toppled pillars lie like fallen dominoes in the sand. It's really odd to be walking over rock pieces that are pieces of ruins 2000 years old. We hadn't done much pre-reading about Petra, so this was a cool bonus.

We reached the start of the trail to the Monastery, just past the Crown Plaza restaurant (?!). It was a 45 minute climb up an easy to follow trail, with more than 800 ancient steps along the old processional route. Finally we reached the top. It took a couple seconds to realize the Monastery was around the rocks to the right -- after the reaching the end of the trail, the first thing you see is a big sign in the distance that says "VIEW".

The Monastery is huge (45m high, 50m wide). It's my favourite in Petra. I actually had no idea that there was more to Petra beyond the Treasury, but it's way more than that. The Treasury is probably only in the top 5 things to see in Petra -- the Siq, the Monastery, roman ruins, Street of Facades and Royal Tombs are equally or more impressive.

We were the only tourists at the Monastery when we arrived. We climbed a facing rock formation to sit and relax and take in the view. We laughed as tourists slowly dribbled in, and did the same thing we did -- look at the view sign, and only moments later see the Monastery and then gasp in awe.

After our little break, we continued onto the VIEW sign to get a better viewpoint. We then trekked back to the Crown Plaza restaurant, and decided to have the buffet lunch. I was starved after all the exercise and poor dinner the night before.

We carried on back, and took a detour over a hill around the back of the roman ruins. There were great panoramic views of the Royal Tombs in the distance. We walked back along the hilltop, and saw more Nabatean caves and facades, that were tourist-free (even while the crowds filled up the main path below). Just like the day before, it was as if we had our own private tour of Petra. And it wasn't even that far off the beaten path. Using a Toronto comparison, it would be like everyone was walking down Adelaide and we decided to check out Richmond.

Back at the hotel, we cleaned up and then headed for dinner. We went to the Cave Bar in the Crown Plaza, which is built into a 2000-year-old Nabatean tomb. When we first saw the Cave Bar, we thought it was cheesy that they made the bar look like a fake tomb. It was only at lunch that we realized that it was a real tomb -- so we had to have a beer there. Because of the buffet lunch, we weren't too hungry and so just had some appetizers and called it tapas. (Oh yah, a couple pints of Tuborg).

The weather was excellent over the two days -- it was sunny and about 16C. We couldn't imagine doing all that trekking and climbing in the summer heat. Yet another reason to come in off-season!

Petra Day 1, Jordan

We were down for breakfast at 7am to get an early start with Petra.  We bought a 3-day pass for 60 JD. I thought we'd be Petra'd-out after two days, but we weren't sure if my ankle would need a break.  The 2-day pass was 55 JD so the extra day was just a 5 JD insurance.

We took our time going down the Siq. Because we'd already seen the Treasury last night I wasn't in a big rush     

There weren't too many other tourists. The situation in Syria has caused a huge decline in tourism here, even though its a different country. I used to think traveling in shoulder season was the best way to travel; now it seems to be going to a country adjacent to a troubled country.

All the shadows of rock formations we had seen on the night trek were now in full life. It's so surreal it almost looks fake, like a Disney impression of Petra. Except it's real.

We spent a few minutes at the Treasury. There were more workers than tourists at the site. The whole of Petra is kept impeccably clean.

We have been pleasantly surprised at the lack of aggressive sales pitches from guides. Just saying No Thanks once is enough, and they wish you on your way. Much different than any other country I've been too!

We followed the suggested walking tour in the Lonely Planet. After the Treasury is the Street of Façades, where the Nabateans cut 20m high façades into the rock around 2000 years ago. Petra has survived earthquakes because it's not built, but carved out of solid rock. Everything is one piece.

We had the street to ourselves - there were no other tourists in sight.

Next on the LP walk was a climb up to the High Place of Sacrifice. I thought it would just be a short climb, but it actually goes all the way to the top of the 200m rock formations. There were amazing views of the surroundings.

By the time we descended, it was close to noon, and the tour bus tourists had arrived. We waited for tourist free pics of the 8,500 seat Theatre. We had to keep remembering that everything was carved, and not built.

We walked up to the Royal Tombs across from the Theatre. By this time we were getting hungry and tired. Had a box lunch from a restaurant facing the Royal Tombs, which was pretty good (pita bread, cheese, tomato, cucumber, orange and cookies) for 6JD. There are also excellent toilets inside Petra -- much better than we had expected.

Rejuvenated, we headed back to the Royal Tombs along a path we had observed from our lunch seats. It ran above and behind the ground level row of tombs. We had this to ourselves - it's hidden from a casual view (especially if you're checking out the Theatre). It was amazing, with great views looking down on the Street of Façades.

We debated doing some more sightseeing but it had been a long day and we didn't want to push my ankle. So we headed back to the Treasury, took some more pics, and then walked back through the Siq to our hotel. 

We showered and headed out for dinner.  It was a choice between identical mediocre restaurants and we didn't choose well. Went to the Mövenpick for a celebratory beer. 

Petra Night, Jordan

We went on the Petra by Night tour tonight. It was amazing! The 1.2km Siq (the canyon that is the entrance to Petra) is lined with candles. There's enough light to see the canyon walls (200m high) all the way to the top, where the sky is lit by thousands of stars. The walk down the Siq is almost as impressive as seeing the Treasury. The Treasury is lit by hundreds of candles. There's a musical performance (flute, and some stringed instrument). The 150 or so tourists are seated in the floorspace. The acoustics are pretty good. I'm sure it's a much different experience from the day (we'll find out tomorrow!)

I managed to get a decent pic even with the low light (see the Photo Album link under Jordan in the right sidebar). The performer asked every to take a pic at the same time. I took a long exposure pic, and all the flashes that went off lit up my pic :)

We have an early start tomorrow to catch the early sun, so we're off to bed.

Wadi Musa, Jordan

This trip we've taken our iPad along. One benefit is the ability to download pics from my camera, edit them and then upload to Picasa. So I can create our vacation album on the go! I'm using Photogene to edit the pics and Web Albums to manage uploading. I'm quite happy with both apps.

I also finally made the header pic random, using a php script running on AWS. If you refresh the page you should see a new pic.

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!

Amman, Jordan

This was the most rushed we've been to leave on a trip.  Heather had an appointment at 10am with her back specialist to see if she could get clearance to dive.  Heather has a couple partially ruptured disks in her back and the water pressure from diving can be very dangerous to ruptured disks. Unfortunately the advice was that the risk is too great, so diving is off the list. That took a couple hours out of the morning, which left us rushed to leave.  Poor Craig, who drove us to the airport, had to wait 40 minutes for us while we finished packing.

The Air France flight was full to Paris. The line up to check in had a lot of people but it moved fairly quickly, it only took us about 20 minutes to get through to the gate.

I had made sandwiches for dinner, which we ate before boarding. That was a mistake because Air France had pretty decent food, and lots of it.

There was also too much on-board entertainment -- it almost seemed like the seven hour flight wouldn't be enough time to read our books, watch movies, listen to new CDs and read the in-flight magazine. I watched The Bourne Legacy (pretty good) and Prometheus (not so good).

We arrived at 7am in Paris. The wine and cognac with dinner had left me a little worse for the wear. As we deplaned, I heard someone call my name, which I ignored because I wasn't expecting anyone to know me in Charles de Gaulle. But it turned out my cousin Tyron had been on the same flight, he on his way to Mumbai!  We chatted for a bit. His connecting flight left shortly so we parted after getting through security.

Heather and I had six hours to wait. After freshening up (a bit more planning required post 911 to take airplane sized toothpaste, mouthwash and contact solution), we found some really comfortable lounge seats at the very ends of the terminal. They're hidden from view until you're right up on them, so most passengers weren't aware they were there. We napped for a bit.

The flight to Amman was on a smaller A320 and the seats were more squished. We slept on-and-off on the 4.5 hour flight, in between eating another good meal from Air France. There was a bit of turbulence, but nothing too bad.

On arrival in Amman, we easily withdrew Jordanian Dinars (JD) from an ATM, paid our 20JD fee for the visa, and got our passports stamped. The immigration officials were very friendly, only asking which hotel we were staying at in Jordan (and also where I was from originally, out of curiosity).

Next was picking up our  luggage which was already off the conveyor so Heather didn't have time to get worried (she has a long history of lost luggage). I had arranged with the hotel for a pickup from the airport, but we didn't see anyone with our names so we took a taxi from outside the terminal. Heather and I are now 0-4 for airport pickups on our last four trips.

We reached the hotel around 9pm, about 20 hours door-to-door from home. We're staying at the Hishamm hotel, a self-described "boutique style" hotel. As a boutique hotel, it has the requisite popular bar and restaurant on the ground floor. We cleaned up and went downstairs for dinner. The food was yummy (although the Arabic food was listed on the back pages, behind the western food). We also had a local draft beer, which at 7JD was the same price as the main.   Smoking is allowed in bars and restaurants, to which we'll need to adjust. It's hard to believe it wasn't that long ago that that was the norm in Toronto.

We crashed pretty quickly after dinner in a very comfortable king sized bed.

This morning I was up at 5am, which isn't too bad for jet lag. The room is pretty quiet so I could just barely hear the call to prayers. Heather noticed a sticker on the ceiling which we couldn't figure out until Heather noticed it pointed the direction to Mecca.

Today we're headed south to see a couple ruins along the way to Petra.

Toronto, Canada

We arrived back in Toronto earlier this week.  All our souvenirs made it back too.  I thought winter would be over by the time we got back, but oh well.  We were very lucky with the weather over the six weeks, it didn't rain at all (drizzled a couple days, but not enough to get wet).

Here's our favourite pics:

2011 South America - favourites

Also here's my attempt at being artistic:

2011 South America - artistic

Santiago, Chile

We're at the airport in Santiago waiting to fly home after six weeks in Chile, Argentina and Bolivia.

We spent the last few days of our trip in Santiago.  We flew through here twice on the trip, spending a night each time.  I've also flown out of Santiago on previous trips, but never really spent much time seeing the city.  This was finally our chance to see Santiago.

We flew to Santiago from La Paz on April 7th.  The flight stopped down at Arica and Antofagasta.  In Arica we had to deplane, claim our baggage and clear Chilean customs, then reboard the flight.  The customs people asked us to open up the extra souvenir bag, which messed up my careful packing job.  Fortunately everything made it to Santiago.  The stopover in Antofagasta was supposed to be 35 minutes; but then the Chilean air force had some planes take off, which shut down airspace to commercial flights.  This delayed our new flight crew coming in, and so we ended up spending three hours in the airport in Antofagasta.

We arrived in La Paz around 7pm.  Heather's backpack was the first to arrive on the conveyor belt, before she had time to even think about worrying about it.  Our other two bags arrived within the first five as well -- we were loaded up on the cart and out the airport in about two minutes after getting to the conveyor belt.  The restaurants in our area of Santiago close around 11pm, so we were cutting it close to get to the hotel, clean up and get to a restaurant.  We ended up at Ostras Squella, a seafood restaurant we ate at the 2nd time through Santiago.

The next morning we talked with Dennis, owner of Casa Bonita (our hotel) for sugggestions about what to do with our time in Santiago.  We arranged for a wine tour for the day of our flight home, as the flight was at night and it left us the full day in Santiago.

Friday we spent walking around the highlights of downtown Santiago.  Santiago is a city of neighbourhoods, each with its own character.  We stopped in at the market for lunch, I was expecting a low-key place with mom-and-pop places serving fresh seafood.  Instead it was a  very popular place for tourists and business folks to have long lunches with wine and dessert.  We tried the king crab, one of the specialties at Donde Agusto.  It was amazing.  It came out freshly steamed to our table.  Our waiter then expertly cut and served us the crab, so we didn't get messy trying to eat it.  It came with a heated olive oil and garlic dipping sauce.  There were also some other sides (fries and a mixed salad if I recall) that we didn't eat, because we were so focused on the yummy crab.  Mmm good.

After lunch we wandered through Barrio Bellavista, an artsy area with a lot of university students, mostly drinking cheap draft beer on patio bars.  Bought ice cream at Emporio La Rosa, and ate it while strolling through Parque Forestal.  Took a trip up the funicular to the top of Cerro San Cristobal for very smoggy views of Santiago.

We walked home down Av O'Higgins, the main street of Santiago, and were amazed at the number of pedestrians.  The other visits through Santiago had been on Sundays, and it's much busier on weekdays (as you'd likely expect).

Later that evening, we had dinner at Las Vacas Gordas.  We had lunch there our first day on the trip, which was amazing.  I had been thinking about eating here again the whole trip.  We arrived at 8:30pm, thinking we would be early and beat the crowds.  However it was already packed, and we added our names to the waiting list.  About 30 minutes later we were seated, which gave us enough time to try to remember the cut of wagyu we had the first time.  We both ordered the same meal (one of the few times we've done so), and then feasted on way too much perfectly grilled meat.  It was one of the best eating days ever.

Saturday we saw a couple art galleries.  Had lunch at Opera Cafe, which shares the kitchen with the acclaimed restaurant of the same name.  We had the chef's choice for sandwich, smoked salmon, arugula, avocado and some other toppings on a long thin baguette -- it was really good.  We had planned to have dinner at Tales, but it was closed because of work on the water main in the area.  So instead we took a taxi to Barrio Lastarria and ate at Patagonia Restaurant.  Both our dishes were excellent, which was four straight amazing lunches and dinners over the last couple days.  The wineries are also running a promotion at this time of year at many of the restaurants in Santiago.  If you order one of the promoted wines, you get a 2nd bottle for free to take home.

Santiago mostly shuts down on Sundays, so we had planned our day around the few places open on Sundays.  We stopped in at Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende, which was one of the best contemporary art museums we saw on this trip.  Next was Palacio Cousino, unfortunately it was closed for renovations. We spent the afternoon browsing through Pueblito Los Dominicos, a small village of craft shops, with really good quality (and somewhat higher prices than La Paz).  It reminded me of the Distillery in Toronto, where there's a concentration of higher-end arts and crafts stores, and little bakeries and coffee shops.  We bought a few more souvenirs, then headed back to the hotel to pack up.  We went back to Barrio Lastarria for dinner, hoping to find other restaurants open, but only Patagonia appealed to us so we ate there again.  Unfortunately our streak of amazing meals ended, we shared the cheese and deli platter for two, which sounded good on the menu, but was very disappointing.

Our last day we spent on an organized tour of a couple wineries, Vina Cousino Macul, and Vina Aquitania.  Vina Cousino Macul is one of the oldest and larger wineries.  The tour of the winery was more museum-like, as a lot of the wine-making equipment was no longer in use, replaced by automation and high-tech containers.  It was still cool to see though.  They also had a cellar with bottles dating back to the 1930's -- again, just for display as the corks weren't designed to last that long, so all the wine would have soured.

Vina Aquitania is a smaller boutique winery, just inside Santiago city limits.  It was surrounded by subdivisions -- I guess Santiago is no different from any other city, growing out.  The view were nice, though, with the city core in the smoggy distance on one side, and the mountainside on the other.  They also had the better ambience for wine-tasting at the end of the tour -- outside, under a walnut tree, with an oak barrel as a table and right beside the vineyards.

We arrived back at the hotel around 3pm, cleaned up and then went to Tales for a late afternoon meal.  The setting was great -- overlooking Calle Concha y Toro, a beautiful little cobblestoned street with art deco and beaux arts mansions.  The food was also great, a nice way to end the trip.  The Lonely Planet says one of the best ways to experience Santiago is through the food and drink, and we gave it our best shot.

We took a taxi for the four blocks from our hotel to the airport bus stop, with the extra bags for souvenirs we were less mobile.  We had 10kg more weight in baggage than the start of our trip, according to the airport scales, but still under our limit.  After checking in we settled into the wait for our flight, and getting home!

La Paz, Bolivia

We've spent three days in La Paz, with the main goal of souvenir shopping.  (La Paz is the best city in South America for souvenirs). We just bought a large sports bag in the Mercado Negro to pack them up for out flights.  Right now we're sitting in the 3rd floor lounge at our hotel (Hotel Rosario), with a great view of the city and Mt Illimani (6402m).

La Paz is one of the more amazing cities to see.  It sits in a crevice in the Altiplano, a city of a million people up and down all around.  In the middle, where we are now, all you can see are buildings climbing up the sides at extreme angles near the top, almost like you're in the middle of a sphere with the city wrapped completely around you.

Unfortunately we didn't get a view of La Paz on our flight from Sucre.  We could see the road winding through the mountains, and were glad we took a 45 minute flight rather than a 12 hour bus ride.

I had arranged for the hotel to send someone to pick us up at the airport, but there was no one there, so after waiting for 30 minutes we took a taxi.  (There was another couple at the airport in the same position, different hotel).

We're staying at Hotel Rosario, close to the main tourist shopping areas.  The hotel room is good, the service is amazing.  The front desk staff have been great at recommending restaurants, making reservations, etc.  When we get taxis, they flag them down and then record the taxi driver's name and taxi number to prevent any problems.

We spent our first two days shopping along Calle Linares and Sagárnaga.  Most of the stores sold the same clothing, jewelry and stone carvings. But every here and there was a store with cool stuff, antiques such as walking sticks, wooden stirrups, weights; or unique jewelry; or traditional masks. We bought quite a bit (thus the need for the extra bag to get them home).

There weren't many artists' stalls.  We stopped in at the three we saw.  We particularly liked one painter, Gustavo Apazo, from whom we bought a oil-on-canvas.  Today we visited the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, which has an exhibit on the top floor with local artists' works for sale, and saw some of Gustavo Apazo's paintings!  We actually recognized his style, and then saw his signature.  The prices in the gallery were much higher than what we paid at his workshop, so we were glad we stumbled across his stall.

We've been having the set menus for lunch, which have been okay. Breakfasts have been great at the hotel -- tasty fresh fruit, amazing bread, eggs to order.  For dinner, we've been trying out the fancier restaurants, a taxi ride across town to Sopocachi (a much hipper area than where we're staying).  Eating at the best restaurants in La Paz, including a bottle of wine, and tip, comes to about $40 - $60, so we figured why not.

We ate our our hotel the first night, we had just arrived and hadn't yet got a feel for the city.  Plus our hotel restaurant is listed as one of the top in La Paz.  We weren't too impressed -- Heather's trout (from nearby Lake Titicaca) was overdone and dry; my lasagna was okay.

The second night we ate at El Arriero, an Argentinian steak house, which was excellent.  Both our steaks came medium rare as requested (tres-cuatros in spanish), the wine was great, and the service was good.  It was one of our favourite meals in Bolivia.

Last night we tried out a french restaurant, La Comédie.  Our taxi driver couldn't find the place, I had to show him the LP map on my iPhone (we downloaded the La Paz chapter).  The atmosphere was great, but the food was not that good.  My lamb shank was so dry I had trouble cutting a bite, and Heather's duck was competing with my lamb for toughness, and salty.  They appeared to substitute quantity for quality -- I had three (!) lamb shanks on my plate, Heather had two (!) duck breasts. Maybe we ordered the wrong stuff, but both were listed as chef specialities.

Tonight we're trying out Pronto Dalicatessen, rated #1 in La Paz by tripadvisor (although not so much a foodie site as chowhound).

Today we did some touristing, haivng been shopped-out over the past two days.  First went to the Contemporary Art Gallery, as mentioned above. It's in a gorgeous old house on El Prado (the main street that runs down the middle of La Paz). It reminded us of the occasional grand old house on Jarvis or Sherbourne.

Next we walked up to Plaza Murillo, which is surrounded by the main government buildings and the cathedral. We saw the sights just in time before being booted out by the police, who were closing down the plaza in advance of a demonstration (which are almost a daily occurrence here -- this is the 2nd we've seen). Later as we ate lunch, we saw the demonstration by miners carried live on the local TV station. It was odd to hear the bangs of dynamite (we thought it was firecrackers) on tv, then the echo in real life.  There was no danger, as we were away from the action.

Yesterday in the market, I almost got peed on by a little boy. We were walking along in the busy street, I was taking in the scene, when Heather blurted at me to look out.  The little boy was peeing in the street, I had just enough reaction time to step over and not get hit. The local lady behind us couldn't stop laughing. A couple people behind us who didn't notice walked right through. Too bad for them.

Well we're off to get ready for dinner. Tomorrow we fly to Santiago, our last stop on our little trip.

Sucre, Bolivia

We fly to La Paz this afternoon, so we´re just waiting at our hotel in Sucre (Su Merced) with a couple hours to laze about.

We spent almost three full days in Sucre.  We saw most of the highlights, including all the major museums, art galleries and churches.  The centre is littered with museums and galleries, half of them not listed in the guide books, of which we stopped into a few.  One of the more interesting non-listed museums was the militiary museum.  It had lots of antique large cannons and guns, which neither of us had seen in real life before.

The weather in Sucre was very comfortable.  theweathernetwork.com had us thinking it was going to rain the whole time, but so far so good and no rain.  The temperature has been around 18C with cloudy periods.  At night it gets a bit chilly but we just needed our jackets.

Yesterday afternoon we were done with touristing and shopping, and so had a beer at the Plaza Restaurant, on the 2nd floor overlooking Plaza 25 de Mayo, and caught up on our reading.  It was a very relaxing place to spend an afternoon.

We found an excellent restaurant for dinner the first night, Tentanciones.  They had homemade tagliatelle with mushrooms, one of the best pasta dishes we´ve had.  We followed that with a cheese and meat platter.  The cheeses all came from Bolivia, I didn´t know they produced such a variety of cheeses.  The tagliatelle was so good we returned for lunch a couple days later and I ordered it again.

Aside from the lunch at Tentanciones, for lunches we´ve started having the ´menu´, which is a set menu of soup, main and dessert, usually under $5.  The soups are generally excellent, and it´s a good amount of food (nutritious too).  The set lunch at La Casona was only 25 Bs, about $3.50 (Heather had the set lunch -- I had a meat craving and so had the asado, which was pretty good for outside of Argentina).  We had it with a glass of house red (about $1).

The 2nd night we ate at La Taverne, a french restaurant inside Alliance Francais. The atmosphere was great, but we were disappointed with the food which was a bit bland. 

Last night we had dinner at El Huerto, a little out of the centro, so we took a taxi (10 Bs).  We were the only ones there at 8pm, and only one other couple showed up at 9pm.  We weren´t sure if this was normal, or maybe they were busy at other times of the day of week.  They were a tapas restaurant (which took us a bit of asking to figure out).  The kitchen was excellent, we particularly enjoyed the chicken brochettes and the panko shrimps.

Our hotel in La Paz offered airport pick-up for about the same price as a taxi, so we´ll have someone greeting us when we arrive after our 45 minute flight.  Whenever I´ve done this in the past my name has always been messed up so it will be interesting to see how they spell D´Souza.  Hopefully the driver will stop at the top of the altiplano before we descend into La Paz, so that I can take a picture.

Sucre, Bolivia

Some more pics.  The last trip I had my SD card corrupted when I connected it to a computer, so the only pics I´m uploading are ones taken from the iPhone, cause I can upload those over wifi.  I haven´t figured out a way to link to picasa when posting to my blog from the iPhone, so I only post pictures when I have access to a computer.



Laguna Verde with Volcan Licancabur, from the Uyuni tour



Inside Cristal Semana (a salt hotel) near Salar de Uyuni

Cathedral in Salta