Day 5: Mt. Nebo, Madaba (St. George Church), Shobak Castle, Little Petra, and Petra by Night

Mohammed 1 was back as our tour driver for our busy day of sightseeing. YAY!
Our first stop in the morning was Mt. Nebo, where God showed Moses the promised land and where Moses ultimately died. The church on Mt. Nebo was under construction, but we were lucky to see the gorgeous mosaic that was recovered from the floor of the church in the museum (aka a big tent) outside. And the views of the promised land from the top of Mt. Nebo were spectacular.

Us at the top of Mt. Nebo.

After Mt. Nebo we stopped by Arts River handicraft shop to see how mosaics are made. We had a feeling it was another tourist trap like the souvenir shop in Amman, but we were excited to see the process of making mosaics. All of the stones used at Arts River are from Jordan. The stones are cut several times to the perfect shape and applied to a cloth with a mixture of flour and water. Then the stones on the cloth are cemented together and the cloth is removed. It looked like quite a complicated process and the average time to make 1 small mosaic was about 1 month. After we saw the process of making mosaics, we were treated to coffee and tea and a sweet snack and told that as the first customers of the day we got a 25% discount. We were in hook, line and sinker. We HAD to get a mosaic.

We fell in love with one of the mosaics depicting the tree of life and elk eating from the tree on one side of the trunk to symbolize life and a lion eating an elk on the other side depicting death. After we saw that mosaic with it’s perfectly cut stones and learned the meaning of the image, we were ruined for all other (less expensive) mosaics. We debated forever and during that time the owner of the shop dropped the price several times (even below our 25% discount) and promised he was giving us the best price. He told us that the shop had given Queen Rania the same image as a gift and that she had loved it so much she had ordered a second one for her friend. And we met the woman who spent 2 months making our mosaic. Oh yes, the whole time I felt like a complete idiot taken for a ride, but to be fair we did see the picture of Queen Rania and her similar mosaic and it was so beautiful. We bought it...so now we will be lugging a mosaic around Jordan, Egypt, and Turkey (and I don’t know about Paul, but I still feel a little like I was taken for a ride), but we spent the evening staring at and admiring our mosaic so I think it must be a good investment...
The woman who made our mosaic on the left.
Our mosaic.

Next stop was St. George’s, a Greek Orthodox Church in the city of Madaba, famous for the mosaic map of the Middle East still preserved on the church floor. After disovering the mosiac map, archeologists were able to uncover several lost and ancient sites. The mosaics and the church itself were so pretty!
The huge map mosaic on the floor of the church.
View of the church.

We were scheduled to visit Kerak Castle on the way to Petra, but Mohammed suggested we stop by Shobak Castle instead so that we would have time to see Little Petra at the end of the day, rather than on Day 7 when the temperature in the desert was supposed to be even worse. We weren’t sure about Shobak Castle, but it turned out to be a great decision! Unlike Kerak, which is located in a city, Shobak sits on top of a mountain surrounded by beautiful valleys and a few small homes built into the mountainside. It is an out-of-the-way unpopular tourist site, so we weren’t able to get an English speaking tour guide. That was no problem with our trusty Lonely Planet guidebook and map and it was AMAZING to explore the castle on our own. And nothing at all was closed off to tourists. It was a quite a unique experience, crawling and climbing through the remains of the crusader castle.

View of Shobak Castle on our way up the mountain. Mohammed's car barely made it up the mountain, it was such a steep incline.

Paul and me at the castle.
Me on top of a turret.



At the end of our visit to Shobak we decided to exit through the secret passageway that starts inside the castle and ends halfway down the mountain at a hole on the otherside. During the crusades, Shobak Castle stood against Saladin’s army’s seige for 18 months, but fell within a week after discovery of the secret passage. Woah, it was an insane trek down 375 “stairs.” Part of the secret passage had old worn stairs and part was just sloping stones. It was all covered with a think layer of dust that was extremely slippery, not to mention the fact that it was pitch black inside and we had to navigate the trecherous path with tiny flashlights we borrowed from Mohammed. At the end, we climbed up an iron ladder built into an opening that looked like a little well. I was completely covered in dust and dirt (and a Bedouin at Little Petra later asked me whether I had spent the day sleeping in the sand).
Starting the secret path...

This looks like a tunnel, but we're actually looking straight down!
Me, covered in dust. The camera flash worked well - it was pitch black in there!
The way out of the secret tunnel.

Mohammed was waiting for us at the opening and surprised us with pomegranates, our prize for making it out of the secret passage. More evidence that he is a great tour guide and driver! On our way to Shobak, he added another stop on the tour and brought us to a beautiful lookout point over Dana Reserve. And in the little town we passed on the way to the lookout, Mohammed stopped and bought us authentic Arabic break. It was DELICIOUS and so fresh and steaming hot I could hardly rip off the pieces without burning my hands. He also bought sweet yellow melons from the Bedouin on the side of the road near the phosphate mines so that we could try the best melons from the phosphate rich soil.

Our final stop on our long day of sightseeing was Little Petra, a Nabatean city that gave us a taste for Petra. One of the highlights was the paintings on the roof of an alcove cut into the rock, which is rare in a Nabatean city. And it was amazing to see and climb on the staircases cut directly into the rock.
Paul climbed a lot of rock stairs!
Me in front of one of the monuments in Little Petra.

In the evening, we managed to rally and decided to attend Petra by Night. The siq (the roadway into the city with 600 foot high walls of red rock) was lit along the sides with candles and opened up to the Treasury. The Treasury, a massive Nabatean tomb, was lit with row after row of candles and we were seated on rugs in the sand to listen to Bedouin music and sip on hot tea with honey. The first musician sang while he played a strange instrument and the second musician played a flute like instrument. The music was pretty and different. One of the Bedouin explained the songs after – He said the first was a man singing to his goats, the second was for singing and dancing, the third was for King Abdullah, and the fourth was for Arabic coffee. He told us the Arabic coffee was extremely important in the culture, especially for peace, and that the host must drink first to prove that the coffee is hot (and not poisoned) and that the guest must drink second. I got the feeling that it was not a good idea for the guest to decline coffee. Petra by Night got us excited to see Petra by day the next morning!