Petra

Petra, what can you say? It's as amazing as you think it's going to be and so much more. Seeing the Treasury peaking out from between the canyon walls was a thrill each and everytime we approached (made better by gently humming the Indiana Jones theme song).

Petra was built in the 3rd century AD by the Nabateans who carved palaces, temples, tombs, storerooms and stables into the sandstone. And they did an incredible job. What struck all of us was not only how beautiful the site is - and it is incredibly stunning - but also how big it is. We ended up walking about 5km from the start of the Siq (canyon) to the immense Monastery at the other end. Along the way we checked out loads of palaces, churches (built later), tombs, and the colonnaded street. We climbed up all of the grueling stone steps in the intense heat of the day to see the beautiful and huge Monastery which looks more or less like the Treasury but on a bigger scale without some of the finer detail. And, at the end of the day, we walked back through the valleys and past the ruins, enjoying each one for a second (or third) time; it's a place that I think I would never get tired of.

Karak

Karak is one of the many Crusader castles built in the 12th century between Aqaba and Turkey. It is the centerpiece of an otherwise friendly, dusty little town. The castle itself is pretty well preserved or reconstructed, with loads of so-called jail cells and an amazing amount of stables. We mere escorted around by an enthusiastic young police officer-cum-guide who showed us the 'VIP jail cell' and the various dining rooms. After our tour and a bit of poking around on our own, we all sat down and enjoyed the view and the swifts darting around after insects.

Madaba, Dead Sea

After a few days in Amman it was nice to escape to the little town of Madaba, home to Jordan's most famous mosaic, which is saying something given the number of mosaics in this part of the world. The mosaic is known as the earliest map of Palestine. It was created in 560 AD and has 157 lables in Greek showing all of the major biblical sites of the Middle East from Egypt to Palestine. Though not that much of it remains, it used to be about 20m long and 6m wide.

We used Madaba as a base for a day trip to Mt Nebo where Moses supposedly saw the Promised Land. We caught a taxi right to the top and spent a few minutes looking at the surrounding area sandwiched between groups of religious pilgrims.

A real highlight of our trip through Jordan was our visit to the Dead Sea. Now, on paper I don't think it sounds like much: hyper-salinated water that makes you float. But there is something unnatural and very fun about the whole experience. It feels a bit more like what I imagine zero-gravity would be like than swimming. We spent about an hour bobbing around super-buyonantly watching other tourists coat themselves with the local black tar-like mud. The only downside of the experience was accidentally getting a few drops of water in the mouth; it tasted like burning.

Jordan - Amman

Amman is the 'modern' capital of Jordan and where we met James for our two week Jordanian adventure. While Amman won't win any beauty prizes it was a nice enough place to spend a few days. Besides having two (two!) places that serve sweet, delicious beer, Amman is also home to a few cultural sites.

We hiked up the hot, endless steps to the citadel which not only had some excellent ruins but also gave great views of the city. As an extra bonus, we also got to listen to the awesome sounds of an Arabic bagpipe band and saw some of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

We also visited the local Roman theater that was built in the 2nd century AD.

The excellent ruins of Jerash are about an hour North of Amman. Jerash is a huge and beautifully preserved site of a Roman city. All the usual 'ruined Roman city' sites of interest where here, the theatre, the forum, the (impressive) main gate, the nymphaeum (I wish fountains where still referred to as nymphaeums) and the many columned temples. Alas, most of the columns had succomed to their sesmic nemisis: the earthquake. Another impressive addition in Jerash was the hippodrome, but just as you're always in a whale-watching area out of season, we were here on the only day of the week that the reinactment of the chariot races weren't racing. Neither was the 'Gladiator' show showing which would have been hilarious.

We finished off the day by taking a trip up to the awesome Ajloun castle.

Oh, Glorious Urfa

The pilgrimage town of Sanliurfa, aka Glorious Urfa, is where the prophets Job and Abraham trod in biblical times. It is culturally smack-dab in the middle of the Turkey we've seen everywhere else and the Middle East that we're expecting. Here we've seen more than our fair share of men sporting huge moustaches and extremely baggy pants. We've also seen an increasing number of women in their chadors and a few with beautiful purple head scarves and curiously tatooed faces, reminisent of the ones that were all the rage in Ethiopia. While the number of tractors has not decreased, the number of horse-drawn carriages has skyrocketed, and we even spotted a few camels today. It is a facinating and friendly place to visit.

The first order of business today was to visit the town of Harran, about 50km south of Urfa towards the Syrian border. Harran is one of the oldest continuously inhabited towns on Earth and home of some distinctive 'beehive' houses, the style of which dates back to the 3rd century BC (though the ones still standing in town are about 200 years old). They're excellent from the outside, but even better to take shelter in when a storm begins a-brewin', as we found out today.

Harran is also home to the first Crusader castle we've seen on this trip. While it's only partially intact, what remains is very cool and up to third world safety standards with enormous holes in the floor that could lead to a broken leg - or worse - if you weren't careful. Needless to say, while the castle and vistas were excellent we remained on high alert.

Back in Urfa we headed straight for the bazaar for a few hours of noodling around and scoping out photo opportunities. Happily, the Urfa bazaar was one of the happiest and friendliest bazaars we've encountered; vendors were more than happy to have us gawk and take pictures. At one point they swarmed us to take their photo. In the pigeon lane they were happy for us to enter the cages and even handle the merchandise! I really have no idea why they're so keen on selling live pigeson, though..

Nemrut Dagi: land of big stone heads

Now, really, who doesn't love a big, disembodied stone head? These really big heads, which have long since toppled off their bodies, were built by a pre-Roman king who believed that the gods presented were his relatives.

There are actually two sets of statues, one on the West side and the other on the East. In between is a 50 m artificial mountain of crushed rock believed to cover the king's tomb and perhaps that of up to three female relatives, but no one's dug in to check. Having on terrace on each side makes it handy for tours - you go up to 'ooh' and 'ahh' at the West side for sunset, then early the next morning you do the same thing on the East side. There are a few nice differences on the two sides, with the bodies still visible on the East side, and the heads retaining more detail on the West side.

Nemrut Dagi is one of Turkey's three most popular sights, after Istanbul and Cappadocia. After visiting, I can see why - there is something a little magical about the place, though the ruins are small and pretty 'what you see is what you get'. Or maybe that's the early dawn talking...

Cappadocia

We have been looking forward to seeing Cappadocia ever since we saw it on a postcard in Bulungula, Wild Coast, South Africa, in March at the very start of our trip. And when we finally arrived we were not disappointed. From the bus we could see the cave houses near Uchisar and the the fairy chimneys in Goreme, a landscape that is totally otherworldly.

The rock formations of Cappadocia are varied in their apperance, from fat and squat little houses to tall and phalic pillars to the drapery-like white rock on the sides of the canyons. It's the kind of landscape that takes a long time to get tired of looking at.

And in order to see it better, we decided to see it from the sky via a hot air balloon ride. Or a balloon flight as they call it here, but we all know it's really more of a ride than flight. It was the first time for both of us to go up in a hot air balloon (we were intending to go up in Tanzania but we decided to pass since we'd missed the migration) and it was absolutely fantastic. You float magically up off the ground and sweep into the sky in absolute silence except for the occasional blast of hot air. The the wind gently swept us from one valley to the next, with our expert pilot (?) taking us down into most of the valleys, just meters away from the formations. When we landed, we landed exactly on the trailer and were treated to a glass of the finest - and by 'finest' I mean 'cheapest' - champagne. It was lovely.

Besides the hot air balloon, we also did a few walks through a couple of canyons to get a better look at the formations and we visited the underground city in Kaymakli which was interesting in a clausterphobic kind of way. We were sandwiched between two tour buses, but everyone was friendly enough.