Jordan - Day 9 Tour - Dead Sea & Petra

Our tour to the Dead Sea and Petra starts today.

Taiwan our tour guide took us to the Dead Sea straight off. A unique experience with the floating. Everyone warned me about the drying up of the sea and from where it was 29 years ago it has certainly dropped but it is still a huge sea. It does however through the Jordan River not flowing into it anymore (5%) only the rest into dams plus evaporation due to rising heat will continue to drop.

We had a swim in the swimming pool after and then lunch.

From there we went to Mount Nebo and visited the Memorial Church of Moses with the mosaics which were beautiful. Such a peaceful place. Mount Nebo is the mountain whete Moses went to the alone.

Next was the Mosaic place where they showed us how they make the mosaics and showed us many beautiful products that they made. Would have loved to had a few dollars for this place.

Then we went to Madaba to see the mosaics in the church - Greek Orthodox Church built on the ruins of the Roman Church. This is also where our guide comes from.

After about a 4 hour drive we then reached our final destination - PETRA. We have checked in to the La Madison Hotel and wandered out and had dinner. Have to be up at 6 tomorrow to get a move on so we can see the sun rise on The Treasury.

Jordan is an interesting country. It has a strong currency but it is broke, the people live on about $400 Dinar or $800 PER MONTH but the cost of living is through the roof. The countries debt is as high as it's GDP.

The country used to export wheat, but the government makes no money off this and in the bad years did not help the farmers out. They incentivised the farmers to sell their land so that houses could be built on this land from which they made a lot of money. So now the soil is quite arid.

Apparently the land does get green between November to April, but is is really dry at the moment.Read more