We then drove to the Saracen’s castle at Ajlun.  Saladin built the 12^th century castle in his successful campaign to drive the Crusaders from Jordan in 1189.  It is wonderful preserved with galleries, towers, staircases and many chambers that form a medieval maze.  After crossing the moat via the bridge, all kinds of opportunities were available to the defenders of the castle to shoot arrows from narrow windows, pour boiling oil or otherwise destroy their enemies as they tried to enter.

After lunch, we drove around the rounded hills of the limestone plateau to reach the Wadi Mujib, a deep gorge mentioned in the Bible as Arnon’s Valley (wadi means either “valley” or “dried riverbed”).  We drove on to our hotel in Petra, the Amra Palace Petra.  The hotel has a Turkish bath and since we had a few hours before dinner, Wade and I had about 30 minutes in the steam room before they called us to our separate massages.  We had a salt scrub, and complete washing with soapy sponges and cloths and it felt great.  We were served tea or karkada (hibiscus flower juice that is supposed to lower blood pressure) and sat relaxed after our scrub.  We wanted to get into the hot tub afterward, but the water was cold to me.  Wade swam in the swimming pool for a bit before we got dressed for dinner.  Larry and Candie, who were on our tour, were not going to the Turkish Bath until we told them how great it was.  They said they had the most restful sleep of the trip after their bath. 

Wade rode a horse guided by a Bedouin to the entrance and then we to the narrow passage between the 600-foot high overhanging sandstone cliffs, called a siq.  It is amazing when you exit the darkness of the siq and see the towering brightness of the El Kazneh (The Treasury), a 140-foot high edifice carved into a mountain.  There are hundreds of soaring temples, tombs, and houses and a Roman theater in the cliffs.  The Victorian traveler and poet, Dean Burgon, gave Petra this description:  “Match me such a marvel save in Eastern clime, a rose-red city half as old as time.”

We went drove by bus to Wadi Rum, an ancient desert landscape in the south of Jordan.  We saw the Seven Pillars of Wisdom, the inspiration for Lawrence of Arabia’s book.  Sandstone and granite mountains reach 5500 feet and we watched camels with riders on their backs going across the desert.  There are ancient carvings thousands of years old in the sandstone showing animals and a woman giving birth.

Upon the death of the queen’s husband, when her toddler nephew was to be crowned successor, she seized control and became pharaoh.  Fearful that the citizens of the empire would not accept a queen, she declared herself king—dressing in male garb and with a ceremonial beard for the most important occasions.  When her nephew, Thutmose III, grew to manhood and wrested control from her, he had Hatshepsut’s name marked out or replaced in most hieroglyphics and ordered the destruction of the queen’s two magnificent obelisks – a task that was only half executed.  

We took a small boat to the West Bank of the Nile for a tour of Altaref Primary School that is partially supported by the Grand Circle Foundation with money donated by Overseas Adventure Tours (OAT).  The young children sang welcoming songs for us, played on musical instruments, recited for us, and showed us their computer skills which were more typing skills since they were not hooked up to the internet.  A suggestion on all OAT tours is to bring pencils, notebooks or small books to donate to the school.  This trip I brought ballpoint pens and pencils.  The children were wonderful, asking us to take photos of them and wanting to see their pictures on our digital cameras.  They asked us to print our names so they can practice their reading and writing skills.  English is taught in all Jordanian and Egyptian schools.  

In the afternoon, we visited Luxor Temple so that we could see it before the crowds came and stay long enough to see the temple at night.  It was built by the New Kingdom Pharaoh Amenophis III and extended by other rulers over the centuries.  It became buried under sand, debris and hovels and was rediscovered and the rubble cleared away just a century ago.  Many interiors were found to be nearly perfectly preserved.

We also visited the Temple of Queen Hatshepsut, one of the most beautiful of the royal mortuary temples and built for Egypt’s only female pharaoh. 

We drove to a pair of massive, 64-foot tall statues of Amenophis III, their eyes cast in the direction of the Nile.  They were given the name Memnon in the Roman imperial era, after a soldier who died in the Trojan War.  The north statue was once famous for emitting a musical note at sunrise which the Romans said was Memnon crying for his mother from the afterlife.  When damage on one statue was repaired by an Emperor, the music suddenly stopped and scientists never learned what caused it in the first place. 

We took a boat to a local farm where we had a demonstration of making Sun Bread, churning milk in a sheep stomach and a grinding wheel for grain.  We had hot mint tea or karkada and bread for a snack and we had our first short camel ride here.

This evening we rode in horse-drawn carriages (hantoor).  We visited the Luxor Museum with Theban relics and some statues from the court of Amenhotep III that were discovered just 20 years ago.  There is a Wall of Akhenaten that depicts the daily life during the reign of Akhenaten who threw out most of the old gods of Egypt and declared that Amun was the only god.