Tuesday, April 5, 2022

Trip of a Lifetime - Day 13

I'm caught up! I'm writing about today! I don't have an adapter for my camera's memory card anymore. It disappeared during our first days in Israel, so I've been borrowing one from a travel companion in our group. But I borrow it each morning to upload the previous day's photos, so tonight I won't have today's Nikon photos to share. The phone does a great job, though, so this blog post should be no worse for it.

We spent most of the day driving between Amman and Petra. Does that mean we didn't see any churches today? Of course not! We visited Mount Nebo, the site where Moses looked across the valley to the promised land and then died. There's a church there. And of *course* there's a church there! Shepherds see a star? Build a church there! Jesus delivers a sermon? Build a church there! Jesus turns water to wine? Build a church there! Mary gets word that she's going to have baby Jesus? Build a church there! In Madaba there are 250 churches! While 95% of Jordan is Muslim, 5% is Christian, and the greatest concentration of Christians in Jordan is in Madaba. We walked down the street to the Greek Orthodox church with the mosaic map and passed four churches on the way. (It wasn't a long walk.) 

The view from Mount Nebo is delightful, so Moses's story ended in a pretty great place. One thing that confuses me is that this is a prime pilgrimage place for Christians. But not for Jews? Moses was a pretty big deal to the Jews, so I expected more of a Jewish presence atop Mount Nebo. (I welcome explanations from any of my Jewish friends about this.)

There's the Promised Land!!

Interior of the church, which was built in the 1980s over the very, very old church.




We also stopped at a Greek Orthodox church in Madaba, which is famous because it has a mosaic map of the holy land, created in the 500s CE. It included many important Christian places, like Jerusalem, Egypt, Bethlehem, the Dead Sea, and others. Its walls were covered in mosaic art.


One of the dozens and dozens of mosaics on the wall of the church.

This is detail of the mosaic above. 


Sign showing the remaining bits of the Madaba Mosaic Map


Also on today's itinerary was a stop at a workshop where they make mosaic art. This is another G-Adventures preferred place, because all the artists are disabled in some way. Most of them are wheelchair bound, but some are deaf, and one was born with no arms, so he makes all of his art with his feet. There are literally THOUSANDS of pieces of art on the walls. They've been busy making art, but their visitors dropped from 1,000 per day before COVID, to about 30 per day over the past two years. Sixty percent of every purchase goes directly to the artist. First we got a demonstration of how to make a mosaic, and there were several artists in the first room doing pieces when we entered. We learned a lot about what to look for in mosaic pieces, and then we were guided to a room that had stacks and stacks of pieces of art, wall hangings, table tops, ostrich eggs, pendants, ornaments, and so on. It was breathtaking, and so much incredible art.

"Mom, you bought us a what?"

See that piece in my left hand? I bought it.

See that piece in my left hand in the photo below? I bought that one, too. The woman in the photo is a volunteer there, who helps sell the mosaics to tourists like me. Her English is very good, she's pregnant, she doesn't take "no" for an answer, and everything you buy goes towards disabled people who haven't seen an income in two years, so her work on me paid off. Mom made a few purchases, too. We're really impressed with this workshop and what it's doing for the disabled community here. The piece I'm holding in the photo below is a scene of Petra, the city carved into sandstone that we visit tomorrow. It's made from actual rocks from Petra. This is the only workshop in the world that is allowed to receive and use actual rocks from Petra, which is a very protected place. So Amy, honey, we now own a wall hanging of Petra, made from rocks from Petra. Hope you like it!


Somewhere in the middle of nowhere, during miles and miles of desert, we saw camels just wandering about the area. There isn't much for them to eat out there, and what they could find was near the road, so that's where they were! Our driver stopped and let us get out for photos. Very cool! My best photos are on my Nikon, but this one shows one of the camels enjoying a snack on the side of the road. 

Once we got to our hotel in Petra it was time for a lecture from a professor who has been a lead excavator at Petra for decades. He and his team unearthed some tombs there. He told us all about the Nabataeans -- the people who ruled Petra before Rome conquered them. They were masters of building and water management in this desert landscape. It was a very interesting talk. 


This is what the dining room looked like. The food is so good!

Our group went to the roof to watch sunset over Petra. It was too cloudy to see the sun drop below the mountains, but not too hazy to prevent some beautiful sunset photos. 

Photo credit for this one goes to Ron, a Canadian who joined our group a few days ago.

Petra as the lights come on.

So ends another day with G-Adventures. Tomorrow we wake up at 5:30am to get ready for an all-day hike through Petra!