6am Bus - Jordan Border - Pella - Gadara - Jerash - Jabbok River - 9pm finally at the hotel in Petra - dinner and a swim

This morning was an early one. We had to be on the bus at 6am, and since nobody would make breakfast before six they gave us sack breakfast - good thinking JUC. Our first trip was over to the Israel-Jordan border up. Crossing over between two less-than-friendly-nations is a bit tricky and sometimes can take four hours, luckily it only took us 2.5. Walking over to our new bus, as our Israeli bus couldn't make the transition, we found our new bus driver was named the same as our previous (Omar). We also made friends with our Jordanian Tourist Police Officer who is required to be with us at all times, our government appointed tour guide (also required, and not free) and his boss. Our tour guide was much more energetic (i.e. he actually got off the bus at every stop we made) when his boss was with us for the first day by comparison to the second and third days where he was more apt to stand by the bus and smoke with the driver.

Jordan!

Our first stop was Pella. We had to cross under some barbed wire and through a hole in the fence to get to the ruins- which i came to understand was fairly typical for Jordan.

Next on our trip came Gadara

Gadara, like the Galilee, was the site of major volcanic activity back in the day so much of the ruins are black basalt. Never thought i would see giant Roman columns made of basalt but they were beautiful. As was the all basalt theater.

After Gadara was Jarash- the most well preserved Roman city anywhere. Also known as the City of a thousand columns, and you can see why.

The column capital below and left is about 10ft across, the columns are some of the tallest that have been found. The bottom right is the cathedral left from when the city came to be a Christian one in the 4th century.

We next traveled south to the Jabbok river which flows from Jordan into the Jordan river. You could smell the river from about 30ft even though there was a significant wind. There are few waste disposal laws in Jordan, and if there are actually any they are not enforced- reasons why drinking this water will kill you. Upstream from this picture is where the industrial waste gets thrown into the water!
Jabbok, for those of you familiar, is where Jacob wrestled with the angel and took the name Israel. There was a shepherd here to, apparetly the animals have gotten use to the polution in the water. I wonder what happens to human who eat sheep who drank toxic water?!

And finally the Jordan sun setting over what looks like construction work, but is actually finished. Everything here is cinder block construction, and none of it looks complete with rebarb sticking out everywhere. Our stick frame house seem awful nice.

At about 9pm we reached our hotel in Petra (mind you 15 hours after we got on the bus) and we were just in time for dinner. Then we swam in the pool. Dont know why, but the hotels that we are staying at in Jordan are considerably nicer than where we stayed previously. I'll take it. And my single room- which i got because the number of guys was odd - fantastic!