3 October – Madaba to Dana Biosphere Reserve

Arriving late meant that we ended up travelling to Madaba, which is about 30km's from the airport, when it was dark. We really missed ‘Richard’ our Turkish gps. We checked into the Mariam Hotel which is supposed to be the very best Madaba has to offer and one of the better hotels in Jordan. We certainly hope that the guidebooks are wrong………… While it is not bad, it certainly isn’t great.

Madaba is called the city of mosaics.

One in particular, the remains of a map dating from the 600’s depict the Holy Land from Lebanon in the north to the Nile Delta in the south and the Mediterranean coast to the desert.

The mosaic is in St Georges Church, a small Byzantine Greek Orthodox church, which was built over the ruins of a previous church. It is believed the original was made up of 2 million mosaics and measured 15,6x 6m.

After changing some money (eish R12.50 to the Jordanian Dinar) and filling with petrol, which cost about R8/liter (a lot cheaper than the R18-19 in Turkey) we head south on the Kings Highway. This is the ancient trade route, so it passes through a number of dusty towns, filled with cars, people and livestock.

Its quite the norm to double or even treble park, leaving very little space for cars. The vast majority of woman have their heads covered and wear a Burka and a long coat.

The road snakes it way through the center of the country in roughly a north-south direction. Jordan is the forth driest country in the world. The area we traverse is very mountainous, with scree covered slopes.

Stopping on route we buy a very colorful carpet from Iraq. Apparently up until 30 years ago little to no handicrafts existed in Jordan, so most of what is on sale is from neighbouring countries particularly Syria, but also Turkey.

The halfway point between Madaba and Petra is Karak. The Karak castle, built in 1142, dominates the skyline. Built on a promontory with sheer cliffs on the three sides by the Crusaders.

The Arabic signposting and our poor map mean that every so often I need to stop and ask directions. Fortunately, most Jordanians understand a little English. We were offered tea, coffee and even end up listening to the Ode, a string instrument with a deep bowl shaped body, being played by two young guys in a wedding shop, en route. By and large the people are friendly and helpful, although we did have an incident where some schoolboys tried to pull off our sunglasses and one even tried to pull down Lorna’s top, which pissed her off. We can only imagine it was schoolboy pranks.

Bedouin Camp

We arrive in the late afternoon at Dana Biosphere Reserve, the largest reserve in Jordan. Set up with aid from USAID and contributions from a number of countries, under the auspices of the Royal Jordanian Society for Nature.

The guesthouse has only 9 rooms and has spectacular views of Wadi Dana, hundreds of meters below. We got to hear the Striped Hyena on the first evening and saw a Griffin wheeling in the thermals. The first evenings sunset was magnificent swirls of dusty pinks, oranges and greys.

It was fantastic to hear the silence of the wide-open spaces.

The early morning air was cool, with a dense band of cloud lying over the Dead Sea in the distance.

We arrange to do a short trail in the park from the Rammana campsite.

Unfortunately, as with Turkey, breakfast only starts at 08h30, which means the best light was gone before we started walking.

None the less, we managed to see a number of birds, like Sinai Rose-pink Finch, Blackcap Warbler, Bulbul, Syrian Serrin, Whitethroat and others we could not identify.