Madaba & Mount Nebo| Jordan, Day 3

Day 3 - Wednesday, October 4, 2023

We started with the buffet breakfast, which we would soon learn would be a very similar breakfast for all the days of our trip.

There were some interesting Jordanian food options. A man came up to our table to ask our room number. We weren't the room number he was looking for, but I had a feeling he was going to be our tour guide, and we confirmed this in the lobby when we went down for pick-up. I think his name was Khalid, pronounced Ha-lid. As we walked out to the bus, Khalid asked Francisco if he was Latino, and then told him "you could be Jordanian." Francisco laughed and explained that he was told essentially the same thing when we were in Egypt and Greece, and that he apparently has a very multi-ethnic look.

We were staying at budget hotels, so our next stop was going to the Crowne Plaza to pick-up the people staying there. It seemed like the majority of people had already started the tour the day before by going to the Dead Sea, and it was just a handful of us that were joining this day.

The Madaba Mosaic is part of a floor mosaic in the early Byzantine church of Saint George. It dates to the sixth century AD and depicts part of the Middle East and contains the oldest surviving original cartographic depiction of the Holy Land and especially Jerusalem. Our guide gave an explanation of some of the associated history before we went in the church.  

Next we went to Mount Nebo, which is part of the Abarim mountain range. This location is mentioned in the Bible as the place where Moses was granted a view of the Promised Land before his death. The view from the summit provides a panorama of the West Bank across the Jordan River valley. The city of Jericho is usually visible from the summit, as is Jerusalem on a very clear day. According to the Bible (Deuteronomy), Moses ascended Mount Nebo, in the land of Moab (today in Jordan), and from there he saw the Land of Canaan (the Promised Land), which God had said he would not enter; Moses then died there. Mount Nebo is also mentioned in the Bible when the prophet Jeremiah hid the tabernacle and the Ark of the Covenant in a cave there. 

A serpentine cross sculpture atop Mount Nebo was created by Italian artist Gian Paolo Fantoni. It is symbolic of the miracle of the bronze serpent invoked by Moses in the wilderness and the cross upon which Jesus was crucified.

Our last stop of the day was supposed to be Shobak Castle, a site which features the ruins of a Crusader Castle. However, this evening got very confusing very quickly. It appeared that perhaps the road was barricaded as we neared the Castle. It was very unclear what was actually happening, but the tour bus driver eventually just ended up turning around, and we randomly pulled off the road to talk to some kids with farm animals. It was strange, and no one understood what was going on.

We also pulled over at one point where we all got off the bus to see the original Old Kings Road. I don't know if this was a planned part of the tour, but again, no one quite knew what was going on. Maybe this our bonus since we didn't make it to Shobak Castle?

Our guide dropped our group off at the RN Petra Hotel and left us there to get checked in.

The first few people from our group got check in fine, and then it came down to the three remaining couples. Plus, Anik. We met Anik earlier that day, and Francisco immediately didn't like her. She was kind of a source of comic relief throughout the trip; she would rephrase a lot of what the guide said and "helped him" make announcements. She always had questions for him and was just very extroverted. Anyways, she started freaking out because she was at the wrong hotel, and it was a little bit confusing. Something in her paperwork wasn't clear so she had gotten off at the wrong stop. She was trying to get clarification on whether they were out of rooms, but the information from the hotel employees wasn't very clear. Francisco thinks that her anxiety just compounded my anxiety.

Clearly the hotel was having issues that they weren't communicating to everybody. We waited in the lobby for around an hour before we were given keys to our room. They'd said at one point that the rooms weren't ready, but the issue seemed to be deeper than that. Francisco finally went up and asked, "be straight with me. Do you have a room for us or not?" At that point, they explained that there was a computer issue or something so they weren't able to assign the rooms yet. It was a whole debacle, and I was so tired. I just wanted to eat my complimentary dinner and go to sleep. That was becoming my nightly motto, "I just want to eat and go to sleep". It appears I have lost my travel legs lol. 🤔

My anxiety was sky high as we awaited our fate. Dinner started at 6:30, and we were thisclose to just hauling our luggage to the dining room to eat, but then we finally got room keys and were able to head down to our room. We were on the bottom floor, and the small elevator could only accommodate a few people at a time so it took a while to move between floors. Our room was fine, but the hallway to get to our room was awkwardly narrow, and the bathroom in our room had a sewage smell. Another couple in our group commented that their room had a broken TV and blow-dryer, and they hypothesized that we had been given the rooms reserved for the tour guides. That was a lot of anxiety for that time in the evening, so it was a bit of a rough night.