Views down to the Sea of Galilee and across to the Golan heights were impressive.
From Umm Qais we descended down to the Jordan Valley through much greener countryside than we expected; certainly not the picture of Jordan we had in our minds. Negotiating this part of the country requires stopping at numerous military checkpoints as the borders of Jordan, Syria and Israel converge. At one point we went a bit wrong and were merrily heading for Israel before we realised our mistake and turned back, it would have been quite interesting to attempt a border crossing though. After five checks and six wave throughs we made it to Pella, another of the Decapolis.
Regarded as the most historically significant site in the whole of Jordan, there really isn’t much to be seen today other than the Byzantine civic complex. We decided to have lunch at the restaurant overlooking the site and across the Jordan Valley, which was nice and tasty (if a bit pricey). The homemade lemonade was lovely and cooling as the sun had made a welcome appearance. SPOT
From Pella it should have been a quick hour and a half along the valley before cutting back east to Amman. Unfortunately we must have missed the turning and took a slightly longer route, passing greenhouses spread across the valley as far as the eye could see. In the end this worked out well as we drove up the picturesque Wadi Shu’ayb and ascended from about 250m below sea level up to 700m above before we had to brave the Amman traffic. Amman is built on a number of hills and has instigated a number of bizarre tunnel/flyover/roundabout “circles” that suck you in and spit you out in a totally different direction. One wrong turn and you have to spend ten minutes backtracking; luckily we only went wrong once and managed to find our hotel in a nice quiet part of the city about 15 minutes walk from the old town; we have to think about safe parking for the Land Rover.
No comments:
Post a Comment