Beautiful chaos

Another great day.

Christians lived in Medaba until the 7^th century when an earthquake decimated the town. It wasn’t until the late 19^th century that Christians moved from Kerak (the place with the big castle) to Medaba and started building houses. As they excavated to start building, they discovered the ruins of Roman roads, Byzantine churches and later mansions, because everyone just kept building on top of what had come before. For example, here's the Roman road on which houses are now standing:

We loved the Archaeological Park which showed the Roman, Byzantine and Muslim civilizations built on top of each other.

The first guide loved showing us around with his heavily accented single words of English; the second guide told us his wife spoke a little English and handed Shaun the phone to have a chat – the conversation didn’t last long.

The most famous mosaic was found when they started building St George’s Orthodox church. It’s an amazingly accurate and picture-filled map of the bible lands, being sure to include Jordan, and focusing upon Jerusalem. Some of it has been destroyed, but the original contained more than 2 million pieces!

By the way, here’s a photo of the church and the guest house in 1902. About as secluded as the Kurrajong property was then – and still is. In contrast, in Medaba there’s a bustling Middle Eastern town full of houses and shops and restaurants and gift shops.  

Next onto Mount Nebo – where Moses got to glimpse of the Promised land he had spent the last 40 years taking God’s people to, before he died. The view was expansive – but pretty hazy – presumably there was less pollution in his day! Looking forward to the promised land without any pollution!

The modern church was the highlight at Mt Nebo, as its brilliantly designed around the mosaics and structures of an ancient church.

We were quite moved by this group of Indians holding a sung communion service in the church whilst we wandered around.  

  

When we arrived in Jerusalem, we checked into our hostel, dropped off our bag and headed for the old city of Jerusalem, only a 10 minute walk from where we are staying. The contrast between Jordan and Jerusalem is stark, the streets outside the old city are new, modern and fancy, feeling slightly European even. Once arriving in the old city, we followed various signs to the western wall, the streets are all stone, very narrow and packed with shops on each side. 

Jewish families in traditional attire streamed past us briskly as they headed for the wall at the start of the Sabbath, so we thought it would be a safe bet to follow them. The wall was surreal and somewhat peaceful, it is cordoned into two sections (male and female), anyone is allowed to visit any part of it 24/7 365 days a year, however we didn’t go all the way up to the wall today. 

We sat on chairs around 20 metres back taking in the moment as the dome of the rock (a Muslim temple where the Jewish temple used to be) towered over us. We then left and wandered through the Jewish quarter of the old city, families increasingly coming down to the wall. 

One turn onto Christian Quarter Street changed the surroundings immediately; instantly there were no more Jewish families, but rather Christians and crosses everywhere. Before we left the old city we found somewhere for dinner – looked a lot like the inside of Kerak castle, and the waiter told us it’s at least 300 years old; then google maps told us it was about 50m away from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (the supposed place where Jesus was crucified and buried). The entrance to the church is nestled in a side walk of the old city and isn't very invisible. However, once entering, you notice that is HUGE, with many different levels and rooms, it would take hours  to investigate the complex further, we will be coming back here another day and going inside the ‘tomb’ and investigating the amazing building further.

Oh and by the way, we had others sorts of excitement too. Shaun couldn’t find his passport for a while in the morning – which was rather essential for today’s activities (and for the rest of our time away); thankfully it turned up.

More significantly, when we arrived at the border crossing we discovered that it had already been closed for 2 hours because it’s a Friday – the Muslim day of rest. Somehow I had missed this detail in my planning. The border officials weren’t particularly forthcoming with suggestions but thankfully some British diplomats were returning from Israel to Jordan, and they were able to help us out. After over an hour in a taxi we arrived at the northern border crossing which was still open. 1 ½ hours later we had crossed the border. By then of course there were no more buses down to Jerusalem so we had no choice but to catch an even longer taxi ride down to our accommodation in Jerusalem. So that filled in nearly 6 hours. On a positive note our Muslim Arab taxi driver from Nazareth was delightful and we got to learn all sorts of things.