After a decent night's sleep and some breakfast at the hotel, we finished packing up our things, checked out, said hello to our driver, Ahmad, and said goodbye to Amman. It was time to do some exploring!
Ahmad was going to be our driver for the next few days as we traveled through Jordan, and it didn't take long to reach our first stop: a roadside cafe for some lava hot coffee. I'm not kidding about it being lava hot. I'm surprised it didn't melt the cup. (But it was still very tasty, once it eventually cooled down!)
Once we got away from the city, there was a lot of open space. We'd pass a random speed bump or police checkpoint here and there, but most of the first part of the day was spent watching the desert roll by and listening to music and chatting with Ahmad. He told us a bit about his family and his previous jobs, and even taught us a couple words of Arabic.
A good bit of driving later, we came to the Dana Biosphere Reserve. I had no idea what to expect when we got there...
...but WOW.
The scenery was gorgeous. We spent a little while walking around, and stopped at a couple different overlooks to check out the view before continuing on.
Our next stop was out in the middle of nowhere in the desert. After passing a bunch of giant wind turbines, we pulled into a dusty parking lot and Ahmad cut us loose to go explore Shobak Castle.
Shobak Castle was built in 1115AD as a crusader castle. The ruins are in fairly decent shape, and there were hardly any other people there; it was pretty neat to basically have a castle to ourselves.
I thought the patterns on the nearby hills were really neat. The whole place seemed so quiet and desolate.
Some of the ruins had caved in a bit in spots, so you had to watch your step. It was pretty neat (and slightly creepy).
You could still see some Arabic carvings on some of the stones.
We eventually finished wandering around and met up with Ahmad again. You could see some of the giant wind turbines in the distance as we left.
We made a quick stop at a castle overlook before hopping back on the road to continue on.
We wound up stopping in a small town along the way to pick up some lunch. This shawarma was delicious.
I honestly can't remember where this overlook was, but the sunbeams were insane. I felt like I was looking at a painting as I stood there; the picture barely does it justice.
We continued on a bit longer, then eventually reached our last stop of the day...
...Little Petra. It's a smaller set of ruins north of Petra. Ahmad spent a few minutes warning us about a steep part of the ruins that you could hike and please be careful and don't fall because some people don't realize how steep it is and it really is steep and please be careful, then finally let us go (after joking that he felt like our dad while we were traveling with him).
There were hardly any people in Little Petra, so we had no problem wandering around and checking out whatever looked interesting.
There were a few small vendors set up along the sides of the rock walls, but aside from that, it was really quiet.
You could still see some of the frescoes in one of the rooms, which was kind of crazy.
We continued on, and eventually found the steep section that Ahmad had warned us about.
He was not kidding. It was STEEP. I wound up coming back down on my butt to make sure I could control my descent and not go flying.
This still barely does it justice. At any rate, we made it safely up and down the path...
...then started making our way back to the car.
It was pretty cool to see the rooms and stairs carved out of the rock; these are likely 2000+ years old.
We followed the canyon back out and met up with Ahmad to continue on.
A few minutes down the road, we made one more stop to check out the scenery...
...and see this. I think Ahmad said they used to use this to make wine.
We spent a few more minutes checking out the scenery, then Ahmad took us into town and got us checked into our hotel. We had the rest of the day free to do whatever we wanted, so after getting settled in at the hotel, we walked over to the Petra visitor center. We spent a few minutes checking out their small museum and a map of the site; we'd get a much better look at everything the next morning when we would meet up with our guide.
The Cave Bar is near the visitor center, so we went over there for a glass of wine. It's actually in a cave; we wound up grabbing a cool little nook with a couple chairs and a small table, and hung out for a bit.
There was outdoor seating there, too, but it was starting to get a little cool toward the end of the day so we skipped that.
We walked back into town and wound up having dinner at a place called My Mom's Recipe. It was pretty quiet when we first got there, but by the time we were about halfway through dinner the place was packed. The food was pretty tasty, and Ahmad said it was one of the better places in town. We eventually finished up, went back to the hotel, regrouped a bit, and went to bed. We had a long day ahead of us!
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