The morning we leave Petra the weather is overcast and chilly (in stark contrast to the day we spent in the ancient city when it was very hot) and for much of the day, we are treated to intermittent heavy downpours - unusual apparently for so early in the winter. The entire country was hit that day by heavy rain and unfortunately in a mountainous desert country like Jordan, flash flooding is a very real threat. We are all very saddened to hear that many people were killed that day in flash floods including a group of children enjoying a picnic in the Dead Sea area of the country around 20 km south of our hotel

Welcome to “Jollywood”

From Petra we continue south into the desert towards Jordan’s border with Saudi Arabia (Israel as well - the three countries come together at the southern tip of Jordan). We’re headed for a protected area full of history, both ancient and modern. Wadi Rum is where T.E. Lawrence - Lawrence of Arabia - led the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire in 1916 resulting in the Anglo-French carve up of the Middle East which created several "artificial" countries - Jordan included. And we're still living through the consequences of the so-called Sykes-Picot Agreement more than 100 years on....

Hollywood also discovered Wadi Rum. The area provides the perfect backdrop/location for movies. In fact so many movie makers want to take advantage of Wadi Rum, that the area now has a permanent camp to house them all and their crews. Not surprisingly Wadi Rum provided the backdrop for “Lawrence of Arabia” in the 1960’s but more recently Wadi Rum was Mars, home to Matt Damon when he was stranded on the Red Planet in the 2015 movie, “The Martian”

The Lowest Spot on Earth

From “Mars”, we head north towards the Dead Sea, the lowest spot on Earth. We’re traveling along Jordan’s main highway which runs from the Saudi border in the south to the Syrian border in the north.

At the northern end of the Dead Sea on the Jordanian side, there are a string of luxury Western hotels each with a private beach allowing their patrons to float in relative seclusion on the extremely salty water and cake themselves in gooey black mud (supposedly good for the skin). From what we could see, most of the customers of the Las Vegas-style hotel we stayed in are foreigners, a smattering of ex-pat businessmen and their families escaping Amman for the weekend, Gulf Arabs letting their hair down like they can't do back home, and the usual cluster of Russians up to who knows what...? And most of the excellent staff appear to be Filipino

We could have been anywhere in the world and any resemblance between this and the real Jordan we've been experiencing over the past several days is purely coincidental....!!

Just a short hop from here to the King Hussein/Allenby Bridge border crossing into Israel - next stop, Tel Aviv!