20th June 2015
Departing Muscat at 1700 on the 13th we had 5 full days at sea travelling back down the Arabian Sea through roughish conditions again and a heavy haze that made the sea and sky blend into one colour so there was little to see and no horizon.
Past Oman around the bottom end of Yemen, through the Gulf of Aden and up into the Red Sea towards Aqaba with Saudi Arabia on our starboard and Egypt to port. On the 18th we turned up into the Gulf of Aqaba, today Aqaba is the only sea-port in Jordan.
Aqaba was originally called Elath the home of the Edomites and in Roman times was a trading centre for goods coming from as far afield as China for entry into markets in Africa, Europe and the Middle East. It is a Muslim country, the first language is Arabic but most people speak very good English and they are considered to be an accommodating mob. Jordan doesn’t have any oil and relies on tourism and an export trade of Phosphate.

19th
Up at 0530 we had an early coach to catch for our tour out to Petra the Lost City. Thought to have been established as early as 6,000BC this great wonder of the world was only discovered by Europeans in the early 1800’s. Other tours were heading out to Wadi Rum a desert reserve where TE Lawrence found his destiny as Lawrence of Arabia and is now home to the Bedouin.

It took almost two hours to reach Petra most of the time on a four-lane highway. We passed through interesting but barren looking ranges where Bedouins were camped in their traditional goat hair tents, people tended goat herds and camels and donkeys grazed. We also passed through several bleak looking towns and I have never seen so many fuel tankers on a highway in my life.

A guide took us from the coach drop, a five minute walk from the Lost City entrance and a down-hill hike on into the lost city through a very narrow steep sided gorge of about 1-1½ miles, the guide warned us we had an overall hike of 5-7 miles there and back to see a lot of the old city. It was great going on the way in and the temperature was only about 35°C. At the site and after a lot of photo taking Nancy and another lady sensibly and slowly made their way back to the starting point. The ladies husband and I pressed on down the valley to see some more major sites one being a Roman amphitheatre carved out of the hillside rock, this amphitheatre had a capacity of 3,000 people – so clever. The other was to climb a thousand steps up to a huge temple also carved out of the rock face – amazing. From here the view of the valley was superb and then back down onto the valley floor it was time to trudge back, up-hill, the sun was now well overhead with little shade and probably up around 40°+C, I can assure you the walk back was quite testing. Underfoot is rocky uneven ground, not the most comfortable for walking on. Locals hurtle up and down the narrow gorge in small donkey carts ferrying unwitting people down to the site for a substantial fee and then doubling the fee to take them back up, others were offering camel rides and horses to do the same. We were warned off the horse carts due to the uneven ground and the fact the drivers go like maniacs to try and get as many trips in as they can, they bounce all over the place and several people have been injured in the past by carts turning over. I really couldn’t see any of us on a camel or a donkey either.

The Lost City is an amazing place they even reticulated water by cutting a channel into the rock on each side of the gorge a closed channel on one side for drinking water and an open channel on the other side for other uses. The water was channelled for several kilometres to dams in the base of the valley where it also formed a substantial oasis. The city shows Roman and Greek influences in its architecture and is a must see bucket list thing to do. - Google it for in depth information. Temperature in Aqaba was 43°C-45°C and at Petra it started off at 35°C but by the time we came out it was probably up around 40°C – 40+.
It was the start of Ramadan and we had been warned it was a punishable offence to eat, drink, smoke or chew gum in public during daylight hours, fortunately lunch was provided at an air-conditioned hotel for us tourists, the food was great and the air-conditioning superb.

We departed Aqaba around 10.00pm to retrace our track down the Gulf of Aqaba then turn northward again up the Gulf of Suez for a days steaming to the canal. Our transit through Suez was scheduled to start about 1.00am on Sunday morning.