Amman to Wadi Musa: Week 3 / Day 20 / Jan 30
Wadi Musa, Jordan: Today will mainly be a travel day as we are headed down to the town of Wadi Musa for a visit to the old city of Petra. Our first task of the day was getting a hold of the rental car we will be using for the next two days. We had debated using the busses that run between Amman and Wadi Musa, but, given that Linda is flying back to the US tomorrow evening, we want to make sure that we can get her to the airport on time. Linda had always planned to head back this coming weekend, but the timetable was accelerated by a few days. Our dog tore his ACL shortly after we left and is having it operated on on Friday (Feb 1). She wants to be there when he gets picked back up from the vet on Feb 2.
Getting the car was relatively uneventful and we set off for Wadi Musa. Using GPS navigation with a wifi hotspot can be bit tricky (I purchased a skyroam wifi that can be used in 165 countries before we left), as you are dependent on cell phone coverage. Considering that much of this drive is through the middle of nowhere it is an adventure at times.
We decided to take the Dead Sea route rather than racing straight down to Wadi Musa. The landscape for the drive was rather barren and fairly reminiscent of what we had seen in Morocco.
As we continued our drive we could suddenly see a large dropoff before us that was the descent down to the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea lies at the bottom of a rift valley and is fed by the River Jordan. The shoreline of the Dead Sea is about 1,400 ft below sea level. So, even starting out not on a hill it is a big drop down to the water.
Descending from the high bluffs surrounding the sea we came across a shepherd and his flock. His dogs were not happy at all about us being there and kept getting in front of our car and barking at us. I believe they were trying to keep us away from the herd. After we made it all the way down and the road began to run along the shoreline, there were pullouts where we could stop and look at the sea. Given the high concentration of salt in the sea it is not surprising that you can see evidence of this all along the shore.
Along the edge of the sea were the occasional nomadic group with their animals and a number of chemical processing plants producing materials from the sea such as bromine, magnesium bromide, and other salts.
The salts are piled up in huge mounds along the edge of the sea and spread out over several hundred feet to dry. As I looked at the back hoe rolling across the many feet thick layer of salt, I thought about the tiny bottles I saw in some of the shops in Amman. They were of Dead Sea beauty salts. They looked expensive, but it appears you can get it by the ton down here.
Eventually we had to pull away from the sea and drive back up the ridge to the top.
As we were ascending, the most interesting sight was when we came around a corner and there were a group of about 30 – 40 dogs along the edge of the road. Some sleeping, others sitting, and most just watching our car go by.
The remainder of the drive was through more of the same barren landscape. Because we took so much time on our drive to stop and look at the sea we did not get to Wadi Musa as early as planned. Also, we have been feeling a bit rundown. So, between those two we took a nice nap, headed out for dinner, and got to bed early in anticipation of a full day at Petra tomorrow.
