We took off early Saturday morning
on a charter bus and drove out of Amman to our first stop – Karak. This is
where the Crusaders battled the Islamic warriors of Saladin. The castle is
fairly intact with lots of rooms and corridors and tunnels to explore.
All the castles are built on
easily-defendable mounts. It makes for some sweet views and lots of
opportunities to fall to our deaths...
Next we visited a similar site, the
Shobak Castle, which was built by the Crusaders and later occupied by the
Mamluks. The landscape around the castle was crazy. Vertigo fo sho.
This is Jay. He climbs everything…
But the best part of this castle was
its underground secret passageway! I guess it has 375 steps leading down, but
after all these years the steps are really worn down and slick. It was quite
the walk - one girl in our group slipped and fractured her ankle. We all took
flashlights and were down there for quite a while before resurfacing through a
water well. It was cooool.
The last stop of the day was Little
Petra. Yep, there’s a little one. First we went into a carved out water cistern
made by the Nabateans. Our professor really likes to sing, so we sang “Amazing
Grace” and the acoustics were really awesome. Then we walked up through the
Little Petra Canyon. There were some really neat carvings in the stone and a
pretty lookout on top with lots of rocks to climb. It felt a little like being
in Southern Utah.
And of course, pictures of cool Bedouin people…
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