Day 121: Swimming and Mud-Slathering in the Dead Sea — Petra By Night

We checked out of our Hotel in Amman and headed south to Petra, with stops at the Dead Sea and Madaba along the way.

First stop: the Holiday Inn Dead Sea — a large resort with multiple pools and a “beach” of sorts that slopes down to the water. Sounds cheesy and it sorta was — but that didn’t take away from the thrill of floating in the super salty water and then covering ourselves with the mineral-filled mud that’s allegedly magic for your skin.

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Everyone took part except James. He wanted none of it — the water hurt his eczema and he doesn’t like his hands getting messy so he had no interest in the mud.

Jim and Llewellyn were gamers and went all in with the mud. This is one of my favorite pics of the year:

Here are a few videos of our respective initial plunges into the Dead Sea…

After rinsing the mud we took a dip in the pool and jacuzzi, changed at the pool area changing room, grabbed a quick snack in the lobby and headed off.

We made a few more stops on the way to Petra:

Mount Nebo is one of the most revered holy sites in Jordan as many believe it is where Moses was buried. A small charge was built there by Christians and it was the site of a sermon by Pope John Paul II that was attended by 20,000 people.

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The kids had both fallen asleep a few minutes before this stop and we left them in the van with Adnan while the grownups took a quick spin through the facility.

In Madaba we had lunch at Food Basket, a friendly spot serving local Jordanian favorites. The food was really good.

After lunch we walked over to the Greek Orthodox Saint George Church. The church was built in the late 19th century over the remains of a 6th century Byzantine church. The Madaba Mosaic Map is the highlight — originally about 15 x 95 sq meters but only about 25% has been preserved.

It was a quick in-and-out which was fine with all of us — especially James who had zero tolerance for it.

It had already been a pretty full day but we had plenty more to tackle.

We checked into the Petra hotel around 7pm but had to make a quick turnaround to attend Petra by Night, beginning at 8:15.

We grabbed a drink and shared pizzas in the bar, then met Hessan who took us across the street, gave us our tickets and sent us on our way to follow the masses.

Our original plan was that the kids would skip Petra by Night, staying back with one grownup. For some reason we changed our minds today. Mistake.

Petra is pretty remarkable — we’ll cover that in tomorrow’s post. But it’s a 1.5 mile walk from the gates to The Treasury, downhill on the way there, uphill headed back. Hessan told us this but I’m not sure it really sunk in.

I ended up carrying James for 90% of the three miles — sweating my ass off by the time we returned to the hotel around 10pm.

That wouldn’t be that big of a deal if the Petra by Night experience / “performance” was somewhat memorable. But we sat on dirt and rocks with about 750 other selfie-taking tourists and couldn’t really hear or see anything, all while dreading the 1.5 miles back up the hill.

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The Dead Sea was today’s unquestioned highlight. Petra by Night was a bust. Should have stayed at the bar!