My 40th Bday in the Middle East

So many people have asked me about my trip to the Middle East – especially my time spent in Israel in Jerusalem. Given there is a war going on there right now, times are quite different than when I was there, obviously. Which is beyond incredibly sad. Everyone we encountered there, both Israelis and Palestinians, were so lovely. However, the Israel/Palestine conflict was still very palpable at the time, even before this current, active war. This is not a new conflict by any means, clearly. I have thoughts on the conflict of course, but this post will be focused on my travels at the time. I’m going to break writing about this trip up into a few posts about various countries because there’s just so much to cover! 

It was the summer of 2022 and Zach and I went to celebrate my 40th birthday (yes I'm telling my age ha). And yes, I'm just now writing about it a year 1/2 later because life just gets in the way! Ugh! Anyway, we technically went to both the Middle East and northern Africa since we ended the trip in Tunisia. We have friends that live in Amman and one of them is Tunisian and I will travel anywhere, so of course I wanted to see her home country when she suggested visiting Tunisia too! But for now, I’ll start in Jordan. Which I honestly think was my favorite part of the trip. Jordan is SO gorgeous, very large and there's just so much to see! And as a Christian, yes, Jerusalem has so many holy sites and of course was amazing to visit, but Jordan has SO many holy sites as well. We flew from the US on Royal Jordanian air which was super nice and my first Middle Eastern airline. Let’s just say literally all other airlines outside of the US are nicer than our airlines in America. Our airlines in the states are trash. Anyway, I digress… hating on our airlines is another post...

We landed in Amman and stayed at the Marriott Amman and let me tell you – hotels hit different in the Middle East. This is the nicest Marriott I’ve ever stayed in! Marble entryway, marble walls, a gorgeous, huge staircase that welcomes you when you walk in, a gym that could rival most paid gyms (huge and TONS of equipment!), amazing and friendly staff, I could go on and on. I would certainly stay there again.

 Many people have also asked me how I managed to pull off such a big trip to a part of the world many Americans have never visited. Like I said, my husband and I have friends in this part of the world and they were incredibly helpful in the planning. We did not go through a travel agency, it was just us and our friends in Amman working out logistics. However, our friend Emna is a big traveler herself and is working on doing some travel planning in the future, so please check out her Instragram here. We couldn't have done this trip without her!

Our first day was spent just walking around Amman’s central downtown area. There are ancient Roman and Greek ruins in central Amman, so we checked those out – a Roman theater and the Citadel, which is an archeological landmark that has remnants from various different cultures that ruled the area – Byzantine, Roman, etc. There is SO much history here in this part of the world! Plus the Citadel has a gorgeous view of Amman from the top. We also checked out some local markets that had a huge array of food and spices – figs, turmeric, dates, nuts, you name it. The colors and all the smells were so intoxicating! Honestly, my favorite part of this day was probably when we heard the call to prayer from our walk from the Roman theater up to the Citadel. It is soooo gorgeous and somehow feels both holy and haunting at the same time. I could listen to the call to prayer coming from the various mosque speakers all day long...

On our second day, we went to visit some of the holy sites and my GOD, they did not disappoint. We went to the Jordan River to the baptism site of Jesus. Again, as a Christian, this was such a powerful experience. To be in a place I have read about my whole life was just so surreal. The funniest part is that the Jordan River now is maybe like 25 or so feet wide. It is tiny! It separates Jordan from Israel and there are Palestinian flags on one side and Israeli flags on the other. Since we were in Jordan, we were on the side of the West Bank (the Palestinian side). You can see the Israeli flag on the other side in the image below. The river used to be much wider back in the day when Jesus was baptized by John, as they have a marker where the original bank of the river was where the baptism happened, and it's much further from where the bank of the river is now. I think the river may have actually been rerouted at one point, but I'm no history buff, so I can't remember the reason. Standing in the baptism spot of Jesus was wild. And even standing on the current bank of the Jordan River was overwhelming. We witnessed a baptism and I could truly feel God’s presence in that moment. It was almost as if time stood still…  At the same time, you have to stay the course and keep with your tour group, as the border patrol will literally shoot you on the spot if you veer off, as they may assume you're trying to cross the border into Israel. Yikes! And yes, you can only tour the baptism site with an actual tour group at a scheduled time for this very reason, you can't just go explore it on your own. There is something called the Jordan Pass that includes the baptism site and many other experiences in Jordan (such as Petra and Wadi Rum), so I highly recommend getting the pass if you plan to visit. Also on this same day, we visited the “mount” (like a mountain but really more of a large hill) where God spoke to Moses and showed him the Promised Land, land promised to descendants of Abraham. There are gorgeous views of both Israel and Jordan from up there and you can see for miles and miles. I'm pretty sure this stop was included in the Jordan Pass as well (there are various levels of pass options and what's included in those options).

From the Jordan River, we moved on to the Dead Sea. It has legit been a dream of mine for YEARS to float in the Dead Sea. The Jordan River flows into the Dead Sea, so it was a super short drive from the baptism site (maybe 15-20 minutes or so). Both the baptism site and the Dead Sea can be done in the same day. Also shout out to our driver Mohanned, who drove us around to all of these locations, who Emna (our friend I mentioned earlier) connected us with. He was lovely, got us everywhere safely, and was a joy to talk with in the car and just hang with during our time there. We stopped at a popular tourist hotel along the Dead Sea where we had lunch (Mohanned joined us) then changed into bathing suits at the property after we ate and walked down to the water. It was summer time there so the water was nice and warm, but it was SO salty (obviously) that if you got any in your eyes, it stung so bad! And if you accidentally swallowed any of it, it tasted so gross. But other than that, just floating in the water was amazing! You didn't even have to try to swim or float, the water would just push you to the top. When you get out of the water, there's an option to rub the mud from the bottom of the sea on your skin. Due to how mineral rich it is, the Dead Sea mud has a lot of benefits for your skin such as reducing inflammation, helping with other skin issues like eczema, psoriasis, and just generally enhancing the skin's surface appearance. Fun fact - the magnesium supplement I take is sourced from the Dead Sea!

The next day, we woke up bright and early to go to Petra - PETRAAAAA, AAAAAH! Visiting Petra has also been a dream of mine forever too. If you don't know, Petra is an archeological site in Jordan that was the capital of the Nabatean kingdom and dates all the way back to the 3rd century BC (and potentially before). The city was also used by the Romans (and by used, I mean taken over by) and during Byzantine times as well. It is literally a city carved into rock (the name Petra is Greek for the word rock). There are homes, religious spaces, financial centers, and other public use buildings all cut directly into the rock face (technically sandstone). The sandstone is a gorgeous copper red color that undulates with tans and golds when the sun hits it just right. Petra was a critical stop and passageway for the spice trade at the time, aka the Silk Roads. The most famous structure in Petra is probably the Treasury (seen in the first pic below), which appears in the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. There are still some Bedouin families (nomadic Arabic tribes) that live in some of the caves inside Petra today. It was honestly so much larger than I was expecting - the trail we took was about 5 miles long and we spent a little over a half day looking at everything. There's a monastery at the end of the trail we did that's a more strenuous hike to get to and apparently there are some amazing views. We chose not to do this due to timing, but I've heard it's worth it! If there are some in your group that don't want to do tougher hikes, or if anyone simply gets tired, there are mules along the trails that you can pay for to ride. You could certainly spend a full day or even a few days there depending on which trails you want to take and what all you want to see. In total, Petra is estimated to be about 100 square miles, so it's huge! If you get a chance to visit, make sure you also stop at Little Petra, which is only about a 10 minute drive down the road. It's also a Nabatean site just like Petra and is believed by archeologists to be a suburb or extension of Petra. It's much less crowded than Petra and took us only about an hour to walk through so it's definitely worth the visit! Petra is included in the Jordan Pass I mentioned before.

That night, we stayed at the most amazing place I've probably ever stayed at in my life, the Petra Bubble Luxotel. It consists of a bunch of bubble tents in the middle of the Wadi Musa desert and has beautiful views of the surrounding land. Each tent has its own hot tub, which was perfect to relax in after a long day of hiking Petra in the heat. The tents have AC, a shower and completely functioning bathroom, they're not primitive tents by any means. The staff would come around at night to cover the top of the bubble if you didn't want light to come in come the morning or you could choose to leave the cover off to gaze at the stars from bed (or you could request a time to put the cover on and off). The food was amazing as well - you would just walk up to the restaurant tent and there was a huge buffet of so much delicious Middle Eastern food such as figs, halloumi, dates, hummus, falafel, fattoush, unique teas and local juices, you name it! I fell in love with the food in the Middle East and could honestly eat it every day. This was probably the most surreal hotel experience I've ever had - I highly recommend!

The next morning, we got up at the crack of dawn and made the drive to Wadi Rum, which was about a 2 hour drive. Wadi means desert in Arabic (I think it technically means a low, dry valley). There are a lot of places that start with the word wadi in Jordan, as this is an area of the world with a lot of dry land, clearly. However, Wadi Rum is one of the most well known of these deserts, as it is a favorite Hollywood filming location. The red sands and the surrounding sandstone rocks make it feel like you're on Mars. In fact, the movie The Martian with Matt Damon was filmed in Wadi Rum. One of the Transformers films and the Lawrence of Arabia movie were also filmed here. Additionally, there are a lot of inscriptions in the sandstone that help date the existence of humans back to over 12,000 years in this specific area. Wadi Rum is protected land and is recognized as a UNESCO world heritage site.

Once we arrived, Mohanned connected us with Ahmed, our driver who would soon take us around Wadi Rum in a truck suitable for desert driving. We rode in the bed of the truck, which was outfitted with bench style seats and a cover over the top for shade. Ahmed wrapped and covered our heads in keffiyahs, the traditional head coverings you often see in the Middle East, to help protect us from the sun. There are many meanings behind the various colors of keffiyahs, which are sometimes also called guhtrahs or hattahs in Arabic. I wasn't feeling super great this day for some reason, not sure if it was from all the riding around in the back seat of a car for a few days, as I do sometimes get car sick, but I felt nauseous in the bed of the truck. Despite the language barrier (we spoke very limited Arabic and Ahmed spoke limited English), Ahmed was so incredibly kind and offered us both tons of water and even offered for me to come sit with him inside the truck. I tried to explain I didn't want to get him sick by being in close quarters in case it was COVID or something else. Every time we stopped, he would check on me and ask how I felt, it was so so sweet. Riding around in the back of a truck on super bumpy desert ground in blazing desert heat isn't exactly where you want to be when not feeling well! But I made it out alive ha. We rode around for hours just taking in the gorgeous, otherworldly scenery. Along the way, we stopped at a few Bedouin tents for tea and snacks, and there were even some local Bedouin handmade goods being sold. We also stopped to pose with some camels (which you could ride of course, but we chose not to, I don't love animal tourism), look at some of the petroglyphs, and see some of the Hollywood filming sites. You know those times where you're standing somewhere and it is just so beautiful and unbelievable that you're like, am I even really standing in this pace, like how are my surroundings not fake?! Is it just me? Anyway, that's what it felt like in Wadi Rum. I couldn't believe we were really there!

From swanky hotels with world class service, to hauntingly beautiful religious sites, to some serious history lessons, to some of the kindest people I've ever encountered, to the FOOD and to getting to listen to one of my new favorite languages all day (I think Arabic is so beautiful), you can say I fell hard for the Middle East. As someone who feels very connected to Latin culture, I didn't think another part of the world could rival what is literally seeping through my veins, but the Middle East really did! I fell in love and I will absolutely be back! Up next is Jerusalem...