You can't get there from here...trouble leaving Musundam

The day started out just like any other. Jake woke us up at 5:50 by kicking us in the head, back, and any place else his little limbs could kick. We decided to take him for a quick swim in the pool before breakfast so he'd have a little fun in this travel day from Musundam to Nizwa, Oman. Our flight was scheduled for 1:25 PM and once we landed in Muscat, we would drive to Nizwa, a few hours away.

Chris remembered seeing a sign at the Khasab Airport that said flights from March-October depart at 11 AM. The Khasab airport is a tiny little airport and is actually a military airport they open up once a day for the one regional flight to and from Muscat each day. For my South Dakotans, this airport may actually be smaller than the Watertown airport or old Pierre airport. 

So Chris checked the Oman Air online flight status to make sure we really were leaving at 1:25 PM and not 11 AM. Status said our flight was cancelled. No reason given, just cancelled. Chris called Oman Air customer service to verify. They confirmed, cancelled. They said they didn't have enough planes. They said the next flight would be tomorrow, but it is already booked full. They have no further details or instructions. Chris called down to Dan's room and let him know. Plan "B" is to take the ferry ("fastest ferry in the world" and we could see it from our hotel room, hadn't seen it move the entire time we were in Musundam). Dan called about the ferry and both Chris and Dan went down to check out of our hotel rooms then headed to check on the Ferry times. Ferry doesn't have a set schedule, but the front desk said it probably leaves at about 12 PM. They had the hotel shuttle take them to the Ferry terminal, but it turns out no Ferry to Muscat until next week. 

They came back to the hotel. At this point, Jake and I had been kicked out of our room and were sitting in the lobby when the guys got back from the Ferry port. They called the Embassy in Amman to check on other flight options and then called Omani Air again. Chris asked the reason for the cancellation again and they said it was just cancelled. They didn't have enough aircraft. Dan got on the phone with them (a little more demanding this time) and they changed the story about 3 times from just cancelled to weather to no A/C. He said, "You know by law you have to provide us accommodations and meals." The lady said she knew, but still didn't offer any solutions. The hotel we were in was full and there aren't many options in Musundam. Then Chris called the Embassy to see if they found any flight solutions and the guy he talked to said he talked to Omani Air and they said we could still make the flight. We were at the hotel so we rushed to load our bags on the shuttle and had them take us to the airport. When we got there, of course, the flight was actually cancelled. I didn't go into the airport with them and just waited with Jake in the shuttle bus. Apparently Chris played "bad guy" this time and Dan smoothed it over. Eventually they came out and said we were leaving but not on a plane. They were followed out by a guy in sweat pants and a t-shirt, who said to wait 5 minutes and then we were locked in the airport. About 15 minutes later, the guy (Adnon was his name) pulled up in his car (Mazda 6) got out and was now wearing a black Thawb, one of the traditional flawy, Arab robes. We loaded up our 2 huge suitcases and 3 carry on backpacks and Jakes car seat and headed to toward Dubai. We are supposed to have a flight from Dubai to Muscat at 8:45 PM tonight.

I'm writing these notes as we are sitting at the border crossing between Oman and the UAE. Jake is sleeping so I'm waiting in the car. Dan just came out and said they won't let Chris, Jake or I cross the border without a Visa on our official passport. You have to apply for official visas in advance and can't get them on the border. Dan already has the visa for UAE from another trip.

On another note, there are goats just randomly walking back and forth across the border.

After 5 hours at the border, they did not let us cross. So we turned around and headed back into Oman. They wouldn't let us cross because we had just been stamped out and only had "single entry visas" and they weren't supposed to let us back into Oman. Dan and Chris went in to talk to the crossing agents and they had to fill out a form for each of us giving us another 30 day visa. Dan was no problem, but then they almost didn't want to let us back into Oman since the UAE wouldn't let us in. They thought maybe they didn't want us either if the UAE wouldn't take us. Chris explained, in Arabic (which is getting better and better with each mishap on this trip), and they let us in. Then the driver took us back to Khasab. On the way Chris called our hotel to see if they happened to have any vacancies and they still didn't, but connected us to a hotel that did. (So originally, Oman Air could have just put us in a hotel tonight and sent us out in the morning if they had done any research in the first place and saved us a trip to the border crossing.) And apparently Oman Air added a make-up flight for 7:45 AM tomorrow to make up for today and knowing the afternoon flight is full. 

We are now in our hotel room at the Diwan Alamir Hotel and have a flight tomorrow morning. Jake is watching Tom and Jerry in Arabic and seems pretty content. 

We went and got carry out food from a restaurant down the street. Jake is now sleeping and we are also ready to get some rest.

Traveling during Eid al-Fitr is much like Christmas in the States. Although Ramadan is over, stores are mostly closed and everyone is on holiday and home spending time with their family.

I did get to see some very beautiful coastline on the drive and Jake behaved pretty well for what we put him through today. It's all a part of the adventure. The Omani's at both hotels and even the airport were very helpful or tried to be within their ability. It is a great country to visit and we don't regret our trip to the Musundam peninsula, even with all the travel struggles. We would do it again! Beautiful country.

Some of the pretty scenery and beautiful aqua blue water.

There is a castle in this picture. Can you find it?

Here are the goats at the border crossing. I wonder if they have visas?

This is Khasab Castle. We could see it from our hotel. It was closed most of the time we were in Khasab so we didn't get a chance to check out the inside, but it was neat from the outside.

Dhow Cruise (Musundam, Oman)

Last night...

Last night we got a number of answers from the front desk on whether or not the Old Souk would be open and what time it would open. Every time Chris or Dan asked, they got a different answer, even if it was the same guy they asked. So we decided to make our way back across the large parking lot to LuLu's Hypermarket (Supermarket with some additional shops in it) to find something for dinner. Then we all headed to bed. Between the heat and travel, we were tired.

This is Dan and Chris trying to figure out if it would be worth a trip to the Old Souk after getting about 5 different answers on what time it would be open. 

 This was a pretty view of our hotel pool in the evening as we were standing outside deciding whether  or not to venture to the Old Souk.

This is a photo of the Omani Rial (sorry it's upside down). Exchange rate: 1 OMR= $2.59 USD (pretty extreme exchange, and not in the good way).

 This is LuLu Hypermarket. One of the few places open to buy dinner. It's a supermarket with some other shops in it, but the deli has some pre-made food that we got take-out from a couple of times so we didn't have to eat the hotel restaurant for every meal.

 Inside of LuLu Hypermarket. It's hard to tell from this photo, but we are in the extreme Gulf and most of the folks we see are dressed in traditional Arab clothing. Wearing pants and a long sleeve shirt, I felt like I was nearly naked. Almost all of the women were wearing an abaya and hijab.

Dhow Cruise:

From Wikipedia: Dhow (Arabic داو dāw) is the generic name of a number of traditional sailing vessels with one or more masts with lateen sailsused in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean region. Some historians claim the dhow was invented by Arabs or Indians, but the majority give the credit to the Chinese.^[1][2] Typically sporting long thin hulls, dhows are trading vessels primarily used to carry heavy items, like fruit, fresh water or merchandise, along the coasts of the Eastern Arabia (Arab states of the Persian Gulf),Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and East Africa. Larger dhows have crews of approximately thirty, smaller ones typically around twelve.

Today we went on a Dhow cruise in the Straight of Hormuz. It was absolutely beautiful. It was 15 OMR per person or $38 USD (Jake was free) for the half day cruise. A bus picked us up at 9 AM and drove us to the boat. We boarded and were off by about 10 AM and got back around 1 PM. We got a beautiful view of the Hajar Mountain Range surrounding Musundam. The locals refer to them as Ru'us al Jebel or "Peaks of the Mountains." We saw dolphins and got to swim in the Gulf of Oman.

 Here is a small map that kind of shows where the Straight of Hormuz is located.

 The top photo is of the water where we stopped to swim. The bottom photo is some of the scenery we boated past on our cruise. We were surrounded by these large masses of limestone jutting up from the sea on both side of us. Every once in a while, we would see a village located at the base of one of these mountains. It appears the only access is by boat and is apparently a pretty rough life. The spot where we stopped to swim had the remnants of a village that didn't make it.

 Some photos of Team Baldwin.

 Top photo is a panorama of some of the scenery. Middle left is one of the other Dhow cruise boats our on the water. At this point there were about 10 boats circling this area and chasing the dolphins (middle right) to try and get their tourists the best photos. The bottom left you can kind of see the remains of one of those old villages that didn't quite make it. The bottom right is where all the boats parked to let us off to swim around for a few minutes. It was nice to get Jake out in the water to cool him down. Although being on the boat felt like winter compared to the land, it was still pretty hot.

 This is a photo of us all swimming in the Gulf of Oman.

This is a photo of our driver. Zoom in and check out the "control panel" or whatever it's called on a boat. I felt like if we had a maritime emergency we would have been in trouble!

 This is our friend Dan who is traveling with us. His wife, Kaylan, took their daughter back to the States a few days ago. He's a good sport for putting up with the Baldwins on this trip.

 The boys all taking in the view.

Oman... (Musundam)

This will be a series of posts. I'm not sure how frequently I'll be able to keep it updated while we are traveling in Oman, but I had some time now while Chris and Jake are swimming and thought I'd take a minute to jot down a few things.

If you read the post last night, we had a mess with our flight to Oman, missed connection, lost bag, etc. But last night Chris got his bag back at about midnight and all became well with the world. We stayed at the Grand Hyatt in Muscat for the night and then got up and headed to the airport again this morning. We flew to Khasab (Musundam), a little tiny peninsula at the tip of the United Arab Emirates. It is part of Oman, but is separated by the UAE from the rest of the country. It was only an hour and a half flight and all went well. We traveled with our friend, Dan. When we got to our hotel, Dan got checked in and when we tried to check in realized that we were at the wrong hotel. The shuttle driver took us to our hotel and we got checked in too. It turns our there is a Atana Musundam Resort and an Atana Musundam Hotel or something along those lines and when we each did our own Booking.com reservation, we selected different hotels, with about the same names and are the same company. Turns our Resort hotel was a little nicer and we wanted to be together, so Dan talked them into changing his room to our hotel and now we are all together, only one floor apart. 

This is a picture of the Grand Hyatt. Pretty nice hotel.

I took Jake swimming for a little while during the room/hotel swap and we've been hanging out most of the day. We all had lunch in the hotel restaurant and also walked over the the grocery store across the parking lot from the hotel to get some fruit and snacks. Later tonight, we plan to go to the souk (market) and see what kind of treasures we can find. Tomorrow we are taking a Dhow cruise.

We are here at a less than lively time for tourism. Ramadan ends today and tomorrow is Eid al-Fitr, so many things are closed for the holiday. 

From Wikipedia:  Eid al-Fitr (Arabic: عيد الفطر ʻĪd al-Fiṭr, IPA: [ʕiːd al fitˤr], "festival of breaking of the fast"), also called Feast of Breaking the Fast, theSugar Feast, Bayram (Bajram), the Sweet Festival^[3] and the Lesser Eid, is an important religious holiday celebrated by Muslimsworldwide that marks the end of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting (sawm). The religious Eid is a single day during which Muslims are not permitted to fast. The holiday celebrates the conclusion of the 29 or 30 days of dawn-to-sunset fasting during the entire month of Ramadan. The day of Eid, therefore, falls on the first day of the month of Shawwal. This is a day when Muslims around the world show a common goal of unity. The date for the start of any lunar Hijri month varies based on the observation of new moon by local religious authorities, so the exact day of celebration varies by locality. However, in most countries, it is generally celebrated on the same day as Saudi Arabia.^[2]

Musundam is a beautiful area with a great view of the Hajar Mountains that shoot straight up out of the sea. There are no taxi's so we are relying on the shuttle service for some of our adventures. It is ridiculously hot and HUMID in Oman and especially in Musundam, located right on the Tropic of Cancer (according to Chris who is not only a history nerd, but geography too; I hadn't bothered to look it up). The humidity is so high that Chris complained about it. Chris used to sit outside in the middle of summer on our porch in Georgia for hours reading and never complained, but he agrees this is incredibly humid. And I get annoyed because every time I pull out my camera or phone, the lens is fogged up and I have to wait to take a picture.

From our hotel guidebook: 

Musundam, the Gateway to the Gulf (Straight of Hormuz)

Musundam occupies a strategic position separating the Arabian Gulf from the Sea of Oman and its people have borne witness to the travels of ancient mariners for thousands of years. 

Relatively little is known about the history of the region prior to the advent of Islam, although the Roman naturalist Pliny and Ptolemy of Alexandria both made mention of it in their writings in the 1st and 2nd centuries.

Musundam is a region lying in the northern most part of Oman boasting four cities, Khasab, Dibba, Bukha, and Mad'ha accessible by road, air and sea. Whilst accessible, it remains isolated in character, and retains several cultural traditions that distinguish it from the rest of the country. The magnificent Hajar mountain range dominates the landscape and extends from R'as Al-Hadd in the south and ends with Ru'us Al-Jebal plunging dramatically into the sea. The picturesque coastline offers a wonderful opportunity to explore rock formations, beaches, islets, and coral reefs. Perhaps the best way to experience the beauty of the area is to take a traditional wooden Arabian dhow and spend the day soaking ups the atmosphere.

Jake fell asleep on the way from the airport to the hotel....the first hotel, and slept until we got  into our room at our actual hotel, then woke up.

The Atana Musundam Resort (views from our room)

On the walk across the parking lot to the grocery store.

The hotel has a small "park" with a few things. It's nearly too hot and humid to be out, but it is pretty nice. They also have a little kiddie pool in this area and it's mostly shaded.

Outing to Joseph’s and Arabesque

It’s been another busy week that just seemed to disappear. We did some of our usual park visits and also went to the Embassy swimming pool a couple of times. We had to say farewell to some good friends this week too. Kaylan and Leila headed back to the U.S. this week and Jessica and Amelia will leave next week while we are in Oman. I’m going to have to make some new friends, but it was great to have these wonderful ladies here while we could have them. Their husbands are still going to be around for a few more weeks so we will farewell Dan and Jon later.

Besides the usual stuff, this week I went out to dinner with some of the military spouse wives again. We went to a Spanish-style tapas restaurant, Bonita’s. The food was really good and had a wonderful atmosphere, and of course, the company was good too. 

Yesterday (Saturday), I went with Jon to visit some of the Bess Family favorites for local artistry and craftsmanship. We went to a place called Joseph’s and another called Arabesque both off the beaten path and I would never have found them if he hadn’t taken me and shown me. Joseph is an Armenian who has a pottery store with some very unique and intricate designs. From what I am told, he and his brother picked up the craft in Jerusalem and he moved his business to Amman. As I was thumbing through our Turkey guidebook, I found a few pages where they do this similar design with deep reds and blues. It is very pretty. There was a woman working in the shop when we entered and she gave us a brief tour of the shop. They mold, fire, paint, and finish all of the products on site. Her English wasn’t great, but she did a good job showing me how it all works. She said “the man” (I assume Joseph) does the molding of the pottery and pencils in the designs. Then she spends the hours of time it takes to paint the designs. Once painted, the pottery is “fired” again and becomes usable and food-safe. 

The top left photo is a picture of the shop where the woman was painting the pieces of pottery. The top right is the ceramic firing oven. The bottom left is a photo of some of the pieces in the shop and the bottom right is the piece I bought. It's a cheese plate or trivet. The long tulip in the middle is supposed to symbolize "long life".

Then we went to Arabesque, where Jon and Jessica had some pottery made as gifts that they wanted to take back to ship back to the States. This shop was way back in an alley way of a very industrial part of town. They call it the “Crack House” because they make a lot of pottery that has a cracked" look to it. Again, a very friendly shop owner, this time with very good English, offered me a tour. All of the pottery is made on site and they had a much larger operation. In the far back, a man was working on molding some tea cups and then the middle rooms had women who were painting and applying the “cracked” look to many of the pieces. There definitely seem to be “men” jobs and “women” jobs. It was interesting to see how it all works and how it is all made. 

The top left is a photo of the man who was molding the tea cups. The middle left is a photo of some of the tea cups that needed to go into the oven, the bottom left are some of the pieces in the shop. You can kind of see the "cracked" pottery in the vase with the flowers or the house on it. The top right is the piece I bought and the bottom right is a photo of the women working in the shop. 

 

This is how Jake spent the evening last night. He decided that the pots and pans all needed to be lined up and then moved on to the water bottles in the cupboard. Thought it was cute and wanted to post. It made my heart smile.

I’m drafting this post while on a plane to the country of Oman. We are going to be spending about 10 days there and plan to visit Muscat, Musundam, and Nizwa. Our flight left Amman at 3:45 AM, which meant we had to leave our house at about 1 AM. Jake was a trooper through the airport and was excited to ride on a plane. He wasn’t trilled with getting strapped into his carseat once we were on the plane, but he crashed in the first 10 minutes on the plane. Chris thought that was a good idea and he’s sleeping too. I couldn’t sleep so I thought I get caught up on the blog. We fly through Abu Dhabi and have about an hour layover before flying to Muscat. 

Update to this adventure....We landed in Abu Dhabi at 8:05 AM and our flight to Muscat was supposed to leave at 9:05 AM. When we got off the runway and into the airport one of the Etihad Airline employees said we missed our connected and directed us to stand in the customer service line.  Our ticket said we were boarding at 8:05 so we didn't argue. Chris stood in line for nearly an hour and when he finally got to the front, another employee questioned why we weren't on our flight (it still wasn't quite 9:05). It was incredibly frustrating, but they put us on another flight that was leaving at 1:25 PM. BUT we had to go to Terminal 1 (we were in Terminal 3) and stand in another line with Oman Air to get our boarding passes and to update our baggage claim tickets. Of course there were two lines and Chris was directed to the wrong one and ended up in line for nearly another hour. We finally had boarding passes and we were assured our baggage would transfer to our flight. They gave us some meal vouchers for our trouble, but when we tried to use them to buy pasta from one of the restaurants, they wouldn't accept the vouchers. So we headed to the ol' tried and true, McDonalds, and got a couple of cheeseburgers. Jake gobbled his up. Then we waited around for our flight to take off. As we were about to board the flight to Muscat, one of the airline workers came up to Chris and told him that only one of our bags was on the flight and he'd have to go to the customer service desk in Muscat to make a claim on the other. That always makes for a wonderful flight...knowing you're going to have trouble on the other side. It was Chris's bag that is missing and along with all of his stuff, it had all of Jake's diapers in it. But we made it safely to Muscat. Our friend and fellow FAO, Vance, picked us up from the airport and took us to the hotel. Our hotel is awesome and at the end of the day it was all an adventure. We met our friend Dan at the hotel. He flew in two days ago from Jordan and we went to dinner at the Turkish House Restaurant, recommended by the hotel concierge. It was good and Jake enjoyed looking at the fish they had in the fish tanks. Then Chris and Dan dropped Jake and I off at the hotel and went out to find diapers. Now it's a 11 PM and they went to the airport to see if they can find Chris' bag because nobody is answering the phones. We have a flight to Musundam tomorrow so he needs to try and get it tonight. All is well and I'm writing the details of this portion of the trip because I know it will become a very insignificant part of our trip by the time we get back to Amman. 

Update to the update: Chris got home from the airport with his bags last night. All is well in the world with Team Baldwin. 

 Top left is the Abu Dhabi airport. Very interesting architecture in Terminal 1. Top right is Jake hanging out. The bottom left is Jake eating his Happy Meal and devouring his cheeseburger. Bottom right is after we arrived in Muscat and Jake is helping us get directions.

 The top photo is what happens to 2 year olds with very little sleep and a long day of travel.


These photos are of Jake and Amelia at their last playdate together. We are going to miss the Bess Family!

The Dead Sea

Well, I fell behind on the blog again last week, but once a week is probably enough. I want to include some of the other interesting things about Jordan, like how water and propane, etc work and keep thinking I'll include it on days when not much is going on, but then time escapes me and I wait until after our big event of the week to catch up on the blog and push that stuff off to the next. Maybe next week...

The past week we kept busy with the usual park visits. We went to a playgroup on Monday with a bunch of other expatriates. We are becoming familiar with a lot of the other families in the Embassy community, so it's starting to feel like home. Unfortunately, by the end of this month, my two closest friends are heading back to the States (Kaylan and Jessica) and I'll have to make some new ones.

On Tuesday, I left Jake with Ailyn and went to lunch with some of the other military wives. The Embassy has a pretty large population, but the military community here is very small but we are lucky to have one of the great Army FAO legends among us, and she got us all together. She has lived in Jordan 3 times since 2003 and has a much broader perspective on all things Amman. It was a good lunch and I'm looking forward to a girls night out with the same group this week.

Then later that afternoon/early evening, Chris and I went to grab dinner and went to Cafe@Books in downtown Amman. This little bookstore was really interesting. It had many of the books in English. It was very expensive, and many of them were about sex. Not in the Harlequin novel kind of way, but more in the cultural sort of way, some also included homosexuality. Middle Easterners seem to be very private about sexuality and seemingly pretend that homosexuality does not exist, so finding a store so open about this stuff was really unique and VERY liberal for Jordan. If you walked into this same bookstore in America, I doubt if anyone reading this blog would even notice a difference between it and a Barnes & Noble or Boarders, but for Jordan, very liberal. We went upstairs to eat at the cafe. It was also a Hooka bar. The restaurants here have non-smoking and smoking sections, but there is very little difference. Even the non-smoking tables usually have ashtrays on them, but have a "No Smoking" sign on the bottom of the ashtray, so maybe it's more of a suggestion...? Dining is not a quick process in the Middle East. It took over 10 minutes to have someone greet us an take our order. When we did, Chris tried to order an appetizer and an entree, but the waiter insisted that both we like entrees and it would be a lot of food, so he changed his order. He got an appetizer and he was already really hungry, so this didn't cheer him up, but we didn't have enough time to get another entrees. We needed to get home and relieve Ailyn of Jake duty. I ordered nachos, which normally Chris would have criticized, "Who orders nachos at a Middle Eastern restaurant?" but since he was hungry, he helped eat them. The sweet smell of Hooka smoke (I kind of like the smell) drifted into our area, unfortunately so did the cigarette smoke, so we smelled wonderful when we got home. It's the only restaurant I've been to, or any place in Jordan that I have seen men wearing shorts in public. We felt like it was the San Francisco of Amman. Of course, if you walked into the same cafe in Columbus Georgia, you probably wouldn't have noticed much difference.

Wednesday nights, a group of girls get together to play soccer/football at the British Embassy. I'm not sure how all of this started, but it was fun to be invited along. The British Embassy has a great astroturf soccer field. This particular night, there were a lot of girls who wanted to play. One team was a group of Jordanian women who get together to play regularly. The rest have been playing on Wednesday nights and very in skill level. I haven't played soccer since I was about 12 and it's been 20 years, but I wasn't as bad as I thought I'd be. I think we may have lost the scrimmage by a point (3 to 4), but we scored the first goal and hung in there pretty well. I look forward to playing again soon.

  We are the Orange Team




















Thursday Jake and I spent the day at home. We had been borrowing our friend Kaylan's car while she was in Israel. Fortunately she returned home safely, unfortunately, we had to give her car back. It was AWESOME of her to let me us it while she was gone. Thank you.  Later that day, we went to the Embassy to get our car that we bought a few weeks ago. The paperwork with all the registration and insurance info isn't complete yet so we aren't supposed to drive it, but we wanted it parked at home and I wanted to have something in case I really needed to go somewhere. For dinner we went to the Embassy and then let Jake play at the park for a while to burn off some energy.

 

Jake discovered this little obstacle. He gets inside and says, "Don't worry Mommy, Jake will do it!"

 Hurry Mommy! Hurry!

 Cheese!!

Our big trip this week was to the Dead Sea. We went with Jon, Jessica, and Amelia (our social sponsors) and we all stayed at the Marriott. Jessica called ahead to see if we could check in early and they said we could come at 1PM. We timed our arrival for about 1:30 PM and when we arrived it was incredibly busy. I think every Christian in Jordan was at the Dead Sea Marriott trying to escape Ramadan and the heat, and of course all of the expats in Amman, doing the same. We stood in line. Their room was ready, but the man said ours wasn't ready yet, but we could upgrade to a better room, but it would have to be a smoking room. I wasn't willing to stay in a smoking room, so we had to wait. Jon and Jessica let us use their room to store our stuff and we all got dressed and headed to the pool. it was crowded and we couldn't find a place to put our stuff. Eventually we found a little piece of grass in the shade to put our stuff down and took the kids to the baby pool. Just then a nice old lady offered us 4 chairs right at the poolside of the kiddie pool.

We all played in the pool with the kids for a while and then headed down to the Dead Sea. I jumped right in to the mud pot and started slathering it on. I wanted to see what this coveted mud was all about. Jake was not interested in getting covered in mud. Chris, apparently wasn't either. The Dead Sea's high concentration of salt made for an interesting float. Jessica warned me not to shave my legs the morning of and I'm glad she did. It would have burned to get all that salt in any kind of cut or scratch. We dunked Jakes feet in just to say he was in it, but didn't want him to get it in his eyes.

We went back up to the hotel, got checked in then headed to the room to shower and rest. We went to dinner at the little sports pub at the hotel. (There isn't really anything outside the hotel area and even if there was, it wouldn't have been open due to Ramadan). The hotel has about 5 restaurants, which is pretty common around here, but only the pub was open before 7 PM. It gets a little late to wait until 7 to feed the little ones, but the Jordanian's don't eat until much later than we normally do. It makes it easy to get in right away without reservations.

I woke up early the next morning and went out to take some sunrise pictures. The West Bank was beautiful across the water, reminded me of the Badlands a little bit. When everyone else was awake, we went down for breakfast and then went swimming again. I took a dip in the mud once more and Chris went for another float and we took turns in the pool with Jake. It was a good first trip to the Dead Sea.

On the way home we went through Madaba because Jon and Jessica wanted to see if they could get a mosaic made before they leave Jordan. We also found out our table that we ordered from Osama a few weeks ago was ready and available for pick up. We made our way up the hill to Madaba and only got lost once before finding Osama's shop. We picked up our table, Jon and Jessica got theirs, and we were able to pick up Dan and Kaylan's table that was also ready.

Here are some pictures of our weekend:

Below floating in the Dead Sea.

Salt on the rocks along the shoreline.

Panoramic view of the Dead Sea. Jerusalem is straight across the water and Jericho just to the right. We could see the lights at night.

 The bottom left are the slippers they let you borrow to go in the Dead Sea. We made the mistake of wearing our sandals in the first day and they get really slimy and gross. The water is smells like sulfur. The bottom right is a clay pot full of the black mud from the Dead Sea. When I went down in the morning, some Asian men were just getting out of the Dead Sea and saw me putting on the mud from this pot. They directed me to some "fresh mud" that came straight out of the sea. There really was a difference, it wasn't as dry as the mud in the clay pot.


This was our view from the balcony after Jake fell asleep. There was an Oud (Stringed instrument similar to the lute) playing in one of the restaurants and we sat outside for a long time, relaxing. The lights are of Jericho and to the left a few hills over, we could see the lights of Jerusalem.

We stayed at the Marriott. It was a great hotel. Very nice.

 A family picture at sunset after we had dinner.

 Jake was not a fan of the mud. For a little boy who gets dirty all the time, he doesn't like dirt, mud, slimy anything or sand on his hands. Top right is a picture of me covered in the mud. Bottom left is Chris floating in the sea. And a duplicate of the clay pot picture.

 Below was Jake's favorite attraction. He still loves tractors. He said, "Wook! Meelie! A tractor!" (Look Amelia! A tractor!) She was not as interested, but it looks like she pretended to care...

 Sunset view of the "Adult Only" pool. Not getting much use in the evening.

Jake and I taking a Selfie.

Jake wanting to climb over the fence. 

 The lowest point on Earth!

 

I found this pretty interesting on our way up to Madaba from the Dead Sea. We took this little one-lane road, off the beaten path and passed by some vineyards. There were a bunch of grapes growing and a few other trees. This is literally out in the middle of almost nowhere, but here were grapes growing. As we went further up the hill, I noticed a tarp with a pool of water, and then more tarps with water and realized that is how they irrigate and store rain water when it rains. You can see pictures of the tarp pools an scan see the vibrant green colors of the grape vines just beyond them.

It wouldn't be a trip to Madaba without a herd of goats walking down the middle of the road.

I also find this really interesting about the Middle East. There a bedouins who live out with their herds and they always seem to be in some of the harshest places to live. They have these burlap tents, made of grain sacks and are set up along roadways and out in the middle of the desert. I believe their whole family lives in these tents because there are alway children playing outside and laundry hanging to dry. Often the sides of the tents are rolled up a little too.  Below is picture of a herd of goats. At this site, there were quite a few tents and they had quite a few water tanks too.  The next picture is of one of the tents. Quite an interesting life.

We finally made it up to Madaba and Jake was treated by Osama and given a white camel. Jake then swapped it because he wanted a Baby Camel. We swapped out camels in the basket for about an hour and he finally went away with one of the little camels that fell off one of those wind chimes or mobiles that you can kind of see in the top left of this picture. It kept him busy and he was quite a trooper for being in a place where he couldn't touch anything.

And this is a picture of our table. The finished product. It's really pretty and more vibrant in person. It's just a little coffee table size, but fits nicely where I swapped out one of the Embassy tables in our house.

We returned to a house with no food so we met Dan, Kaylan and Leila at the Embassy for dinner and then dropped off their table.

This morning Chris has his 2-hour, Arabic tutoring session so Jake and I headed to the park and then went on a breakfast date at Crumz. He fell asleep on the way to the grocery store at 10:30, and I made him wake up so he wouldn't ruin his long nap. It worked because he slept for about 3 hours while I've been drafting this incredibly long post. I hope if finds everyone well and thank you for taking the time to read it. ~ Bridget


Some info on the Dead Sea from Wikipedia:

The Dead Sea (Hebrew: יָם הַ‏‏מֶּ‏‏לַ‏ח, Yām HaMélaḥ, "Sea of Salt", also Hebrew: יָם הַ‏‏מָּוֶת, Yām HaMā́weṯ, "The Sea of Death"; Arabic:البحر الميت‎  al-Baḥr al-Mayyit (help·info),^[4]), also called the Salt Sea, is a salt lake bordering Jordan to the east, and Palestine and Israelto the west. Its surface and shores are 427 metres (1,401 ft) below sea level,^[3] Earth's lowest elevation on land. The Dead Sea is 306 m (1,004 ft) deep, the deepest hypersaline lake in the world. With 34.2% salinity (in 2011), it is also one of the world's saltiest bodies of water, though Lake Vanda in Antarctica (35%), Lake Assal (Djibouti) (34.8%), Lagoon Garabogazköl in the Caspian Sea (up to 35%) and some hypersaline ponds and lakes of the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica (such as Don Juan Pond (44%)) have reported higher salinities. It is 9.6 times as salty as the ocean.^[5] This salinity makes for a harsh environment in which animals cannot flourish, hence its name. The Dead Sea is 50 kilometres (31 mi) long and 15 kilometres (9 mi) wide at its widest point.^[1] It lies in theJordan Rift Valley, and its main tributary is the Jordan River.

The Dead Sea has attracted visitors from around the Mediterranean basin for thousands of years. Biblically, it was a place of refuge forKing David. It was one of the world's first health resorts (for Herod the Great), and it has been the supplier of a wide variety of products, from balms for Egyptian mummification to potash for fertilizers. People also use the salt and the minerals from the Dead Sea to create cosmetics and herbal sachets.

The Dead Sea seawater has a density of 1.240 kg/L, which makes swimming similar to floating.^[6][7]