Day 22 - Jerash and some off the beaten path exploration

(Gerassa)

When we went to bed last night, we were in the middle of a pretty serious thunderstorm and when we woke up this morning, it was still raining. That is good news for the people in Israel (it was raining over there too) and the people here in Jordan. Our waiter at the steakhouse we ate at tonight (I won’t tease you by telling you how good it was) told us that it has been the biggest storm they've had in three years.

Since it was raining we decided not to make the long drive down to Petra today (it will take about three hours to get there). Instead we decided to do what we were planning on doing on Tuesday, head up to Jerash (ancient Gerassa) and then try to find the place where Jacob wrestled with God.

(a much better sign for Gerassa than the actual one)

We got a little bit turned around on our way up to Jerash (highway detour = 1 hour of being completely lost.) Jordan isn’t the most friendly place for non-Arabic speakers (or readers) to drive. We had a map, but while the road numbers are in English numbers on the map, the numbers are rarely in English on the signs. We made it out to Jerash eventually, but it took longer than it could have if we knew where we were going or if roads were consistenly marked. When we finally made there we were wondering how we were going to be able to find the archeological site. We had a hard enough time finding the modern city where everyone lived, how were we going to find the ancient one? Fortunately it is gigantic and the main road runs right next to it. Which is good because the sign for the parking lot and ticket office said, “Crafts center parking.” And then in small letters, “(archeological site)”. I think the craft center was the gift shop.


Gerassa was a really cool site, it was huge. Dad had never seen a Roman city before, and this one was a great one to start with. He said he thought it was as cool as the pyramids in Egypt. It took us three hours to walk through the site. It had two theaters, a hippodrome (for horseracing), temples to Zeus and to Artemis (which were later turned into churches) and some great, great roads. It is funny with all that cool stuff that is still there, it is the roads and the sewage systems of these Roman cities that I think are the most incredible. There were circular stones in the road that I think were kind of like ancient manhole covers (or maybe drains). You could see a few feet of empty space under the street through some cracks and the water still drained into them pretty well. I’m amazed that the stones of the streets haven’t collapsed into sewer yet.

(One of the super awesome streets. Lots of pictures of Gerassa, I know, but give me a break, this was the only dry part of the day.)

After we left Jerash we tried to make it down to ancient Succoth and Penuel and Mahanaim. Bill Shlegel at Ibex (the group we went through in Israel) gave me directions at his house the other night. He said that from the Dead Sea, you take the road that runs alongside the Jordan River north to a city called Dayr Allah, which is where the ancient city Succoth was and where the Jabbok river runs into the Jordan. Up the Jabbok from Dayr Allah are the two tell’s of Penuel and Mahanaim. Where the Jabbok river cuts through the mountains is probably the pass that Jacob took when he came back into the promised land. Mahanaim is the place where Jacob wrestled with God, and somewhere between Penuel and Succoth is where Esau intercepted Jacob before he made it back into the promised land.

Dad and I decided that we would try to make it to Dayr Allah from Jerash, so we would have to cut through the mountains and drop down into the Jordan rift valley north of Dayr Allah then head into the city from the north side. That sound like a simple scenario, but without highway numbers it was more on the exciting side. It took us through a pretty mountainous hilly area of Jordan and through a lot of small towns where I’m pretty sure tourists never go.

So we drove through these small (and pretty poor) towns listening to the Rolling stones and Grand Funk Railroad, trying to matchup anything we saw written in English with stuff on our map. Somehow we made it down to just north of Dayr Allah without incident, rain and sometimes really thick fog not withstanding.

Eventually we made it down the Jordan and then to south to Dayr Allah. Dayr Allah was another place that doesn’t see tourists, the roads were full of people selling vegatables (there are hundreds and hundreds of greenhouses and gardens in this part of Jordan. After some driving back and forth (and crossing through a military checkpoint a couple of times,) we found the Jabbok river and started to work our way up towards where the two tells are. There wasn’t an easy road back there, we just kind of pointed ourselves east and tried to keep the gap in the hills (caused by the river) in front of us. We drove back far enough that I think I saw the first of the two tells about a quarter mile in front of us, then we hit another military checkpoint. There are a ton of military checkpoints in Jordan, I bet in our two days here we have driven through 20 military checkpoints, and in almost all of them when they see that we are white guys driving a rental car they wave us through. Here they did not. They asked us where we were going. Not many people here speak English, including the guys at the military checkpoints, so when they asked neither of us where quite sure how to say, “we are trying to find the unexcavated tels of Mahanaim and Penuel.” Dad looked at me and I looked at the guard and said, “we are looking for two archeological tells…” The soldier continued to look at me so I kept talking, “…they are like hills that ancient cities are buried under…” At that point the soldier said, “passports please” and asked us to pull of the side of the road. Apparently I gave him the wrong answer.

The soldiers had us pull our car over and open the trunk. He looked at our passports, looked through our trunk and our car and then asked us again where we were trying to go. At this point we decided that better be dumb tourists so we took our road map and asked them how to get to the Dead Sea. They gave us back our passports and pointed us back down the road that we came from. At that point the military guys became pretty friendly, dad told them the eight words that he knows in Arabic and they enjoyed that. One of the guys introduced himself to us, Faraz, and then they waved us goodbye. I think that ultimately they were trying to help us, they just didn’t see any possible reason that tourists would want to go down the road that we were trying to go down. Or maybe they were keeping us from trying to blow up the dam that was further upriver. Either way, we weren't able to make it up to the tells. So we went back down to Dayr Allah then headed back south to our hotel at the dead sea.

And that was it for today. There is still a pretty serious storm going on outside. Hopefully it rains hard all night and then clears up tomorrow, but even if it doesn't we'll be headed down to Petra in the morning.

Until tomorrow, thanks for reading.