"TERRA SANCTA" Tour 2007-08 PART 1

The first leg of my journey was the departure from Baghdad, which involved a late-night ride across town in an armored bus (the "Rhino"), a few hours crashing at the transient compound at the airport, a military flight into Amman and then a taxi ride to one of Amman's five-star hotels. The rest of the day was spent in a room-service-and mini-bar-induced stupor, watching, for some unexplained reason, two Sandra Bullock movies back-to-back on Jordanian satellite TV. Upon waking up the next morning, I felt sufficiently prepared to launch my pilgrimage across the Holy Land, perhaps in search of redemption, perhaps in search of cheap knick-knacks carved from camel bones. These are products that are offered readily in this region.

JORDAN

I toured some of the sites of Amman, which in ancient times was known as "Philadelphia." There's a fantastic Roman amphitheatre downtown and a citadel on a prominent hill overlooking what was then the ancient town. I chose the typical mode of transportation in Jordan by hiring a taxi driver for the day. I negotiated to be taken to my desired destination, Petra, and we set off. Along the way I was upsold on a few additional sites, making it a very lucrative day for my driver when he finally gave me the final tally at the end of the day, and checked me in to the hotel that he swore would give me a very special rate. They didn't. Along the way I got in my first of the many Bible-related sites I would see over the next three weeks. Mt. Nebo, where Moses looked out across the desert and over the Dead Sea, spying the Promised Land that he was destined to never set foot on; my driver pulled up to the ticket counter and said, "I give you ten minutes here then we go, okay meester?" And thus my tour of the Holy Land began.

I was pleasantly surprised when I found out the reason for our next stop was the famed mosaic map of the early Christian world serving as the floor of the St. George's Church in the town of Madaba. I was growing suspicious of my driver's insistence that I 'just had to see' all the additional sites he was bringing me to on what was just supposed to be a two-hour drive south from Amman to Petra. But being a map enthusiast I gave my driver a thumbs up when I finally realized why he was dragging me into what appeared to be a very non-descript church in a very non-descript town. The map, built in 560 AD, once contained over two million pieces and identified every major biblical site along the Levant from Lebanon to Egypt. While much is missing now, enough remains to fire the imagination as to its original grandeur.



I got my first view of the famed Dead Sea as we skirted down its Jordanian coastline, passing a number of resort hotels but the most part driving along a desolate desert cliff side separating a dead sea from a dead land.

Eventually, after a few more stops at some Crusader castles, I made it to one of the major destinations of my trip: the spectacular ancient city of Petra, with its magnificent buildings carved directly out of the rose-colored rock of a hidden cavern.