Our March 2009 trip was to Egypt and Jordan. We traveled with fourteen others on an Overseas Adventure Travel tour for two weeks in Egypt. Eight of us continued on for one week in Jordan.
We began our tour with an eleven hour flight from New York to Cairo. Just south of Cairo, we visited Saqqara including the step pyramid which is believed to be the oldest in Egypt. Other sites in the Cairo area were the Pyramids of Giza, the Citadel, the sprawling Khan el-Khalili bazaar and the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities. We flew to Aswan where we visited the Aswan High Dam that created Lake Nasar and Philae Temple that was moved as a result. At Aswan we boarded our Nile cruise boat for Luxor. Arriving four days later in Luxor, we toured Karnak and Luxor temples, had a dawn hot air balloon ride over the Valley of the Kings and a carriage ride after dark in a sandstorm. Egypt is a country of extreme contrasts of rich and poor, beauty and filth, desert and green. We were at all times accompanied by an armed security guard who rode or walked with us.
We flew from Cairo to Amman, Jordan, where tight security and accompanying guards continued. In contrast to Egypt, We thought Jordan was clean and very organized. We visited the ancient Roman city of Jerash and had dinner with a well off Jordanian family in Amman. We floated in the Dead Sea, saw Israel on the other side, and looked on the hills of Gilead, and Mt. Nebo. Traveling south on the Kings Highway we saw many Bedouin sheep herders living as they have for centuries. We finally arrived at Petra, an unbelievable place carved in rock by the Nabataeans, Arabs who dominated the area prior to the Romans. Wadi Rum, where the movie Lawrence of Arabia was partially filmed, was our last stop before returning to Amman, then to Cairo and our flight home.
The maps below show our tour route in both countries.
Click here to go to Saqqara & Giza; here for Cairo; here for Aswan; here for St. Simeon; here for The Nile; here for balloon ride; here for Luxor; here for Amman; here for the Dead Sea; here for Jerash; here for Madaba, Mt. Nebo, Wadi Mujib, here for Petra; here for Wadi Rum; here for miscellaneous.
