Hello everybody. For now we start off in Amman, the capital in the country of Jordan, where we visited after Cairo. We found out that Jordan is MUCH less crowded than Egypt and it was sort of a pleasant surprise because you don't have so many vendors or as much traffic, so it really felt different.
 
The first thing we did in Jordan was go to ancient ruins in a city called Gerasa from the times when the Greeks rules this part of the world. The funny part about going there is that we ran into part of the National Geographic group that we were with in Egypt (and we ended up seeing them again in Petra). We toured with them around the Greek ruins.
 
After visiting the Greek ruins, we started on our way south to Petra. We stopped off at the Dead Sea, whish is the lowest place on the planet as well as the saltiest. The Dead Sea is so salty that you can float on top of the water and read a book. It's also so salty that fish can't live in the water there, so that's why it's called the Dead Sea.
 
By the time we got to Petra we were already asleep so we wouldn't see it until the next day. In the morning we started on our way to Petra, but before you get to the city, you have to go through a gorge in the rocks called "the Siq." We were on our way there and saw a bunch of caves carved into the mountain and later found out they were ancient homes.
 
The passage through the Siq is really almost a mile long and once we were in it we saw that on both sides are channels that water used to flow through to provide water to the city. After walking for about 20 minutes we saw the treasury building, which is the one you see in the Indiana Jones movie. But unlike in the movie, there is no city inside, just a big room with a few smaller rooms.
 
After the treasury, we went to a big open area where me, Stefan, my Dad and our friend Rob climbed up to a place where you could see all of the ruins. We did a lot of climbing while we were in Petra so we could explore all of the old buildings. We went on a hike up to a place called the monastery, where there was a large treasury-like structure carved into mountain that sloped down and you could see the whole valley from there. The way things were carved right into the rocks was really cool.
 
That's all for now!