We crossed the muddy waters of the Jordan (much of the volume is already extracted for use further south in the country by the time it is a few kilometres south of the Sea of Galilee). It winds through the valley that reminds many of us of the Okanagan - dry steep hills and a green valley bottom fed by irrigation. Water is such a focus of survival, economics and power in this part of the world! They have acres of covers to maximize the "winter" vegetable crop for sales to Europe. And then we turned east and started to climb.
The northeast of Jordan is covered with sharply contoured hills and valleys, again impressive by their stony nature, olive trees and buildings climbing up the hills. We went from over 400 meters below sea level to something like 1200m above sea level in the course of an hour or so.
Jerash was our destination; one of the major Roman centres in the area at the time of Jesus (one of the cities referred to as the Decapolis in the Bible). For all the sense of the rural, pastoral existence in Nazareth of 2000 years ago that we experienced yesterday, we were presented today with truly amazing ruins of a city of over 30,000. The major streets were lined by columns many stories high, and the temples of Zeus and Diana were huge, reminding me of gothic cathedrals in size. Today, I could get a glimpse of living in a city of the Roman empire. Then it went on to be christianized by Constantine and his followers until major earthquakes put an end to things in the eighth and ninth centuries. Earthquakes have had a big influence on things in this part of the world.
Tonight we sleep in Amman where the usual housing is limited to 4 stories, in part to protect from earthquakes. Like Calgary, in 1900, there were only about 2000 people living here and most everything is pretty new. Unlike Calgary,
