After breakfast we will take a tour of Madaba visiting the Church of St. George in the middle of town. We will also visit the church of apostles and the Archeological Museum. Then we head to Mount Nebo, known as Pisgah in the Bible. According to the Bible this is where Moses lived out his remaining days. We then head to Kerak which lies on the ancient caravan routes that used to connect Egypt to Syria and its commanding position almost 1000 meters above the Dead Sea Valley made it a strategic asset of great importance. After we finish our tour in Kerak we will head to Feynan - at the desert zone of Dana Biosphere Reserve - to spend the night. Overnight in an Ecolodge.
Meal plan: Breakfast & dinner
The Church of St. George in Madaba is the home of the Mosaic Map of Palestine, which represents the Holy Land and its surrounding regions. The mosaic, made around 560, measures a staggering 25 by 5 meters and was originally composed of over 2.3 million pieces.
According to the Bible this is where Moses lived out his remaining days, able to see the Promised Land but never to enter (Deuteronomy 34: 1-8). Mt. Nebo offers a fantastic view westward, with a vista that includes the Dead Sea, the West Bank, the Jordan River and, on a clear day, Bethlehem and Jerusalem.
Madaba, located 30 kilometres southwest of Amman, is most famous for its exquisite 6th-century mosaics. Its history dates back at least 3500 years, however. Madaba, which was known in the Bible as the Moabite town of Madaba, is mentioned in the Old Testament account of Moses in Exodus (Numbers 21: 30). Its most well-known mosaic lies on the floor of St George’s Church, depicting a map. However, the city is home to a number of tiled art displays, which many believe are even more complete and vibrantly colourful than the latter. Join a walking tour of the market town to discover these rarely visited works of art and listen to the bells summoning Christians to pray before dawn and bid Orthodox Christians to rise at first light, in this surprisingly religiously tolerant town.
Feynan is located in the Araba Valley, within the boundaries of Dana Biosphere Reserve. It was one of the largest copper works in the ancient Near East. Copper production in Feynan reached its peak under the Edomites (during the 9- 5th centuries BC) when mining and smelting techniques attained a high professional level and probably influenced the economic and political power of the Edomites. Giant mounds of more than 200,000 tons of slag attest to copper productions on an industrial scale. One can imagine endless caravans of pack animals carrying juniper beams from the uplands to stoke the furnaces. What remain today are ruins of Byzantine churches, an aqueduct, a water reservoir and a smelting furnace. The site has been exploited since the Early Bronze Age (middle of the third millennium BC) as well as during the Iron Age (9-5th centuries BC), and the Roman Period (2-4th centuries).
Kerak lies on the ancient caravan routes that used to connect Egypt to Syria and its' commanding position almost 1000 meters above the Dead Sea Valley made it a strategic asset of great importance. The city was the ancient capital of Moab and was also used by the Greeks and Romans. Kerak reached its full splendor in the 12th century with the arrival of the Crusaders. The major attraction at Kerak is the magnificent Crusader fortress of Kerak, which made Kerak the new capital of the province; superbly situated on the King's Highway where it could control all traffic from the north and the south and grow rich by the imposition of road-tolls. This castle soars above its' valleys and hills like a great ship riding waves of rock; an excellent example of the Crusaders' architectural military genius.
Feynan Ecolodge is a solar-powered lodge and exclusively candle-lit. Isolated from paved roads and electricity supplies, the Ecolodge is a totally new concept in environmently-friendly accommodation and is rated one of the world’s top 50 eco lodges by National Geographic magazine.
