Welcome to Jordan.

A land where history's ancient echoes mingle with the vibrant rhythms of modern life, where culture, adventure and mystique converge.

Uniting past with present, I visited this country nestled in the heart of the Arab world, for two weeks to see things like the ancient city of Petra, the beauty of the deserts of the Wadi Rum, and even the Dead Sea.

I'm Alice Ford and we're back in Northern Norway.

This is the Garden Island, Kauai, Hawaii.

As you guys can see, it is absolutely beautiful down here.

The views are just already stunning.

We are on our way to Antarctica.

So right now we're having a traditional tea here.

Wow.

Welcome to the Rose Red city, aka Petra.

This is one of the Seven Wonders of the entire world.

It was built 2000 years ago by the Nabataeans, and it was one of the most important trading cities in the world.

Today I'm getting to experience it's grandeur.

Behind me is the monastery.

One of the things people from all over the world come to see.

Petra was a city where people both lived, worshiped and were buried.

Many of the amazing and famous buildings here in Petra are actually tombs.

There are more than 800.

The monastery, however, was actually a banquet hall where people came to eat and have fun.

Since I had entered through the back door trail, I would be walking the city in reverse and it was way bigger than I expected.

Taking me another six hours to walk from the monastery through the main entrance, where most tourists entered from this part of the city, I followed a series of stairs and pathways carved into the sandstone that pass through tourist shops and teahouses that border the edges of the trail.

Every now and then, a donkey or horse would come, snorting up or down the path, carrying an oversized human that had already tired of all the stairs.

When these stairs ended, I was spit out into a huge open area that once held the city's main buildings, and I'm sure they must have been magnificent.

It's hard to pick and choose which places to stop and gander at and which ones to miss, as there is just so much to see in this massive ancient city.

The ancient city was established sometime around the first century by the Nabataean, and this ancient metropolis flourished as a crucial crossroads for trade routes.

A testament to the Nabataean engineering prowess and architectural ingenuity.

The buildings were designed with the influences from Egypt, Rome, Greece and the Umayyads a testament to the architects who wanted the city to be welcoming to the many cultures that passed through its streets.

In its heyday, Petra thrived as a bustling city.

There were fountains and pools throughout the city as well, and it was one of the most important cities for trade between the East and West.

However, the city gradually declined.

Sometime around the fourth century, a huge earthquake decimated much of the city, and after that it soon fell into ruin.

By the seventh century, there was little to no one living here, and it fell into relative obscurity.

Today, Petra's enduring allure lies in its well preserved tombs, intricate facades, and the archeological remnants of a once vibrant civilization.

At 6 p.m., the gates to Petra close, but a few days a week it reopens at night for a special experience called Petra by Night.

It was a long walk to get back down to the Treasury from the town of Wadi Musa, but seeing the Treasury by candlelight was definitely a unique experience.

Welcome to Amman on the capital of Jordan.

Here we're going to discover food, culture, customs and even a little ancient history.

Let's get exploring.

The first place I'm taking you is to see some of Ammans ancient roots.

This is the Amman citadel.

It sits at a hill, the highest point in the city.

And it goes all the way back past the Bronze Age.

Tons of history here.

Even a familiar name, Marcus Aurelius and Marc Anthony have ties to this ancient city.

Which thousand years ago was actually called Philadelphia.

It was named after the Egyptian king and use the Greek name.

Amman is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, with a history spanning nine millennia.

The citadel is in the ancient heart of Old Amman and has several ruins of old castles, temples and living structures that any history buff will want to explore.

One of the most prominent features here is the Temple of Hercules.

This is built in the first century for the ruler of the Roman Empire at the time, Marcus Aurelius.

Now there used to be part of a hand and an elbow that historians believe was actually Hercules.

Hence the name of this temple.

No one knows what happened to the rest of the ancient statue, believed to be Hercules, but from what remains of the Roman times, I'm sure it was quite a piece of art.

The Romans built the Temple of Hercules, and they ruled here for a few hundred years, but they weren't the only ones that ruled this land.

Later on, the Umayyad Arabs came here, and they built what's behind me here.

This is a cistern built around 730.

And over to my left is one of the mosques that they built.

There's just so much history embedded here.

So many different people that came through here from the Bronze Age and before.

If you're interested in history, you'll find this place so fascinating.

One of the most impressive ruins at the citadel is the ancient castle from the Umayyad Arabs.

All that remains today is an outer shell.

But use your imagination and you can just picture what it would have been like.

Walking the halls of this ancient building.

The most well-preserved piece of architecture from the time of Philadelphia is the Roman Theater.

It seats up to 6000 and is still used today.

Located right here in the heart of Amman.

There's nothing quite like going to have a meal at your grandmother's house, right?

Well, right now we're at a restaurant called Beit Sitti, and it means my grandmother's house.

We're going to be taking a cooking class here now.

This restaurant was voted one of the ten best vegetarian restaurants in the world back in 2014.

And I cannot wait to get in there and try some of the traditional Jordanian dishes.

And so what we do is out of her grandmother's house, out of our grandmother's house, out of her house.

We decided we wanted to empower women.

So we bring women here to get them to teach you how to cook these dishes that she used to teach us, and we tried to empower them in that way.

Today we have Amalek, and she's going to be teaching us how to make one of my favorite dishes.

Today we're going to learn how to make maqluba.

Have you ever heard of it?

I have not.

Okay.

Amazing, I love it.

You've been here ten days and you haven't.

Okay, good.

Today we're going to learn how to make this dish.

And this is made with eggplant, cauliflower, chicken and rice.

And we're going to flip it upside down.

We call it maqluba because maqluba translated means flipped upside down okay.

A lot of the dishes in Arabic cuisine and these are homemade dishes, the dishes that you can't really find in restaurants.

So the referred to or they're named after the way they're cooked.

So if you know galayet bandora, which you will be trying, it's tomatoes with onions, but they're cooked in a pan.

So we call it a pan.

Oh this is the name in Arabic.

Galayet.

All right.

So today we're making maqluba.

I would be making several dishes.

And the first was the upside down dish known as maqluba, which starts with oil and some rice to cover the bottom on the pot.

Then I add some already cooked chicken and lined the pan with sliced cooked eggplant.

Then cauliflower and more rice are added with some local Arabic spices that they call seven spices.

Follow this with some chicken stock and then put the whole pot on the stove to simmer.

I left my eggplant to char on the open stove, and you actually see a lot of this vegetable in dishes in Jordan, because it grows in abundance and fall is actually harvest time for eggplant.

So they use a lot of seasonal ingredients, which I was really excited to see as this was cooking.

I got some of the next dishes prepared by cutting some vegetables for a fattoush salad and making a pan of roasted Arabic vegetables.

Once the skin on the eggplant was very well charred, it was skinned, finely chopped and combined with tahini and mix to create baba ganoush.

After that, I whipped up some Arabic bread, which is a very simple recipe of flour, yeast, and a little bit of sugar and salt, making it into small pancakes and placing it in a pan to bake.

After letting it rise for a few minutes.

So we've got our feast here, but the last stop is for our maqluba, which is upside down dish, so we put a plate on top.

I am going to put my plate under this pot and we're going to flip.

And wow, beautiful.

Let's eat.

Look at this piece we prepared of Arabic bread what we call it America baba ganoush.

We've got this fantastic salad, vegetables and the upside down dish.

We've got that coconut cake cooking.

So, so many fantastic local Arabic and Jordanian dishes and I cannot wait to dig in.

Thank you so much for teaching me.

To burn off a few calories, I had it downtown to the souks with a first stop at the gold souks.

Now, gold in Jordan is typically a higher quality than in the US.

So if you're looking for jewelry, this is a great place to look.

And much of the city has entire blocks dedicated to this or that.

And I loved looking around for gifts, scarves, and local spices and treats too.

But these gold souks are definitely something to stop in, even if just to look in the windows.

Street food is also incredibly good and incredibly cheap in Amman, so don't be afraid to try a few things, namely knafeh and falafel.

From Amman, I'm headed north to one of the largest and most well-preserved sites of ancient Roman architecture in the world.

This is Jerash.

It's some 6500 years old.

It was one of the ten great cities of the Roman Decapolis era, and it's nicknamed the Pompeii of the Middle East.

Unlike Petra, Jerash was built by the Romans.

It was one of the ten great capital cities that helped spread their rule, and they're oftentimes barbaric tradition and culture far abroad from Rome itself.

This place has been inhabited since the Bronze Age at the crossroads of civilizations like the Romans, the Greek, the Byzantine and the Umayyad, it was actually lost to the sand for centuries.

And over the last 70 years, they've actually been slowly excavating and unearthing this massive Roman city.

Where we're standing now would have been ground zero for the chariot races.

There are stands over to my right for spectators and what I believe would maybe be the referees over on the left, although I'm not sure now.

For hundreds of years this was used for chariot races, but later it was actually transformed into an arena for gladiators.

This place is a living history lesson and with things like war and religious destruction and even city expansions destroying so much of our ancient history around the world, being able to walk through a place so intact from so long ago really inspires me to learn and to wonder about what this place must have once been like.

Now, I've been to other ancient Roman cities around the world, and the roadways that are intact are always some of the best things to see, because these have been around for thousands of years and it's still intact.

Chariots drove down these horses, lots of people, over thousands of years, and now we're getting to walk on it too, just really special place to be.

It said that Jerash was absorbed into the Roman province of Arabia around the second half of the first century, which at the time included the cities of Philadelphia, Petra and Bastrop, which was in modern day Syria.

The Romans ensured security and peace so that people could devote their time to economic development, and Jerash is said to have been one of the largest and wealthiest cities in the ancient Near East at the time.

Surprising fact about this mostly Muslim country is that many of the roots of Christianity started right here.

This is Mount Nebo, one of Jordan's many religious sites.

And just behind me is where in the Old Testament, Moses looked out and saw the Holy Land.

Christianity may not be the main religion in Jordan anymore, but it is a prominent destination in the Holy Land for religious tourism.

From this spot, it's possible to see right into the West Bank of Jerusalem on a clear day.

A Christian church from the Byzantine times also stands at this site.

It's full of ancient mosaics and lots of history.

Jordan is also home to the baptism site of Jesus, which is located on the Jordan River and the Christian city of Maraba.

That holds ancient Byzantine churches and the oldest mosaic map of the Holy Land.

The Madaba map Welcome to the Dead Sea.

Right now we're in the lowest place on the entire planet.

The first thing you notice as your legs touch the sea is the salt.

With every little nic or scratch stinging from the high salinity.

It's super easy to float here in the Dead Sea because the salinity level is extremely high.

And that's not the only fun fact this at sea hasn't been connected to the Mediterranean for almost 2 million years, so there aren't many fish or crabs left in it.

But there are plenty of microorganisms and bacteria still living in this body of water.

The real Dead Sea experience also involves getting slathered up in the famous mud of the Dead Sea for a full beachside spa day.

Dead sea mud is high in minerals, so it nourishes, moisturizes and improves the texture of skin.

This salt lake is also said to improve all kinds of health ailments, but mostly it just feels really great.

After letting the mud soak in for 15 minutes, you rinse, scrub with salt, and then rinse again.

And that is the official Dead Sea spa experience.

I just rinsed stuff.

I am feeling rejuvenated and exfoliated.

If you are coming to Jordan, you definitely can't miss coming to the Dead Sea.

I hope you're ready for a wet and wild adventure.

Located next to the Dead Sea, this is Wadi Mujib.

It's the Grand Canyon of Jordan and the lowest nature reserve on Earth.

And we're going to head in the river and head up this canyon.

This is called the Sikh Trail.

It's part walk, part float It's one of a few trails here in the reserve.

You can also go canyoneering or regular hiking.

The Wadi Mujib River cuts through these huge sandstone canyons and eventually enters the Dead Sea at 410m below sea level.

The area was protected as a reserve in 1987, and has since become a biosphere reserve as well.

The river is fed by seven tributaries, which means it has water all year long and supports a large amount of biodiversity.

It is in an extremely water scarce place though, and is more.

Resorts are built along the Dead Sea and more livestock graze in the country of Jordan.

This river could easily be reduced to a trickle in the years to come.

Vast.

Echoing and godlike.

That's how this place was described by Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia.

Welcome, everybody, to the Wadi Rum desert.

This is a Unesco World Heritage Site, protected for its immense culture of the Bedouins.

And over the next few nights, I'm going to be staying here at a Bedouin camp.

And I am so excited to learn about the Bedouin culture and try some of their foods that they enjoy and immerse myself in this just spoke tacular desert landscape.

After a quick tour of my room, I set off to get some fantastic views of the sunset.

This is just such a beautiful place and I was really blown away by the landscape here.

Quite different than most of the desert landscapes that I'm used to in the American Southwest.

The color of the sand is just so captivating, with the rich colors of orange and all of the different weird looking rocky spires that stick out of the ground are just so mesmerizing to look at.

But I couldn't stay up there for long.

Soon enough, it was time for dinner.

And the way that the Bedouins cook is actually really cool.

They have these metal structures that they line with different meats and vegetables, and they actually lower them down into a pit in the sand underneath.

This is a fire, and it's kept hot throughout the day so that the food just slowly cooks.

So at around 7 p.m., they unburied it and they pull it out from this chamber, and you have this hot tray of slow roasted meats and vegetables.

And it was so good.

The next day we had a full day of exploring in the desert, which started with a drive to the southern border of the park for a hike.

Our Bedouin guide, Salaam was also our tour guide for the hike, and his family has been hiking in this region for generations, so he was sharing his knowledge with us as well.

Like how to track snakes, how to tell which are poisonous and which aren't, just from looking at the way their body moves across the sand.

And this is without even ever seeing the snake.

It's just looking at the track it made across the sand.

He also pointed out some really unique features as we went on the hike, like an old stone pile that was actually used as a tiger trap about 300 years ago when tigers roamed this area.

But we made our way higher and higher, and we actually got to this high point where we could see right into the country of Saudi Arabia.

Salaam, will you tell us where we are again?

We are at Wadi Rum area.

We are South Jordan.

We are now in Hush Mountain.

We are on the top of the mountain.

There is the highest mountain in Jordan.

It called Umm ad Dami.

1845m from the sea.

And behind this mountain, is Saudi Arabia You see the far mountain there, that is already in Saudi Arabia border.

Spectacular stone arches and just mesmerizing rock formations.

This place reminds me so much of the American Southwest.

And there's even some slot canyons here which are called Sikhs.

And I'm about to check one of.

Our last stop on this wonderful journey through Jordan is here in the city of Aqaba.

I've headed to the southern side of the country where right next to Israel here.

And just a couple of kilometers from Saudi Arabia.

Behind me is the Red Sea.

And this is a place that I've been wanting to come and scuba dive for a very long time.

I've heard the colors for the coral are just extremely vibrant, and there are lots of fish just like you see in your fish tank at home.

So today I'm heading under the water.

Hopefully we're going to see a lot of marine life, and I cannot wait to show you more of this underwater world.

Aqaba is the only coastal city in Jordan, and it also serves as its main port for industry.

It's a vibrant place with a mix of old school tradition as well.

You'll find an old fortress here and lots of shops and restaurants as well.

Being just an hour from the Wadi Rum desert and not far from Petra, this is part of Jordan's Golden Triangle for tourism, so you'll see lots of other travelers while you're here exploring too its main draw is definitely the Red Sea, and if you're not a scuba diver, you can get out on the water on a glass bottom boat.

Soon enough, I was on my dive boat and jumping in the water near the shoreline at two of the most popular dives box here in Aqaba.

Now the King of Jordan actually loves scuba diving, so he has made quite a few manmade diving locations in this area.

There are a few planes.

There are over a dozen pieces of old military equipment, and there's also several hundred meters of sunken netting that helps the corals grow.

The reefs were quite hearty in some places, but not as colorful as I expected.

And lacking the marine life I was definitely used to seeing in other areas of the world.

I've been scuba diving.

I know there are some spectacular places to dive here in the Red Sea, and for me, while the equipment was really neat, I would much rather see fish, turtles, and brightly colored corals than manmade equipment.

Now, I was lucky enough to see one green sea turtle and some pretty colorful fish, but it was not as spectacular, as I had been told by other tourists and other divers in the area.

It is great that Jordan has invested so much money into the reefs, and I hope that it's successful in the years to come, and keeping corals and marine life healthy in this part of the Red Sea.

All in all, this trip to Jordan has been eye opening and incredible with so much diversity in history, culture and biodiversity and species too Jordan is certainly a country that offers a unique blend of history and culture and thrill seeking.

We have seen so much from the Grandeur of Petra to the Wadi Rum desert, to right here at the Red Sea, and even gotten to try some of that famous Jordanian cuisine.

I hope you guys have enjoyed joining me on another adventure as always, I'm Alice Ford.

Never stop exploring