'As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the LORD surrounds his people both now and forevermore.' (Psalm 125:2) We are in the 3000 year old capital of Israel. After viewing the city panorama from the Mount of Olives we descended down the Bethany Hallel road towards Jerusalem. Below us lay the Kidron Valley; on its upper slopes sits the Golden Gate which was sealed by the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent to prevent the Jewish Messiah returning. A cem...

We left Amman at 745am for a one and three quarter hour drive to Jordan's northern border with Israel. Australian eucalyptus trees line the roads through the mountains of Moab. Eucalypts were planted in Galilee in the 1930's and served to eradicate the scourge of malaria by soaking up the swamps in which mosquitoes once multiplied. The Al Baqa Valley, which holds the largest Palestinian refugee camp of almost 400 000 people, stretched out to our right. Palestin...

Today we rose with the sun as it revealed a pastel colored panaroma of Petra before our departure. We would descend from 1440 metres above sea level down to the Desert Highway (900m) and finally to the Dead Sea which lies 442 metres below sea level. Every 150 metres we descend the temperature increases 1 degree celcius. Though the morning air was brisk, by midday we would be basking in the dry heat of Dead Sea sunshine. After a brief cameo from Nick 'Moses' Combe...

Departing Amman along the desert road for Petra our journey would take us south from the land of the Ammonites, through Moab and into ancient Edom. At AL QATRANA we passed by the Ottoman train line completed in 1908 for pilgrims to travel to Mecca from Damascus and to transport Ottoman troops south into Arabia. Then it was Muslim pligrims and the military; today trains transport minerals to the port of Aqaba. The land is rich in phosphate and where there is p...

As we arrived in Amman after a three hour flight from Dubai, Air Force One sat on the tarmac ready to whisk President Obama out of the Middle East. The newly rebuilt and refurbished Queen Alia Airport was chaotic. Having opened just two days before the arrival processes were in need of, shall we say, fine tuning. The 'patience training' we receive by living in Jakarta comes in handy when having to wait more than two hours to exit the terminal. It was worth the wa...