Month in Pictures - Um Al Jimal

Although today isn't one of them, we have had some nice weekends and we've flipped through our now very worn Rough Guide Jordan to find spots we haven't visited before.

Three weeks ago we headed to Um Al-Jimal. "Mother of the Camel" - named because the town is over a spring so there was food there and people let their camels graze there after the town was abandoned. We were told that a local sheikh has a heard of white camels (my favorite camel color) but even though we saw a lot of Um Al Jimal, we saw no white camels (or any camels).

We did see this massively huge bug.

The archaelogical site was quite large - it had been a town housing thousands at one point and more recently was a camp site for French soldiers during world war I. Now it is empty - there was one tent there so many there is an active archaeologist on site - but no guards and no one at the tourist office to take our entrance fee. We own someone 1 JD ($1.41).

The site is near the city of Mafraq on the Syrian border. When visiting Syria with Dave and Karen we went to Bosra, which is known for its black basalt amphitheater. This town is probably just 10 miles away (due south and across the border) and thus has the same black stone.