4 Jan - Kerak and Hammamat Afra
We left our hotel in Madaba, planning to visit the
castle of Kerak, bathe in the hot water
springs of Hammamat Afra
and reach
Petra by
the evening. We arrived at our first
destination at 11:30,
after a 2 hour drive
along
the famous King's
Road. The scenery was
breathtaking, beautiful
sunshine and not a
cloud in the sky.
Kerak
castle is
impressive:
it was
built by the
crusaders in
1242,
is
huge and has a
vast
network of
underground
galleries and
rooms
which enabled the
occupants
to stay
cool
during the hot summer
months. It was amusing
to
explore
all the
passages and the
children loved exploring
all the
dark
corners
with
their torch
headlights
!
We made it to the hot water springs around 15:15. They're
situated in the middle of nowhere, at the
end of a long windy
road,
but
the thought of
bathing in hot waters in a
spectacular desert
gorge
spurred us
on ! But we were pretty disappointed when
we
got there, after such
high expectations... It
was ugly, dirty,
no
changing
rooms despite
the new buildings
put up
during last
year's
renovation works and a lot
of
concrete laid with no respect for the
beautiful
natural surroundings.
The icing on the cake was the
men and women's
bathing
pools were separated !
Three or four pools were reserved for
men which
were
cleanish (if you're not too fussy)... but the
tiny
single, walled-in
pool
reserved for
women
was
filled with a
gray,
opaque water.
Despite being less
than a metre
deep,
the
bottom and even walls
of
the
pool couldn't be seen ! There
was no way Jenny and the girls
were going to
take a
swim in there ! After complaining, we were
redirected to a small
private pool where we
were given
permission
to bathe as a
family, which had
transparent waters and
was
at
39 degrees. Not
very e
nticing even so, but as we had come all
that
way and paid
the
entrance fee, we felt obliged to bathe
!
The remaining part of the drive to Petra was tiring: the King's
road is windy, crosses many small towns packed
with lorries and
sleeping policemen...
and to
top it all, we
encountered
roadworks
with a 60 km
detour...!
The hotel reserved by telephone was VERY basic: the room is very
chilly despite the
"heating",
the
shower
has two
positions,
cold
or
scalding hot,
not to mention the awful
decoration and
carpets.
On the
bright side of things,
we are at
Petra, we have 4 beds for
the night
and it's
quiet...
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| The King's
Road |
Inside Kerak
castle |
The hot water
springs of Hammamat Afra |
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| 