Jericho

Monday, Maylanne and I decided to treck on to Jericho to see the oldest known city in the world. We tried to use Alternative Tours for guidance, but had no luck. So off we set solo, with our tour books in hand on the bus. The bus literally dropped us off in the middle of the desert, about 5km away from Jericho, with nothing insight except two gas stations!

 

After having a good laugh about how it was 44 degrees outside and it looked like we were about to start walking, we made way toward the gas station to top up our water. Luckily, we discovered cabs come by to bring people into the city, which was a huge relief.

Now granted, there is not the humidity here that there is at home, but 44 degrees is 44 degrees! I was dripping just from standing still!

The cab driver just assumed the places we'd like to see, so took us first to the Church of the Sycamore tree, dedicated to Zacchaeu, who climbed the tree to get a better view of Jesus in Luke's Gospel. The church is Greek Orthodox and very colourful.

Next we visited the old city remains, dated to 8000-7000BC. I'd love to say I paid a lot of attention to detail here, but was feeling tapped on archaeological remains at this point and it was so hot it was frankly difficult to concentrate/care about what rooms we were looking at.

We did however take the cable car up Mt of Temptation to visit the Monastery of Temptation, which is built into the mountain face. This was quite something! The current monastery was built in the 1800s, the original and past editions had been destroyed during earthquakes and conquests. We did not get a view inside the dorm rooms, but you could tell from the space between door they were tiny! The chapel was small, and sadly no pictures were allowed out of respect. The view from the balcony off the chapel was spectacular--you could see the Jordan River, Jordan and the Dead Sea...other than that, there wasn't much around but desert! The city really is quite secluded.

Looking out toward the Jordan River