Kerak and Shobak

Have you ever seen a Crusader castle?  I have.  Two of them in fact! First, we drove out to Kerak. Kerak is one of the largest crusader castles in the Levant area. Saladin besieged it several times, finally conquering it in 1189. 

When we were approaching Kerak, I kept wondering where it was because we were driving through a city.  Then our driver told us to look up...and there it was! Kerak! A real life crusader castle. 

Kerak castle!

View of the countryside

Hallways!

Joy and Courtney hanging out. 

Melissa living it up :-P

One of the coolest things about Kerak were the underground tunnels that ran EVERYWHERE.  I don't even think we found all of the tunnels, there were just so many.  Kerak was huge.

Who likes Castles? Mary likes Castles

There was a karate group running around Kerak the same time we were.  I'll have to mention to Kancho about training on a castle...I'm sure he could fly all of Phoenix out to Jordan for a day or two :-P 

After Kerak, we stopped in at a small restaurant for huumous and falafel sandwiches and then got back into the van and drove to Shobak.  Shobak is only a half hour away from Petra, whereas Kerak was close to the Dead Sea, so it was quite a drive.  Most of us slept on the way there.  

Though Shobak was smaller, it stuck out more, to me, at least, because of the barren, desolate landscape it was in.  The natural beauty around Shobak was astounding; the mountains had patterns carved into them by the wind and there was just absolutely nothing as far as the eye could see, except rolling mountains. Beautiful.  

Shobak!  And a dust storm brewing.

Walking up to Shobak

Ruins!

Joy on top of the Castle

Another quick note:  Shobak used to be three stories; but time, sieges, and earthquakes have reduced it to one mostly, two in places.  Just imagine how big is used to be!

Courtney, Joy and Sawyer

So, I've decided the ACTUAL reason for Shobak's destruction was a Dragon, skyrim style. 

Apparently one of the only castles with a curved walkway like this, built as such to protect from the wind. 

As we were getting ready to leave, Melissa was telling us about this escape tunnels that ran from the castle, through the mountain and led out and down at the bottom of the mountain for the royalty, soldiers and citizens living in Shobak to use in the even of a siege.  She then continued to tell us how she had gone down one of them when she had been at Shobak with CIEE earlier in the weekend.  The more she talked, the more I was intrigued.  She showed us the tunnel she had descended:  

In one end...

And Courtney, Joy and I wanted to go for it.  Melissa already had, and the others weren't so sure, (which, really was probably the intelligent decision)  but Courtney had a flashlight and I was ready to throw caution to the wind and do this.  How many times was I going to be at a crusader castle, in Jordan, looking down an ancient escape tunnel?  We knew there was a light at the end, eventually; Melissa had been down this same tunnel.  And Courtney had a flashlight!  Down the three of us went.

It was rather precarious; there were steps about a third of the way down, but then the steps had eroded into the stone, and it was very steep, very dusty, and very slippery.  Courtney kept the light in the middle, with Joy leading and me bringing up the rear. Visibility wise, it was the perfect arrangement, there was just enough light for the three of us to see clearly.  Behind us, it was truly dark as pitch.  I hadn't ever seen darkness like that before.  We carefully made our way down through the abyss, especially careful with our footing.  I was pretty sure that a slip here would have meant a slide all the way to the bottom.

Gradually the steps returned, and it became less steep, until - almost sooner than I had expected - we saw light at the end of the tunnel Sure enough we had made it through the escape tunnel, and there was a ladder leading to the surface.  To be honest, climbing it was the scariest part for me - I've never been good friends with ladders.

and out the other!

As we stumbled back up the hill, blinking in the sunlight, our van came rumbling around the corner with the rest of our group already inside.  We dusted ourselves off, hopped in, and settled down for the three hour drive back to Amman.