This beautiful picture that you see is what we did on Tuesday morning. It was a wonderful day that started oh so early. A group that decided that wake up earlier than the others, had to wake up at 4:30 in order to be ready to leave by 5:30am. We wanted to get to the desert at least 2 hours earlier than everyone else because the desert gets incredibly hot as you can imagine. The other thing that we were going to go see was the St. George's monastery.
So we arrived at the site, were dropped off, and were allowed simply to take in the beauty of the desert sunrise. The colors are brighter and more beautiful during sunrise hours than during the day. Then we began our hike down to the very isolated Orthodox monastery. It was quite a hike down, perhaps 400m vertically down although it took us at least 30 minutes to walk to St. George's.
We weren't alone as we saw some dressed in black Romanian Orthodox nuns who started some 15 minutes before us and beat us to the front door entrance. This way we knew that we were going to be allowed inside, since this wasn't guaranteed...the only thing that got us inside was that our guide is Fr. Tim, an Orthodox priest.
We spent 45 minutes in the monastery praying and observing the beautiful icons. Then we left and hiked along the edge of a gorge/canyon until we arrived at a road. There, we were picked up by the bus and were taken to Jericho. It was around 8:30 am at this point and so we were a bit tired...
Jericho was hot, but we went to the monastery commemorating the site where Jesus was tempted in the Desert....it was so incredibly hot. We took a cable car up to the monastery and were allowed to enjoy the most beautiful view of the city and surrounding area. This monastery was also very beautiful as you will see from some of the pictures. Aside from the day when we went to the Dead Sea, this was one of the most tiring days that we have had...but is was all worth it!!
Thank you for visiting...God bless you!!!
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