When we announced that we were going to Jordan a number of people raised some concerns about safety, prompted no doubt by the wars in every neighbouring country. Unperturbed we showed them the smarttraveller website which indicates that Jordan is generally safe. The only area that is listed under the "DO NOT TRAVEL" banner is the far north at the Syrian border. It specifically mentions not to go to Umm Qais. So naturally on our first day in Jordan we found ourselves at Umm Qais.
Now we had no actual intention of going there, we really wanted to go to Jerash. On arrival at our hotel we were asked whether we wanted to join a tour going either to the Dead Sea, or one to Jerash. As the latter had been the plan all along, we said yes. We had, rather naively, assumed that the tour would no longer head all the way up to the Syrian border. We were wrong. Tour is also probably the wrong word as it was us, Terry from France with a driver to take us to the sights.
After exploring the fairly impressive ruins of Jerash, and the charming castle at Aljun we were off to Umm Qais. As we were approaching the town our driver asked us, in his rather stilted English, whether we wanted lunch. Sandwich? Falafel? We nodded yes. He stopped the car and gestured for us to stay, or come, we weren't entirely sure. He returned a few minutes later with falafel wraps, for which he declined payment and we were off to the next set of ruins. Umm Qais was certainly not the most impressive ruin, but the views were absolutely sublime. Standing at the lookout we could see Israel to our left and Syria stretched out to our right. Spectacular and, as it turns out, perfectly safe to travel to, at least it was yesterday.
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