The Karak desert castle is a famous ‘crusader castle’ but the occupation of the Franks (the crusaders) was only 46 years (1142 – 1188 AD); a short time in the castles long history. Inscriptions found inside the fortress, combined with historical sources indicate that it was originally built by Mesha, king of the Moabites as a temple to the Moabite God, Chemosh during the Iron Age in 850 BC. It has been conquered, occupied and added on to many times since, by many civilizations. The huge multi-layered castle is a maze of corridors and rooms and if only rocks could talk, the stories it could tell! I leaned into the stone walls trying to absorb the history and let my imagination run loose. It was fun at the time but might have contributed to the horrific nightmares of violent death and destruction that I had for the next four nights. Just a wild guess!

We have done some great hiking, met wonderful people, ate delicious food, seen incredible sights but we are ready for warmer nights. And both my Achilles’ continue to be stubbornly uncooperative. So we returned south to Aqaba to cool our heels for a few days on the coast of the Red Sea before taking the ferry back to Egypt.

The evening we planned to leave Jordan, the wind turned ferocious and the ferry was cancelled. We sheltered ourselves and all our belongings back inside our own castle walls to wait out the siege. The waves were roaring like a thousand foot soldiers on a rampage and the attacking wind sounded like it was ripping our little orange dome apart by the seams. But we successfully held down the Fort and our small, strong keep survived the onslaught intact. The morning dawned bright and blue, we raised the drawbridge (and by that I mean the tent fly), packed up and set out again to catch the ferry. (I may have seen too many castles!)