by Ryan Markiewicz | Oct 17, 2025 | Berlin's Wall
All,
Arrived in Jordan yesterday. Though it’s not far from Cairo, it feels like a completely different world — a different vibe altogether. Less crowded (120 million vs. 12 million people) and slower paced — in a good way 😊. This is my fourth time here, and it remains one of my favorite places to visit. It’s a very biblical place — so many of the stories from the Bible happened right around here.
Our first stop was the Dead Sea, the lowest exposed point on Earth. For comparison, Death Valley (the lowest point in the U.S.) sits 282 feet below sea level. The Dead Sea? 1,410 feet below sea level. Crazy low!
Because it’s about 70% salt, no life exists in this sea — maybe that’s why they call it The Dead Sea? 🤪
It’s been that way for tens of thousands of years. We went in — very cool experience — but you can’t really swim; you just bob and float. It’s a strange, weightless feeling. Some people slather themselves in the mud, which is said to be great for the skin (but my skin is already luxurious enough, don’t you think? 😉).
Just across the sea is the West Bank, where you can see Jericho and Bethlehem in the near distance. Jericho is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world — people have lived there for over 10,000 years, long before the Egyptians built their pyramids (and I thought those were old!). The Tower of Jericho, dating back that far, is believed to be the first stone monument ever built by humankind. And of course, Bethlehem is where Jesus was born. Like I said — a very biblical area.
From there we drove through the mountains (yes, there are mountains in Jordan!) to Mount Nebo, where Moses — the Moses — died. (Did I mention this place is biblical? 😄) Pretty amazing.
Tomorrow we head to Petra — an incredible site, truly one of the wonders of the ancient world. You might remember it from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. I’ll send photos for sure.
Onward! -JB
P.S. Our guide, Aziz, has been terrific — explaining everything from the history to the Five Pillars of Islam, including the custom of praying toward Mecca five times a day. One of the guests asked how people always know which direction Mecca is, and Aziz said most hotels have a little arrow in the room pointing the way. Then he added, “But now, there’s an app for that.” Not kidding. 😄
The Dead Sea. Jericho, on the West Bank, in the distance
Our new friends Tracy and Scott got mudded up before jumping into the water
Floating in the Dead Sea
Camels on the hillside along the road
Mt. Nebo. Where Moses died after leading his people out of Egypt and wandering for 40 years in the desert (supposedly died at the age of 120!)
The Dead Sea from our hotel
Awesome!
by Ryan Markiewicz | Oct 15, 2025 | Berlin's Wall
All,
From Luxor, we flew to Aswan, where the famous dam is. This was built in the 60’s to control the annual flooding, which used to wreak havoc with its unpredictability. Now its flow is controlled, so life along the river is less dangerous. So much so that although the Nile River Valley is only 10% of Egypt’s land, 90% of its population lives along its banks. Incredible. They are trying to get people to move westward into the desert, but I think that is a tough sell. Some hardscrabble land.
We took a great small boat ride down to a Nubian village. Nubians live in southern Egypt and have much darker complexions than Egyptians from the north. Actually, due to the long-time influence of Greeks and Romans on the Mediterranean coast, Egyptians can range from very dark to very light-skinned. Not what some people expect.
We visited several more temples and learned about the rich and wonderful Egyptian culture, and flew back to Cairo today. Tomorrow, onto Jordan 🙂
Onward!
Cruising down the Nile
The land is so fertile along the river. Because of that 90% of all Egyptians live by the Nile.
Locals tied onto our boat, trying to sell goods to the passengers. WAY better than Somali pirates coming after us 🤣
This is the Nile, looking north from the Aswan Dam. And that’s a modern-day Sphinx guarding it hahahaha
This is the Temple of Abu Simbel. Incredible!!!
Lots of pretty violent battle scenes portrayed everywhere on the walls. Keep in mind these are over 3,500 years old.
A friendly face peering out through the wall of the tomb
Pretty incredible, huh?
And this is the inside
Nubian village. 30 miles from the border of Sudan
We took this small boat to the Nubian village. Notice the name: Titanic. I figured it was safe. No icebergs here hahahahaha
Crocodile mummies
Here’s a contest: Guess which one is the captain of the ship?
by Ryan Markiewicz | Oct 11, 2025 | Berlin's Wall
Hallie, getting in the spirit (of the Pharaohs 🙂 )
Literally, the sky looks like this—blue/no clouds almost 365 days a year here!
What’s incredible about these temples is not just how grand they are (I think you can sense the height from this picture) but that they were all buried under the sand for thousands of years until they got “discovered”. There is actually graffiti at the top of many of these columns from kids writing on them when the sand was up to the top of these. Crazy!
Somali pirates in training attacked our boat, but we were able to repel them with water hoses and machine guns. Just kidding. I think, like NYC “subway surfers” they just wanted to latch onto our boat for a faster ride 😉
Cruising down the Nile. Lots of rocks and caves that people lived in.
by Ryan Markiewicz | Oct 10, 2025 | Berlin's Wall
The colors in this tomb are over 3,500 years old
This is the ceiling
The hieroglyphics, over 3,000 years old, are truly stunning.
Walking like an Egyptian?
That is the tomb King Tut was buried in.
Like those Russian matrushka dolls, Tutankhamen was buried with three of these, each inside another. He remained safely there until thousands of years later, when he was discovered in 1920.
King Tut! The original. Ruled from the age of 9 til he died at 18. Crazy!
Another tomb. The tomb of King Hatshepsut. These are all in the middle of this arid, rocky desert in “the middle of nowhere”. Incredible.
Scary what you can find down in these ancient tombs.
An Egyptian minivan for a family of 5 😉
by Ryan Markiewicz | Oct 9, 2025 | Berlin's Wall
Luxor is about 400 miles south of Cairo and is the home to many ancient temples and tombs. No pyramids, since the Egyptians stopped building pyramids as the resting place for their rulers, as they found that they were easily robbed. So these tombs were easier to protect.
The Temples, again, have ancient Egyptian influences, but also Greco-Roman, Christian, and Muslim influences easily seen and recognized. I don’t want to bore y’all with lots of details, but if you Google Temples of Luxor, or Valley of the Kings, and Valley of the Queens, where they are buried, I am sure it will explain a lot better than I could anyway.
Again, incredible to witness such buildings from humanity’s ancient past.
View of the Valley of the Tombs from our boat
These hieroglyphics, over 4,000 years old, are still pretty clear and crazy detailed
This is a bas relief carving on the wall of Alexander the Great
Sunrise over the Valley of the Kings
We also took a hot air balloon ride this morning. That was also very cool. Hallie was a little nervous to get onboard. (I was not. The first 2 hot air balloon rides I took ended up in kind of crash landings–not truly crash, like the balloon exploding and falling for the sky, but one landed too fast and too hard and the basket tipped over and we got dragged through the rocks and sand. The other time we landed in a tree and got tore up a bit by the branches. Nothing serious. But I figured this 3rd time HAD TO be a charm 😉)
And it was. Flew for about 45 minutes without incident. 👍
Crazy that the basket held 28 of us. You wouldn’t think a balloon could lift that many people, but I guess some are even bigger than that.
A memorable experience for sure.
From our hot air balloon
Heading down the Nile now (though “down the Nile” means heading North/not south. One of the few rivers that flows northward. It is also the longest river on earth and helped shape the history of mankind for sure.
Cruising the Nile
PS – if anyone has questions they’d like to ask, please just email me and I’ll be happy to reply one-on-one.
Onward!
by Ryan Markiewicz | Oct 7, 2025 | Berlin's Wall
All,
Today we hopped on a bus and made our way to the pyramids. Even cooler than you can imagine. There are a few of them here, and even though they’re all about 5,000 years old, some are “newer” and better built as the Egyptians learned along the way. Amazing that these things got built at all — and amazing they were tombs. (Also amazing that the Taj Mahal — MUCH newer but still pretty old — is also a tomb. I guess royalty has always liked to be buried in style 🤣).
Here’s one thing that’s always struck me, but even more so now:
When you think about building these monuments — the Great Pyramid alone is made of 2.3 million blocks, each weighing between 2.5 and 15 tons, quarried and hauled from Aswan hundreds of miles away — let that sink in for a minute:
1. First you’ve got to imagine it.
2. Then you’ve got to design it.
3. You need to calculate, find, order, ship, and deliver everything (ah…logistics 😊).
4. Someone has to track it all and make sure you got what you ordered.
5. You need to build it — with no electricity, forklifts, or cranes.
6. And all this happened before humankind knew the Earth orbits the sun or understood gravity — discoveries that came thousands of years later.
Crazy.
So to me, not that much — beyond technology and science — has really changed. Those have advanced in unimaginable ways. But the buildings and monuments they built have stood for 5,000 years and remain breathtaking. I’m honestly not sure we can say the same for most of our modern buildings. Time will tell, I suppose.
And think about it: even back then, there were architects and draftsmen, quarrymen and haulers, loaders and drivers, foremen and accountants — and lawyers, doctors, judges, priests, and politicians too. Life wasn’t all that different in some ways.
Weird… and humbling.
Tomorrow: Luxor.
Onward!
The pyramids!
We actually got to go down into one of the tombs
The Great Sphinx protects the pharaoh’s tombs
Hallie got to take a camel ride
Sporting both the Bills and LP 😉
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