January 4-14, 1999
Photo 85
This is a most unusual and beautiful site. Here our bus stops as our group takes a tortuous pathway to a cliff overlooking a great canyon where one step could lead to a fall of thousands of feet. There we had a devotional. We learned that this region is the very place that Jesus went for 40 days and nights into the wilderness. Nearby we looked down on Wadi Qelt and viewed the Greek Orthodox monastery of St. George of Koziba founded in 420 AD. The building was destroyed during the Crusader Period but was restored in 1900. There are some beautiful blue domes, and we could hear roosters crowing below and even saw one of the five monks that reside there.