Petra

Petra is one of the new seven wonders of the world recently voted. After a great shawerma for lunch (chicken and pickles wrapped in paper-thin pita) we went into the site for a four hour walk. I rode an Arabian horse in to the gate. Sounds exciting, but the horse was led by a grumpy Bedouin. The walk through the siq, surrounded by massive cliffs, led us after more than a km to the Treasury, the most famous sight in Petra and the easiest to get to.

When you finally emerge from the deep canyon to the sight of this massive facade, it’s just stunning. The area in front of the Treasury is filled with camels ready for rides, horses and carriages, and local Bedouins trying to earn your money. Petra was first inhabited around 200 BC, and only about a third of it has been excavated. The Treasury and other impressive facades were likely tombs built for the inhabitants in the afterlife. Residents lived in caves cut into the rock. The area is massive as we soon realized. Our walk took us to the Royal Tombs and shops in the caves where the Bedouin lived until 1985, when Petra was declared by UNESCO to be a world heritage site, and they were moved out to a settlement nearby.

Petra was the setting for one of the Indiana Jones movies, the one with Sean Connery.

We met Marguerite, a well-spoken New Zealander who married a Bedouin and lived in a cave for 7 years. Her husband has since died, and she now sells her book “Married to a Bedouin” and jewellery helping to support local women.

Back out to the tourist town built for this site, we were joined by a silent man and a loud woman who claimed to be from Lisbon but seemed to know nothing about it, and had apparently come from Israel that day. The next day they were apparently trying to return to Israel. None of this made any
sense so I was watching my purse!

We attended Petra by Night, a tourist spectacle, where the siq is lined by candles (actually lamps that looked like candles) and the Treasury has hundreds of candles set in front of it. The crowd sits and listens to
flutes, a guy without a microphone talking nonsense, and finally the sounds of goats over a loudspeaker(?), until the facade is lit up in red. Some find this experience very spiritual but I missed that part!

The next day we started out early to see more of Petra. It was ancient ruins and tough hiking all rolled into one. We started with the high sacrificial altar, the highest point you can reach, from where you can see a view of most of the lower area. To come down we went through a high valley filled with tombs, caves, and colourful rock formations. Then up to the Monastery, the largest facade in the site, and another viewpoint over the area. Along this well trodden path were local women with shops selling scarves, carvings and jewellery. The local men are all trying to get you on a donkey for the climb up.

This was a very long day, and was about 15 km of walking and hiking up and
down hills, sometimes with steps and sometimes not. I didn’t do the last climb, taking you to a point overlooking the Treasury where there is a Google Earth camera filming you, since I ran out of time. I was having fun bartering with the women for a couple of scarves and trinkets.
Back out to the town again, I went for a Turkish bath or hamman with Tanya from New Zealand and Alex from London, and I hope I will never do it again. This is at least my third time, each experience has been different but I can’t say any were enjoyable. This time we went sent into a steam room which was so hot it was suffocating, with the steam obscuring everything including women very close to you, and left there for at least 20 minutes. I was just at the point of running through the door yelling “let me out of here” when Tanya was called for her scrubbing and massage, but she insisted I go ahead of her, bless her heart.
The scrubbing with a loofah, soaping a massage lasted all of ten minutes which was enough for me. At the end a tub of hot water was dumped on my head, I think just to mess up my hair more. After escaping we were given tea, which I sipped to be polite then ran out.
There aren’t many restaurants here, most don’t serve alcohol and those who do overcharge for it, but I voted for one that did after this experience. There are big restaurants and huge shops on the main street that are empty of tourists even though this is a great time of year to visit. Temps can be into the 40’s during the summer, and now it’s in the low 20’s. Mo told us that over 50% of people booked for Jordan tours with Intrepid have cancelled, due to recent events in neighbouring Syria.

We leave this amazing place tomorrow for Dana nature reserve.