Tuesday morning, we woke from our final night in Wadi Rum. We both slept exceptionally well in the new tent and the bed that was better suited for us. While the whole experience was enjoyable, I can't say that we were not excited to get back to a climate controled environment, whether our car, or a hotel. It was interesting to notice how much of our attention was spent focussed on the weather. While the temperatures were unusually cold for March, the Bedouin that live here tolerate these temperatures every winter during the colder months. During the summer, instead they tolerate the extreme heat of the desert (though I believe since Wadi Rum is at a fairly high altitude, the summer temperatures are not as high as some other areas in the arabian desert. With the modern conveniences available nearby in the cities, we did ask ourselves a few times, why so many would choose to live in such conditions. And of course, economic conditions, cultural differences, education, and social stigmas I'm sure also create barriers in to simply shedding a nomadic life and moving to urban life, however it does start with that choice, and it was clear in talking to everyone, that many of the Bedouin are happy remaining in this life.
On the other hand, I will not forget the several times where I had a few moments to just sit and listen to the quiet of the desert, and admire its beauty. It certainly provides certain benefits in the level of serenity it provides to its inhabitants.
The original plan was to have a camel ride back to Wadi Rum Village where the tour began, and our car was parked. The evening before, Shaker had asked us how we would like to coordinate this. He said if we would like they camel can meet us part way to town, and then we would get driven out to meet the camel, and ride it the rest of the way. We asked how long it would take to ride the camel all the way to town. He said that would be about two and half hours. While he said they would be happy to provide that option, it was clear the emphasis and tone in his voice was that for our own comfort he would not recommend that. (Note, when walking, camels generally walk at the same pace as humans. Travelling by camel doesn't provide faster transportation, it simply reduces the effort allowing you to ride instead of walk.) We had agreed to meet the camels at the point where the balance of the trip would only be one hour by camel.
However, as we exited our tent, and began packing up our bags, we noticed it was snowing on us, and it was quite cold. This definitely felt like the coldest morning so far of our stay. Aimee quickly decided the weather was not right for an enjoyable camel ride. Before we left, we asked our driver if we could skip the camel ride due to the weather. He of course obliged. As we and two other couples (including Adrian and Danka), piled into the back of a pickup truck with all of our luggage we prepared for a very cold ride in the open air back to camp. Multiple layers of clothing, hats, scarves and everything else were still not quite enough to keep us warm as we zipped at 30-40 miles an hour through the desert for 30 minutes back to the village.
About two thirds of the way back, we approached a teenage boy sitting in the desert with 2 medium sized camels. Our driver pulled up to him and let him know in Arabic that we'd be skipping the camel ride. We then rode off the rest of the way to camp, leaving the camels and their herder to return without us.
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| Our Camels: All Dressed Up With Nowhere to Go |
10 minutes later we arrived in Wadi Rum Village and were delivered back to our parked car. We jumped in and cranked up the heat and sat for several minutes simply enjoying the warmth before heading out on the road.
Once our extremities had defrosted, we plugged in Wadi Musa (the city that sits along side Petra) to our GPS, and embarked on the 2 hour drive.
As we drove away from Wadi Rum we noticed that our elevation was climing higher and higher. At the same time our surroundings were getting foggier and foggier. Also much to our surprise, we saw that the snow was actually beginning to accumulate on the ground. We knew we were on a mountainside, but from the fog, we could not tell at all what was to our left below the drop off at the side of the road. To the right of us, the road sloped up higher into the mountains. My anxiety began to increase as we continued to climb and the weather continued to decline. The ground was now covered in a thin layer of snow to the side of the road, and now I saw a few sections of road, where pot holes that had been filled with water had actually iced over. Further more a few sections of road were actually slushy. The surroundings for most of the first 2/3rds of thee drive were incredibly remote, and there was obviously no treatment that had been done to the road, so all i could do was driver exceptionally slowly, and hope that we'd get past the top of the mountain, and begin to descend into Wadi Musa. We did eventually, with no major issue aside from my white knuckles from having to driver through such conditions.
The few towns leading up to Wadi Musa, and Wadi Musa itself were towns of incredible variations of elevations. While these were very small towns, one side of town would be several hundred feet higher than the other side of town. And the temperature and wind would vary dramatically based on the elevation. We were a bit concerned that our first day (half day, to be more accurate) in Petra would still be a very cold one. We drove to the Petra Guest House so that we could check in if we were able, drop off our bags, and then grab a quick lunch in Wadi Musa before commencing our exploration of the ancient city of Petra. I had chosen this particular hotel for the sole reason that it sits directly at the entrance to Petra, allowing us to walk out of our hotel door, and directly into the national park. With as much walking as we knew we'd be doing throughout the expansive ancient city, I didn't want us to have to waste any time or energy just getting to the entrance.
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| Approaching Wadi Musa |
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| Wadi Musa |
The hotel was beautiful, and had very heavy security both as we pulled inot the parking lot, as well as walking into the hotel. The main entry to the hotel had metal detectors and bag scanners. Though my steel toe hiking boots would set them off each time I walked through, they would simply wave me through. Many of the high profile sites in Jordan had very heavy and visible security. It would seem however that profiling is still a standard part of their security screening of visitors, and we rarely got more than just a hand motion to enter.
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| Room at the Petra Guest House |
We had received a free upgrade to a larger room (which was quite a surprise as this is an IHG/Crowne Plaza property for which I am not even enrolled in their program) which was quite lovely. We quickly dropped all our bags, through some necessities into our backpacks and headed back out to find lunch. We drove our car to find a restaurant but did unfortunately find that the streets of Wadi Musa are very cramped and crowded, so we ended up basing our lunch selection simply on where we could find a place to park, and then chose one of the restaurants nearby that looked decent. Lunch was very tasty, and we got ourselves some tea and Turkish coffee to warm us up as well. We finished with a baklava tray which had 4 different types of the tasty desert. We ended up only eating half of it, as it was quite a large amount, and wrapped up the rest to take with us if we got hungry. We then jumped in the car and headed back to Petra, excited to see the primary site that attracted us to Jordan.
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| Lunch at Bukhara, Wadi Musa |
Our guide book warned us is that one of the annoyances of Petra is overly aggressive touts and vendors. The guidebook was not wrong. As soon as we entered the gates, there were people coming us and attempting to sell us something. Entering Petra requires a long walk through a canyon. This walk itself can take about 30 minutes until you even see the first major carving. There are horses available to ride, which are included in your ticket, but immediately touts begin offering there services. First by referencing the free horses, however it would seem this would bbe followed up by extra services, unfortunately making the horses not even worth while, as its impossible to figure out how to get to them without being sold something. Therefore we rushed passed the onslaught of offers.
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| Heading Into Petra |
The canyon provided a clear understanding of the value of the location from a security perspective for ancient Petra. The way into the city was a deep canyon with vertical walls and a passageway that at many places was only 15-20 feet wide, offering tremendous opportunity to guard the city against invaders. Along the sides of the canyon (or "the Siq") as it was called were multiple dams which would collect the rainwater from on top of the rock formations, and channel the water into the city for the use of its citizens.
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| The Siq |
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| Carvings in The Siq |
After a very long downhill walk, we finally came to the view made famous in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade--suddenly between the canyon walls, was visible the massive "Treasury" building carved into the rose colored rock of the canyon. The carved building was perfectly symmetrical, with intricate detail carved into every aspect of it. Including statues carved into the various sections of the facade of the building. While the building itself was blocked off and couldn't be entered, you could peer in the door and see the large room inside, which is believed to have served as a tomb in ancient Petra.
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| First Glimpse of "The Treasury" |
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| The Treasury |
As we continued to walk through the ancient city we began to get a sense of the massive footprint of this city. It continued on for what seemed like forever. Along our right side were several buildings carved into the side of the rocks. Many of these appeared to have at one time been just as ornate as the Treasury, but unfortunately erosion over the past 2000 years has heavily eroded their detail. It required some climbing up a few rocks and over worn-away ancient stairways. We had a couple maps between our guidebooks and what we picked up at the visitor center before entering, but had a hard time determining where we were. We thought we had made it more than half way into Petra, but later found we were still at the very beginning of the whole city, with quite a bit more ahead of us.
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| Natural Colors of Rock that Makes up Petra |
Petra at this point was a slightly warmer than where we were in Wadi Rum. In some sections of the city, there was no wind. Other areas it was extremely windy. At one point, Aimee's scarf came off of her windburned face and she was struggling with it. A small local girl offered to tie the scarf on correctly for her (in the traditional Jordanian/Arabian fashion). Our first instinct after hours of the onslaught of vendors and touts was to say no, however we then realized this was actually something we needed and that she could probalby sincerely help with. Aimee kneeled down and the girl tied the scarf onto her head. While she didn't get it entirely tight, it gave us a good starting point to fix it a little bit later, and also resulted in a neat interaction with one of the locals.
One building (which we later found out was the "Urn Tomb") was particularly intersting. We saw some people walking around up in the front of the building, but couldn't figure out how to get up to it. We wandered towards it, and climbed a few sets of stairs in the attempt to find the entrance. At one point, we were a bit confused, and a local woman appeared in one of the archways of the building above us and to the left, and called out to us, telling us where to go to get into the building. To enter required turning a few corners, in small corridors, and some tiny stairways to get up to the next level. A few times we got confused as to where to go next, and she peeked out again from behind walls to give us directions. (In a strange way this brought me back to my childhood days of playing the Legend of Zelda and finding random wiseman or old woman in caves that would give you hints on how to get to the next level of the game). Once we found our way into the main complex, she began to give us a tour of the building, showing us some rooms that were used as tombs by the Nabataeans but later converted to prisons under Roman rule as well as providing quite a bit of other interesting information.
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| The Urn Tomb |
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| Receiving a Tour through the Urn Tomb |
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| Passage Ways Inside Urn Tomb |
We saw that this woman had a shop setup in the Urn Tomb, and that ultimately this would result in a sales pitch. The major frustration as a tourist in Petra, is that the vendors are very forward in offering conversation, help, pictures, etc. all leading up to trying to get you to buy something. While it is understandible that this is their livelihood, the uniform approach seems to be by approaching with the standard Jordanian hospitality (which is common throughout the country) but then expecting money at the end (which is unique to the tourist sites). After the first few times of this occurring and realizing you are now out of cash, you are then guilted by all the rest of the touts for having "accepted their hospitality" (even though you didn't have a choice) and not buying something from them.
At this point, I only had 1 dinar in my pocket (and some very large bills) so I gave her this to thank her for the tour. As we were walking away she called out and asked if we had a biscuit. It took a follow up and some pondering to understand what she was actually asking for, and then she said "I haven't been able to eat all day, as I've been up here." There was some sincere humanity in her voice, and Aimee suggested that we give her our left over baklava, which we did.
As we left the urn tomb, we came upon another individual in the center of town that offered a mule ride. We told him were finishing up our day shortly, as it was going to be getting dark shortly. He suggested a mule ride up to the High Place of Sacrifice and to the Monastery. I knew these were both fairly hard hikes with a lot of climbing, and thought this may be a way to knock them both out without killing ourselves. Unlike most of the other touts and vendors, this individual seemed to be less pushy in trying to get us to hire him. He gave us his cell phone number and said if we decide to hire his mules to let him know.
At this point, Petra was beginning to clear out, and it was getting dark. We headed back towards the entrance and to our hotel. Once in our room, we took advantage of our first warm showever and warm room in 3 nights. We got ourselves cleaned up, and headed to the hotel restaurant for dinner and a few glasses of wine, enjoying a very different type of hospitality versus the prior three nights.
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