Dateline Petra

Remember Indiana Jones riding into Petra in his third movie! Well, we’ve made to Petra, but it’s changed since that movie was made! Petra has become a tourist mecca in the intervening years. Our friends who were here 16 years ago said there was one hotel and some horses to rent in order to ride into the Treasury. Now there are 72 major hotels, Starbucks, McDonald’s, KFC, internet cafes, shopping malls, as well as horses, camels, donkeys, carriages to rent, and all of the other trappings of a modern tourist destination. Petra has become a UNESCO World Heritage Center; it’s also one of the 7 Modern Wonders of the World. Who wudda thunk that would happen so soon? Today we will take one of the carriages into the Treasury and then explore on our own.

We have been in Jordan for the past 3 days. During that time we’ve seen a Crusader Castle from the 12th century, a Roman City from the 2nd century, and a myriad of Biblical sights from the 4-9th century BC. Jordan is filled with ancient sights because it has always been a crossroad. At one time it was called TransJordan. It’s now called the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

Like Iraq, it had its borders fixed by political means. Winston Churchill and his cronies were dividing the area up after World War I and came up with the boundaries for several “Middle Eastern” countries based on what they thought was the best for the region. (According to our guide, that’s when the term “Middle East” was coined too. I need to check to see if that is correct.) What they forgot to take into account were the natural cultural and religious barriers of the people. So, we have Iraq with 3 opposing groups of people “living” in one country. Then there are the Palestinians and the Israelis. Thankfully, Jordan does not have the internal strife that some of the countries in the area has!

The capital of Jordan is Amman, sometimes referred to as the “white city” because most of the buildings are covered with white limestone. When the sun shines, the city is bright and very white. It’s a clean city too, much cleaner than Cairo, but then it’s also smaller than Cairo with about 2 million people. It is a mixture of East and West, Arabic and English signs, modern and traditional dress, yet we did not see any horse drawn carriages like we did in Egypt. Westerners can feel very comfortable in Amman.

Our first day here we drove to the Dead Sea and we saw some scraps of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Some of our group went for a swim in the Dead Sea. It’s so salty they just floated on top of the water. The Dead Sea is the lowest spot on earth, over 1300 below sea level.

After Walking in Ancient Petra
WHOA! What a place! There is far more to Petra than the “Treasury,” which is the building that you see in Indiana Jones III. The complex goes on for 13 miles! It’s huge. The Treasury is well known, but there are also Roman Gates, an amphitheatre carved out of the rock, nicely paved and domed Roman Roads, hundreds of tombs, a monastery, various temples, and more. The basic area reminds me of Zion National Park in southern Utah, but the carved buildings are like nothing I’ve seen before.

Getting to the old city of Petra is not an easy task. You have to go down inside the gorge for about a mile. We opted to take a carriage ride. That’s making it sound far more grand than it was…think about 1 poor horse, dragging a tired cart, downhill, sometimes over cobbles that were laid by the Romans in the 1st century! When we emerged from the gorge, the Treasury was standing right before us. It was breath-taking! We left our “chariot” and started walking another 3 miles on sand or the remnants of the Roman Road past the most amazing structures carved out of the living rock. Some of the rock is stained by “desert varnish” others rocks range from blood red to burnished brown. As we wended our way down the gorges, there are temples and columns and walls as well as the tombs that are buried in the walls.

Not all is perfect in Petra. The modern world has found this ancient location, so you can buy souvenirs and postcards and donkey rides and camel rides from willing Bedouin merchants and their children. Unlike the persistent vendors of Egypt, these did understand NO. We’ve learned that eye-contact is key. Do not look at any of these merchants as that’s a sign that you just might be interested in what they have to sell. One little girl had a good line however—she said she was K-Mart and she had the blue-light special!

At the end of the easy walking there’s a restaurant called The Basin that is owned by the Crowne Plaza hotel (where we are staying). After a nice buffet lunch you can opt to climb around the mountains and explore the tombs and old foot paths more or you can slowly meander your way back to the Treasury area and wait for your chariot to take you back to the visitor’s center. We slowly walked back to the Treasury and soon we were back on carriage #2, heading for the “barn.” It was a great day!

On this trip we’ve been to places we’ve heard about all of our lives but never thought we would get a chance to see. They really do exist. It’s time to get back to the world. The trip has been very good, but we’re tired. It’s time to go home and take a vacation from our “vacation.” We all need a bit of rest, some home cooked meals, and time to relax and digest all that we’ve seen and done this past 3 weeks. We have covered 45-50 centuries of history is a very short time!