Personally, I have good memories of Petra already. I visited last year with a friend from Brown, whose grandparents ran the Brown archaeological dig there. Everybody knows her and her family there, and we stayed in the local Bedouin village with a family friend rather than in Wadi Musa, the tourist town. As a result, I knew some of the locals this time around, which was really nice. Petra runs on tourism, and can feel a little cynical and impersonal. The Bedouin are friendly, but they can be aggressive salespeople.
Anyway, I digress. We arrived in Petra on Thursday night and were installed in the five-star Movenpick. In the immortal words of one CLS administrator, “You are State Department property and we don’t want you lost or broken.” Thus we had to stay in a hotel with a security detail, which also happens to be the nicest hotel in Wadi Musa. With a spectacular breakfast buffet. Thanks, Uncle Sam.
We all got up early on Friday morning and set off in a thirty-strong group with a tour guide. Not my cup of tea. We walked through the Siq, Petra’s distinctive gorge. You may recognize it from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. I quickly skipped ahead of the group. To my mind, the wonders of Petra are natural, not man-made. I don’t need a tour guide banging on about the significance of this inscription in both Akkadian and Ancient Greek. It might have been another language, classicists are invited to read this and weep.
Here are some pictures from the Siq. Marvellous indeed.
You come out from the Siq into the Treasury, Petra’s most famous building. It’s very well preserved with all this elaborate carving. Some tours just walk to this building, and then turn around and go home. A picture in front of the Treasury has become a staple in every well-travelled person’s album, I think. That is to say, it’s a cliché. Like I said though, the buildings don’t do it for me so much, even really really goodlooking ones. I was eager to get up into the mountains to see the views I remembered from last year. First I stopped off to see the aforementioned family friend with whom I stayed. Her lovely nephew was in Petra from Australia, and I ended up spending the whole day exploring with him, which was also a welcome relief from the group. We climbed up to the Monastery, which is a massive building not unlike the Treasury. The top of the mountain affords incredible views towards Wadi Araba. It’s called the End of the World lookout.
Then we climbed the Monastery building itself, which is totally not allowed, but commonly done by Bedouins. Who are like mountain goats and prance about deathly cliffs with utter assurance. I’m used to America’s litigious culture, so it was a little alarming to peer over the edge and see a fifteen story drop. The most alarming part was descending the worn down stairs. They turn corners, like most staircases, which means they lead right off a sheer drop. So if one happened to build up momentum and couldn’t make the turn – boom. Extreme caution recommended. But it was really cool to go up there, you don’t realize how big it is otherwise.
Woke up early the next morning for the next climb, to the High Place of Sacrifice. The views were so amazing that I decided to stay for a while. The group of girls I came with wanted to leave after about twenty minutes, so we resolved to meet later and I just sat and stared for about an hour.
That whacking great piece of rock on the left, below, is called Umm al-Biyara, and it's not on the tourist trail. I climbed it with Sureya last year and we were the only people on the whole thing. I also just found out that a guy lost his life on it two years ago....
little blue lizard
On the way down. Eerily like a movie set
There are few sights in the world sufficiently interesting as to command one’s attention for an hour. I just sort of sat, and meditated on life, and reflected a bit. The beauty was overwhelming. I’m working on a post describing this. Afterwhich I went down, and went back to the pool, and slept. Ah.
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