Osama, my driver, picked me up at the hotel this morning in his Toyota. Osama looked 13, but swore he was 21, and the youngest tour driver in Jordan! He handed me a beer, a canned pear drink, and a bottle of water and we were off!
His English was not bad. In an effort to help, I found myself talking slowly and saying ridiculous and obvious things (e.g., I actually said, "The highway is really nice."). I grew embarrassed and shut up.
It was about 2 hours to Petra, through dry, mountainous desert, bereft of trees or greenery. When all you have is such a bleak landscape, you notice the subtleties. Osama pointed them out to me, such as the striking, jagged lines of black basalt that run down the sides of mountains like a lightning strike).
We passed Bedouin camps, camels, and little else. But as we climbed up towards Petra, the air grew cooler, which was welcome. Osama told me it snows there, so much so they sometimes have to close the road to Petra.
The tourist town outside of Petra is Wadi Musa, and it ain't much to look at. And as best I can tell there's no reason to be there other than going to Petra. Which I did, meeting up with my guide at the gates. Akhmed is a former archaeologist who gave it up because of bureaucratic hassles. He's now a tour guide only. But because of his experience, he was a motherlode of information, having actually excavated some of the ruins himself (or so he said).
Akhmed congratulated me on seeing Petra at such a good time: because of the unrest in the rest of the middle east, tourism is way down in Jordan. He said that usually at this time of year Petra is so crowded it is unbearable. Today it was pleasantly populated, and at times I found myself utterly alone. The falloff in tourism is having a ripple effect, and even the little postcard touts have an air of desperation about them.
Anyway, Petra is everything you think it is and more. Lots more. Most of us, if we think of Petra at all, think of the Treasury, that monumental building carved out of the sandstone mountain that we saw in that Indiana Jones movie. But there's so much more around the corner.
You enter Petra through a gorge consisting of sheer rock walls on both sides that reach into and block out the sky. After about 30 minutes of walking, you turn a corner and glimpse a slender piece of the Treasury. Once there, you enter a much larger opening beyond which is another siq (gorge) that leads to the rest of Petra (including a giant amphitheater, all carved out of the rock. It's stunning and exhausting.
As we approached a Byzantine church that had been excavated, Ahkmed waved at one of the archeologists and he came over to chat us up. Turns out, he is a professor at Brown who has spent the last 11 years here, working on various projects. His focus is now, not so much excavating, as preserving ruins already dug up. He chatted us up about his work, the work of other archeologists working out there, and strongly urged me to take the time and effort to hike up to the Monastery (a 2 hour roundtrip up to the top of a nearby mountain where a giant monastery was carved in the rock, much like the Treasury, but more complete).
I took his advice, and despite the fact that my ass was dragging, and I had sand and pebbles in my boots, I made the climb. It was worth it (although I doubted it at the time).
Feel I got my money's worth out of Petra, and that's rare. Despite the many offers to ride a mule, horse, or camel back to the entrance, and I was near collapse, I hiked it. Nearing the exit, I buzzed Osama on the cellphone he gave me for my pickup. He was already at the gate, and couldn't help himself from showing me on his cellphone videos of his favorite WWE wrestlers (Randy Orton anyone?). Again, the worst of American culture reaches every nook and cranny...
To the desert, Wadi Rum, tomorrow!
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