Your Man in the Middle East: Day Nine

May 23, 2007

Today we experienced Petra!! You have all seen nuggets of Petra—Raiders of the Lost Ark was filmed here. The sandstone rock formations in Petra, Jordan should be one of the Seven Wonders of the World. In fact, there is a voting campaign in progress to make it so. Over hundreds of thousands of years the strong winds mixed with sand, and the flash floods across the sandstone rock has formed the most beautiful, and colorful rock formations imaginable.
Surrounded by the mountain peaks of the Trans-Jordan Rift, the ancient city of Petra was built by the Nabateans, who inhabited the mountains of central Jordan, at around the time of Christ. They made most of the carvings in the multicolored rock walls. The Romans took over the area in the late 1st century, and realizing the awesome beauty of the city, paved many of the roads with large rectangular rocks, a common Roman motif.
There was a one-kilometer walk down sand trails to get to the Seek (gorge), narrow passageways which are 100-200 feet deep in the mountain. The walking trails are at the bottom of those gorges, as is the ground level of all of the carved stone monuments. The first quite recognizable building carved into the rock walls is the temple/treasury building. This is the main scene from the Indiana Jones movie. It was an absolutely incredible carving.
A little past the temple is the start of 850+ stair walk up to the top of the mountain. I use the word “stair” quite loosely here. Actually, they are slanted, sandy rocks, of varying, shapes, sizes, heights, widths, and angles. It was not a walk for the faint-of-heart. It took a couple of hours of walking up steps, around ledges (overlooking 500-1000 foot drop-offs), and along dusty trails.
We walked along a sandy road to another Seek that has, at its top the monastery, and surprisingly, the Queen’s (of Jordan) jewelry shop. It was interesting to see the number of elderly ladies making the treacherous climb, presumably to get to the tent-covered jewelry shop at the top. What really amazed me was that the little shack on top of the mountain took Visa. I won’t say that I bought Linda something there—I may want to surprise her—but I did use my Visa card on that mountain.
There was a donkey-ride vendor hawking rides up the last half-mile trek to the monastery. Edward, Larry, and I had somehow separated from the group—we were, in Larry’s words “snorkeling, not speed boating, through the water”. We were proceeding slowly enough to see the beauty around us. Anyway, we had no intention of riding the donkeys, but as we kept ignoring the vendor his price kept going down—it started at ten dollars a person and finally went down to three dollars. We decided to take the ride to catch up to the rest of the group.
Riding the donkeys (who only understood Arabic commands) was a hilarious adventure. Larry tried to take pictures of Edward and I riding the donkeys, while he was riding his donkey. On the other hand, I was holding on for my life. Edward, the youngest member of our group, and Kuwaiti in origin, looked like Clint Eastwood riding in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. He was at home in the saddle. I looked like I was sitting atop a large slippery pyramid. And to add to that, about a third of the way up the mountain, we came to more stairs (ha-ha) up the mountain. I was not about to ride an Arabic speaking donkey up narrow, uneven, sand-covered steps while overlooking several-hundred foot drop-offs. Certainly I trusted the donkey’s sure footing, his strength and his skill (and besides, we saw lots of donkey poop on the trail); what I didn’t trust was his motivation—I figured he might be tempted, at some point, to fire his heavy load (me) down into the canyon. Really, how much do you want to trust a donkey? I had reached my limit. We dismounted and humbly walked up the rest of the way to the monastery. The donkey vendor, however, kept all of our money.
We ended our day by going to the hotel pool (our first chance for swimming on the trip). The huge pool patio overlooked a expansive valley with the mountains of Petra all along the horizon. It was the most beautiful view from a pool that I have ever seen. I will include a picture in tomorrow’s blog. The water was ice-cold—I think it was colder that the beer I drank while standing in the pool, seriously!
It was a long day. We climbed rocks from about 9:00 in the morning until 4:00 in the afternoon. My legs were looking for a lawyer because of my abusive treatment of them this day. It was a day that I will never forget! Thanks to God.