I still haven’t found much for entertainment or sight seeing in Kuwait but luckily I have to renew my visa every 30 days which means I get a chance to explore some of the local area. This month I went to Jordan, a country I knew nothing about 6 months ago. I found out I needed much more than the 3½ days I spent there.
Jordan is a relatively small country in the Middle East, bordering Israel, Palestine, Syria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia about a 90 minute flight from Kuwait. It may not sound like the most welcoming place but I found it is a beautiful country with great people. I decided earlier this year that I wanted to visit
Petra, the setting for the last scene of
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. I didn’t know the name of Petra before researching Jordan but had seen pictures and thought it looked like a place in the Middle East so I started Googling and eventually found it. After doing more research and talking to a friend who had lived there for a while, I found out there was a lot more than just Petra to visit.
This was probably one of the more adventurous vacations I had been on. I was traveling alone in a country which I don’t speak the main language. When I got lost, I eventually got pointed back in the right direction by people that spoke adequate English or played cultural charades well enough to get me back on the right path.
I rented a car from the airport and the guy that brought me the car was Palestinian and had originally grown up in Kuwait. He told me that his family had fled Kuwait when Saddam invaded in 1990. He drove with me part way to my first destination,
Jerash, gave me a basic map, and wished me good luck. (This link gives a pretty good description of a tour of the city.)
Jerash is considered on of the best preserved Roman archeological sites outside of Italy. After missing my exit and guessing my way through the residential area of Jerash, I finally found the visitor center of Jerash. I wish I had gotten there faster because I caught the very end of a Roman soldier fighting performance in the
Hippodrome. So I moved on to the Oval Plaza, which seems to be the real beginning of a tour around the city. It was pretty empty that day and I was alone so I must have looked like an easy target. A kid approached me and asked if I needed a tour guide. I assured him that I didn’t but he walked around the Oval Plaza and the Temple of Zeus with me anyway. He knew some interesting facts so I told him I’d hire him for the hour and we started through the city. We walked down the Colonnaded Street, like Main St., to the Macellum. Inside were a bunch of columns and Raith rested a penny on rock and set one end of the penny under the column. He then pushed the column and you could see the
penny moving up and down. He told me the columns were seated in a way to allow them to sway to prevent them from falling during earthquakes. Considering an earthquake did a lot of damage to the city in 749 AD, I have to believe him. Either way, I thought that alone was worth the price of admission.
The last place we visited was the South Theater. The design of the theater was to project the voice of whoever was performing to all of the seats. I went to the top seats and could easily hear Raith when he was on the ground. Also, he showed my how you could whisper into the base of the circular wall and hear it on the other side. Those Romans were pretty smart.
A lot of the temples and theaters were getting set up for a big festival that night. Raith told me it was a lot of cultural singing and dancing. At the time, I knew I had at least a three hour drive and wasn’t sure about the directions. I wish now I had stayed because I easily made it to Petra but I did get some well needed rest. I had three full days in front of me.
The drive to Petra was cool with the sun going down over the desert hills. I tried not to crash as I snapped a few shots of the sunset. I got in last to my hotel but it was a two minute walk to the Petra visitor’s center.
Petra was build by the Nabataean people but an exact date is not known. The best guess I’ve read is that it was sometime around the end of the second century BC. The place would have been great to defend as the narrow entrance to the city, or Siq, as the walls are over 100 feet tall and very narrow. Nonetheless, the Romans conquered Petra and made it part of their empire. And when the Roman emperor Constantine brought Christianity to the empire, the Nabataean temples were converted to churches and the idols carved into the rock were decapitated by the Roman soldiers.
Petra was recently named one of the new
7 Wonders of the World. I thought the place would be packed from the start the park opened. But at 7am, there were just a few people going into the park. I paid more than I hoped to for a guide but he pointed out a lot of interesting stuff I would not have seen without him. Some of these things were the carvings of idols in the rock and Nabataean, ceramic pipe running along the walls, and “Nabataean graffiti” carved in Latin, Greek, and
Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus. My guide told me there were pipes running throughout Petra and there was running water in the homes and a sewer system.
The most recognizable place in Petra is the
Treasury. It is the first thing a visitor sees when coming out of the Siq and is pretty breath taking to see. It is a giant carving in red rock. The acoustics are really interesting too because the area right by the Treasury is surrounded by 100 foot rock walls. This is really the starting point to exploring the park. There are several booths open selling souvenirs, maps, books, snacks, and water (essential for a day in Petra). You can rent a camel, donkey, horse, or a horse drawn cart to take you anywhere in the park. All are rented by the Bedouins, a nomadic people indigenous to the area. They were somewhat aggressive trying to sell things but were also very helpful even if you didn’t buy things from them. I was told by my guide that the Bedouins didn’t live in the park anymore. The Jordanian government recently built them a city outside the park but I found out not all of them live there.
The rest of the day I spent exploring the main
sites of the park. The Theater, the Silk Tomb, the Great Temple, the Monastery, and all the other ones that were easily accessible. One of the beauties of the rock was the different colors in the different layers. The Silk Tomb is a great example of that, though my picture of it isn’t as striking because the sun isn’t directly on it.
The Monastery is at one of the far ends of the park. It is a pretty good hike and a lot of the tourists rent donkeys to carry them up. Riding the donkey looked like more of an effort than hiking and later in the day I saw a lady fall off of one. On the hike, I was invited to have tea with a couple Bedouin girls that had a souvenir shop. The tea was nothing special but it was interesting to talk to them. They spoke really good English, along with bits of Italian and Spanish, whatever they need to get more business.
The Monastery was really busy. It was around lunch time and I was really tired but wanted to get a good picture with the sun fully on the rock. So I found a place about a five minute hike away from the tourists with a great view of the Jordanian landscape and took a nap. The rocks weren’t that comfortable but it was absolutely silent except for the wind and I slept like a baby for about an hour.
I got my picture and decided on my last hike of the day. It was to the High Place. Not a very original name but it comes as advertised. It was only about a 30 minute hike from the base and the view was over all of Petra. And besides the Bedouins, I was completely alone at the top.
I lucked out by visiting the days I did. Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday night they offer a night hike through the Siq to the Treasury. They put candles down the path all the way to the Treasury. They ask everyone to be silent but it’s hard to keep 300 tourists quite. Once at the Treasury, they have a guy sitting in the middle candles playing a type of guitar singing Arabic songs. Really cool because of the setting and acoustics.
The next morning, I decided I was going to see what it was like to walk through the Siq alone. I was at the gate when it opened and was the first to walk down the Siq. All I could hear was a few owls and I got some good pictures of the Treasury. Since I had gotten an early start, I decided to take one of the longer hikes in the park, to
Aaron’s Tomb. It is the place that is believed to be the burial place of Moses’ brother and is one of the highest points in Petra. Again, I was alone on the hike except for the Bedouin families that I past. They had homes carved into the sides of the mountains which looked really neat. Kids ran out to greet me at almost every home. They didn’t speak English as well as their parents but were pretty funny to play with.
About two hours into the hike I thought I was getting kind of close but still not sure how far away I was. I came across an old Bedouin man at a point where I could see the main trail I was on and a less obvious trail up the side of the mountain. He asked me where I was headed and I told him. He then asked if I wanted to buy some old coins from him. He said they were old Roman coins. I told him I didn’t have much money but felt like I was in the old Zelda video game, buy some coins from this guy and he’d tell me the way. He told me the coins were $100 for two. For about five minutes, I tried to convince him I didn’t have that much money on me. He finally told me to think about it and we would talk about it again when I got back from Aaron’s tomb. He then told me to follow the trail up the mountain. He said it was an old donkey trail. I wasn’t sure whether to trust him or not, but I did and it was the right choice. I ended up losing the trail a few times but knew I was on it when I saw new piles of donkey poop.
One of the great things about Petra is there are no signs telling you not to go places. So you have to lookout for your own safety. No walls or guardrails at the edge of mountains. Just a hope you will use common sense. But hiking up to Aaron’s Tomb, I think I found the only handrail in the entire park.
Finally after 2½ hours, I made it to Aaron’s Tomb. The scenery was amazing and could not see any evidence of civilization. I’ve read that from there, you can see Egypt, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. I had my lunch of an orange and cashews, took another nap, and started the hike down. By the time I got back in the main park, it was about 5pm, a had little water left and I was exhausted. I decided to my time in Petra was finished.
One quick story about the Bedouin guide I had. He was one of ten kids and the only one to be educated. His mother, father, and siblings still live with the tribe and are still live in tents. He grew up living in Petra and when the government moved them out his mother refused to live in a house. He said they still move from place to place depending on the season. I asked him how he finds them to visit and he said that he knows the general location that they will be whether it’s spring, summer, fall, or winter. And his father has a cell phone.
The next morning, and my last day in Petra, I got up well before the sunrise because I wanted to make it to the
Dead Sea before my flight. The hotel told me to go back to the main highway and drive north until I saw signs for the Dead Sea and then head west. This was the long way and not very scenic but I figured it was the best because I didn’t want to get lost and miss my flight. Well, I somehow missed the turn out of town to get to the main highway but I could tell from the cities I was being directed to, I was on the right path. About an hour into the trip, I hadn’t seen a sign in a while but knew if I kept heading north I’d find my way. I stopped at what looked like a bus stop on the outskirts of a town to ask a guy if I was heading the right way to the Dead Sea (I’d had pretty good luck with getting directions to that point). When I rolled my window down to talk to him, he reached inside the car, unlocked the door, opened it, and hopped in. I guess that meant I had my first Jordanian hitchhiker. He started talking in Arabic and I started talking in English and we both realized neither of us spoke the other’s language. I said Dead Sea a couple time and pointed down the road. He shook his head yes and smiled which I assume meant that was the right was. So I drove down the mountain, which turned out to be a beautiful drive. We didn’t talk much and when we got to the bottom of the mountain the road came to a tee in the middle of nowhere. He pointed to the right, shook my hand, and got out of the car. I have no idea where he was going but he did point me towards the Dead Sea.
The Dead Sea was a trip. Everybody floats because of the salt content, which is around 4 times greater than the ocean. If you wanted to, you could lie back in the water and take a nap. I wanted to see how far I could walk into the water before I floated. I got to about chest high water and then all of a sudden I popped up. And then I lost my balance and fell onto my back. I could have played all day there but didn’t have time. After an hour, I showered up and was on my way. They only bad thing about the water is that because it is so salty, it tastes horrible and burns your eyes much worse than the ocean. If you ever go, I don’t recommend drinking any of it.
My last stop before the airport was
Mt. Nebo. It is said that Moses reached Mt. Nebo and shown the promised land by God but told that he would never make it there. This is the final resting place of Moses. There is a small church on the top of Mt. Nebo and a small visitor’s center but not much else. I didn’t have much time there but probably would have only needed to spend another hour to see everything. The views and the mosaic floors of the church were amazing.
I made it back to the airport with time to spare. I was dirty, tired, and broke (after paying the airport tax I didn’t know about, I had 1 Jordanian Dinar left), I was ready to go back to Kuwait and get some rest.
Headline in this week’s paper… Riyadh, Saudi Arabia – MAN SCARED TO DEATH BY MUTAWWA “A Bangladeshi man died of fright after being arrested by Saudi Arabia’s controversial religious police for washing a car instead of praying, a local newspaper reported yesterday. The unnamed man died last week in the holy city of Madinah after being detained by members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, Al-Jazirah reported. The Arabic daily said the man ‘convulsed in fear after he was arrested, leading to a drop in his blood pressure and causing his death’. The man was arrested by members of the commission, commonly known as the Mutawwa, for washing a car during a time of day when he should have been at prayer, the paper said. The Mutawwa enforce a strict Islamic moral code in the ultraconservative kingdom, and are increasingly being criticized by the public for perceived abuses.” Luckily Kuwait is not this strict but I sure miss the good old USA where you can wash your car any time you want...
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