Petra, Jordan

Petra – Jordan’s Rose Colored City in the Desert

Three words: Far Above Expectation

And my expectations were very high indeed.

Who has seen Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? You know the temple at the end of the movie that holds the holy grail, it’s a real place, without the ancient knight and the cup of Christ of course. And let me just say that in real life the city of Petra beyond the is absolutely stunning.

But backing up.... We docked early in the morning at Aqaba, Jordan.

Jordan is a landlocked country with the exception of Aqaba. In the ancient times Aqaba was the headquarters for King Solomon’s merchant fleet, exporting copper and bringing shipments from the Red Sea through to the far East. Aqaba dates back all the way back to the 4^th millennium BC. And over the years has been controlled by the Edomites, the Nabataeans, the Ptolemies of Egypt, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Arabs, the Crusaders, the Ottomans and lastly (and currently) the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Whew, that’s a lot of changing hands, but the land feels unchanged, and it’s hard not to breath the layers of history in the air when visiting here. People stay the same. Trading, farming, having families, fighting, loving... that’s what the majority of us humans do best - while the select few waste their lives fighting over lines in the sand, and a few extra shekels.

But we don’t stay long in Aqaba, today’s objective is Petra, the capital of the ancient Nabataean civilization.

The Nabataean’s were an Arabic empire that flourished in the centuries before Christ up until the time that the Romans took over in the first century AD. They were mainly traders, controlling the lucrative routes between east and west. Did I mention they were amazing with stone work? While they had a very distinctive style of building by carving right out of the stone walls of their mountains, they borrowed ideas from all the other civilizations that they traded with. The used Greek pillars to decorate their tombs and even pyramid designs depending on the fad of the day.

Leaving our two little girls at the kids club - still recovering from the flu - we boarded a bus for the two hour drive north into the hilly mountain region where Petra can be found. The drive is anything but boring, with sharp mountains sticking up, camels running free and many Bedouin tents and goat herds dotting the landscape. Jordan is a fairly poor country, with nearly half of its 4 million population being immigrants from Palestine and the other Arab countries that are under fire these days. But the people don’t seem destitute, just simple.

The walk down the valley to Petra is beautiful. The Nabataean’s must have been a very theatrical people because by the time you have walked down the valley and get ready to enter the “Siq”, or entrance to the city, you are already quivering in anticipation. Small carvings, and simple tombs are carved into the valley.

The Siq is a narrow valley carved into the cliffs by years of flash flood rains. As the only entrance to the city it makes it simple to defend. And oh so impressive to the visitor. After a 10 minute walk through this narrow valley, under cliffs of 150 feet or so, the Siq gets even narrower until you suddenly glimpse your first view of the Treasury. This huge monument is staggering in its beauty and the effect that you get from viewing it that way - literally popping out of the mountain - makes your knees wobble.

The Treasury Building, as it is known today, is actually a tomb of one of the Emperors wives. And this is just the start of the city. Other tombs are carved into the wall. This entire entrance to the city is a giant necropolis. Further along you come to the amphitheatre and baths - expanded during Roman times - before coming out of the mountain and seeing the main road stretching out before you where the ancient market place would have been. And the ruins of houses, and all the other things that make up a city.

Petra was devastated by an earthquake in the 300’s AD but hung on until a second large earthquake in the 500’s when it was mainly abandoned, except for the migrant Bedouin tribes. It was rediscovered to the outside world in 1812 by a Swiss explorer and has been drawing tourists ever since.

I am not a very good writer and cannot even begin to put into words the scope of the city. The big kids had a fantastic time. Liam had chosen Petra as one of his two “must see” places for the trip (his other one is Vatican City). I asked him if it is all that he thought he would be, and he said it was so much more. He thought Petra was just the one building, as I think most people do, but to have an entire city cut out of the canyon is mind boggling.

And it was Liana and Liam’s first introduction to haggling. The Bedouin who live in the caves and old empty tombs of the area have all sorts of ware available all along the valley floor. Randall had his eye on a few daggers for his collection and took the kids with to learn about getting a good price. The key to haggling here in Jordan is to keep the respect for both parties. The nice Bedouin man sold his daggers and gave Liana a moonstone necklace and Liam a Nabataean coin for free. Everyone was happy - until we saw the time and realized our bus was leaving and had to run back through the Siq. We ended up hiring horses at the bottom of the Siq to get us up the long hill at the end. Not that it made much difference in timing as my horse was the only one that would gallop! We made it to the bus, sweating like demons, doing the walk of shame to the back of the bus past all the on-time people waiting for their late lunch.

We had such a lovely guide who was very concerned that each of us got a good sense of history of his country, and that we saw the place for the country it really was, unaffected by the media that surrounds the middle east in general. I hope to come back to this place again, and this time be able to explore all thirteen cities of the Nabataean’s that have been found thus far.

Back at the ship we were met by some happy smiling girls.... and as the sun set over the gulf of Aqaba we had a nice dinner and enjoyed catching up on our respective days and planning the next day – EGYPT!!!!!!!!!!!