By the time we arrived in Jordan and napped to make up for lost sleep on the flight, we only had a few hours to explore Amman. It struck us a little bit as Cairo had, very big and not overwhelmingly touristy. We were able to enjoy some very cheap falafel sandwiches and juice, and wander the streets until evening.
The next day, we caught a mini-bus to Petra. The buses wait to leave until they are full, so we ended up sitting in the bus station for some time. After that it was a three hour ride. Petra is a small town made big by the presence of the archaeological site, best known for its appearance in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. We visited it in the afternoon.
It’s a short taxi ride to the outskirts of town where the entrance to the ruins is located. There are several souvenir and snack stands and lots of men offering you horseback rides. Admission is really pricey, about $30 a person. Once inside the gates, there is a long walk down a dirt road lined with increasingly higher hills. There are a couple of tombs carved into the rock, with obelisks and columns. After some time, you descend into a narrow canyon, with steep rock walls. Towards the end, you can see the famous Treasury building peeking through the canyon walls. When you emerge, you are treated to a truly spectacular site. The carvings are mostly in excellent condition, and it was much larger than I ever thought. Definitely deserving of the title of one of the New Seven Wonders of the World.
From the Treasury, the canyon continues to widen and wind. There are several little restaurants and souvenir shops, little more than tents against the canyon walls. The sides are peppered with carvings and buildings in the rock, including a Roman theater. Most of them are not in the same shape as the Treasury building, but they are still really spectacular. It’s a lovely walk.
Eventually the wide canyon ends at a steep stairway carved into the rock which leads up into the hills. There are many people offering donkey rides (“Taxi?” they ask) but we opted to hoof it ourselves. The day was growing late, but there were still a few other people making the climb as well. It was fairly arduous, but worth it. At the top, there is another spectacularly carved building, a monastery that could easily be the Treasury’s equal. Walking a little farther from there affords some beautiful views of the rocky mountains and the desert beyond. All in all, the scenery alone would have made the trip worth it, and the carvings only made the visit even better. Petra was truly a wonder to behold.
The next day, we arranged a tour to go out to Wadi Rum, a desert about an hour and a half away from Petra. We rode there with two other American tourists who had a rental car. The desert is a popular tourist destination from Petra, and it seems like they are really trying to do it right. There is a beautiful visitor’s center where you pay a small fee to enter. Then you drive a little further to the small town of Wadi Rum. Our guide met us and took us to his house, where his wife served us some delicious tea and we saw his three adorable small children. His living room was furnished with cushions lining the walls where we sat and sipped our tea.
We got into the back of a truck specially fitted for these tours with benches and a covering. Then we drove out to some of the desert’s popular sites. It is famous as the place where T.E. Lawrence was based during the Arab Revolt, and many of the sites have connections to “Lawrence of Arabia.” It is not a flat open expanse of sand, but a desert filled with rocky hills and cliffs. We stopped first just on the edge of the village, where some steps had been chiseled into the stone. A winding path took us to a freshwater spring dripping out of the mountain. A little enclosure had been built around it.
From there we drove out of town. The paved road suddenly ends, and then there are no roads to follow. We wound our way through the sand, around the tall cliffs. Some were smooth, others choppy and steep, and still others looked like the rock was dripping down them like liquid. We stopped at one rock with old carvings chiseled into it. Above this rock was another spring, apparently one which is mentioned in Lawrence’s autobiography. But it was an arduous climb to the top, and our small group opted not to try it. We did climb up an immense sand dune, which provided some wonderful views and the opportunity to clamber around the rocky tops of the mountains. After a lunch of falafel sandwiches, we continued to see more rock carvings, the remains of a stone house where Lawrence stayed, and a tall rock bridge. We climbed up the rocks in order to get on top of it. It wasn’t a very easy task, but it was fun getting to the top.
Our two friends were heading on that evening, but Tommy and I had arranged to stay in a Bedouin camp that night. There are several campsites set up around the desert for this purpose. Our guide dropped us off and directed us to another spring across the desert which we could walk to. The camp comprised of several large black tents, furnished inside with rugs, mats, and cots. There was one open tent where we ate which was lined with cushions and had a firepit in the center. The whole camp was nestled up against a mountainside to provide shade, but the inside of the tents were still steaming hot in the sunlight.
We made the trek across the desert to the cliff our guide had indicated, and found the spring. When we returned, we had some more really wonderful Jordanian tea and then climbed up another cliff to watch the sunset. Unfortunately, as evening set in, clouds began to cover the sky. We couldn’t see the sunset or the stars, two of the things we were looking forward to the most. We still enjoyed our campout. The night was actually a little chilly, but the next day dawned sunny and warm again.
We caught a bus back to Petra to collect our packs, and then another bus to Amman. It was from there that we would fly to Dubai the next day.