The West Bank Blog: Petra (part 1)

Getting from my hotel in the morning to the bus station where the minibuses head to Wadi Musa was decidedly easier than any of my previous day's travels. In front of the hotel I caught a taxi for the half-hour drive to the bus station in the north end of the city. As often is the case my taxi driver and I had an engaging discussion about the war and what Nasrallah means to the Arab world. His english was exceptional as he described his travels throughout the Arab world and what he thought about each nationality. I learned a lot form him in those fifteen minutes of driving through pre-rush hour Amman traffic. He dropped me next to the proper bus platform and because my ride was metered I felt for the first (and in some ways last) time that I wasn't being ripped off in Jordan.

A group of kuffiyah wearing Arabs sat on a blanket behind the bus - I immediate realized that they were bus drivers and bus-wranglers for lack of a better world when one jumped up and asked me in English where I was going. Standing behind the Wadi Musa bus I answered him by gesturing towards the bus, at which point he showed me to the passenger seat. Excellent! I would get to ride the King's Highway through most of Jordan from the passenger seat of the minibus! My day was starting off right!

When the bus finally filled up one of the men who had been taking his tea on the blanket behind the bus jumped in the drivers seat and we were off.

The signs for Baghdad in the windows of the tour companies surrounding my hotel last night had made me nervous. The first fifteen minutes of the drive to Wadi Musa stirred the same unease in my stomach as we drove through the northern reaches of the city, exiting via an off-ramp marked "az-Zarqa". Just a few weeks ago I had told the man in the Old City of Nablus that I thought the recently killed leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq - Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was "majnoon" - crazy. Now I was driving through the southern reaches of the town that he had come from and that had given him his nom de guerre. I got shivers as I thought of the young Japanese man who lost his life at the hands of Zarqawi two years ago after he had traveled to Baghdad from Amman; probably using one of the tour companies offering those cross-border-and-certain- death journeys that had frightened me so the night before. (See tangent below...). It was the second time that the war in Iraq, raging in the country next door was brought to my mind in the span of 12 hours.

The drive along the King's Highway was pleasant and impressive. It, in a strange way, reminded me of parts of Mexico: desert, mostly flat, and with random restaurant/gas stations that looked straight out of a movie.

The drive took a couple of hours and eventually we began to veer right towards the Jordan that I knew ran beyond the wadis towards our west. Over small hills we drove closer our destination passing through surprisingly vibrant small towns. It was mid-morning when we arrived in Wadi Musa and on our drive into town we passed the hotel where I, with the help of my tour book had decided to stay. Down the hill we continued past dozens of small hotels and restaurants geared towards backpackers. The parking-lot bus station held a few cabs but I decided to walk back up the hill to my hotel. 20 minutes and twenty pounds lighter I arrived at the hotel, drenched in the sweat that poured from my body in the arduous uphill climb that ended up being a lot longer than I had calculated in my mind.

No there were no dorm style rooms (as my book had suggested) but they had a good room and a special rate just for me! Imagine that - two hotels in Jordan offering me a special rate! I braced myself for a heavy quote but it turned out to be not too bad at about 20 Canadian dollars a night. The room itself was exceptional. Large with a King sized bed, the best part was the balcony that looked out over the town in the direction of Petra.

One of the reasons I chose this hotel was for it's pool. I quickly threw on my swim shorts and headed down the hall and around the corner and out into the blaring sun. I slid into the pool and was shocked by what was easily one of the coldest pools I've ever been in. I dunked my head and jumped back out. Shivering I returned quickly to my room to get ready for what would probably be only a half day at Petra.

The front desk got me a cab (fare included in my rate) and I asked to be dropped off in the center of Wadi Musa. I was starving and found the restaurant recommended to me in my tour book (not the best tour book I had decided). The Lentil soup I had was great but my shish kebab was disappointing. I decided that I was ready for the park and jumped in another cab heading for the gate.

At 20 dollars CDN for a two-day student pass into the park, the admission to Petra is a steal. I have read in a number of places that it takes at least two days to experience so I figured I could do it in a day and a half (I'm in good walking shape).

The Siq is the famous two kilometer winding, narrow, water hewn passageway through the rock that leads to Petra but before the entrance to the Siq you need to first walk a kilometer along a more open path that runs parallel to a horse road - where you can hire a horse from the Bedouins to take you to the entrance. In fact, there are a number of transportation options to and within Petra - all offered by the local Bedouins. Horse, horse-drawn buggy, donkey, camel. I didn't ride on any but I do admit, the camel was tempting.

At the entrance of the Siq you get the sense that you're entering some sort of time warp - or that you are going into a hidden world. It was really quite amazing. The Siq itself felt surprisingly long. The ground, often changing from Roman cobble-stones to well swept, hard rock was kept very clean. Along the towering walls, embedded into the stone about hip high were the troughs and ceramic pipes installed by the Nabateans 2000 years ago and carefully maintained and replaced since, that fed the arid Petra with water runoff from the surrounding Wadis. Water, an obvious precious commodity in such a hot and dry place is a hard thing to envision now, in our era of waterbottles (I had two liters in my back pack) . And water in Petra has an interesting history: in the 1960's dozen of tourists were killed in the Siq when a dam broke and the narrow passageway flooded.

I knew that the Kahzneh lay at the end of the Siq. The Treasury, as it is also known, is the most well preserved of Petra's edifices and as I rounded what I thought was just one more curve in the road, it appeared ahead of me and I stopped dead in my tracks. Rosy pink in the mid-day sun, random tourists gathered at the steps at its base and I stood in awe as its carved pillars and reliefs towered above me. I took a few shots and decided to keep moving. I wandered past ornate entrances to tombs, past the large roman amphitheatre, past ancient buildings that are only now being excavated. The immense size of the complex was almost overwhelming. I peeked into tombs and unknown buildings and chuckled to myself to see that most of these fabulously constructed buildings hold very small, usually single rooms, and are complete empty.

With the red sand of Petra gathering in my shoes, and with Bedouin children, again like their Mexican counterparts trying to eke out a living by selling mass produced trinkets to tourists, I grew tired quickly and decided to return to the Kahzneh where I sat on one of the wooden benches opposite the Treasury and stared at its wonderful artistry and watched the tourists pose at its steps and beside the well placed camels.

At some point I thought I might be able to come back tomorrow and see what I want before moving on that same day to Aqaba and back to Israel. I got up and walked back through the Siq.