Petra, Jordan

For most of the stops on this cruise so far, I’ve had some knowledge about the places we’d go and the things we’d see. Not so with Petra. I’ve heard the name, yes, but I knew exactly zero about the site and I made a conscious effort to keep it that way. I thought it might be fun to go in ‘cold’ and let it all unfold without any idea of what it would be like before I got there. Literally the only thing I knew about Petra is that it’s a UNESCO World Heritage site and that it’s been on Rob’s bucket list for a long time.

But first, we have to get to get to Jordan. We dock in the port city of Aqaba (OCK-a-ba) which is a resort city with beaches and lavish hotels and a tiny little strip of coastline. It’s at the very end of the arm of the Red Sea called the Gulf of Aqaba. Several countries meet up right here.

We had a short tour of Aqaba, which is a pretty small place. It’s becoming a huge resort area, though, thanks to it’s tax-free shopping and enormous foreign investments. I think every country on earth is building a “seaside getaway” neighbourhood with a big hotel and shopping complex. The most interesting thing for me, though, was that you can snap a picture out of the bus window and get three countries and two continents all in one shot!

That all happened our first day here. Early (and I mean early!) the next morning, we climb onto the bus for the two-hour trek to Petra. Along the way, we saw lots of desert, with the beautiful red sand and clay that lends its name to the nearby Red Sea.

The Jordanian desert is full of bedouin - nomadic tribes who live in tents and move around depending on the weather and ability to get water. We saw lots of them.

Some bedouins decide to stay put and establish villages. According to our guide, this town of around 2,000 people is all one tribe. “Everyone is brothers and cousins.”

About 30 minutes outside of Petra, we stopped briefly at a place that had the “best view of Petra” for some photos and water and a washroom break. I walked over to the viewing area and expected to see more than this, obviously.

At this point, I’m not even sure if the guide was joking when he said, “there’s Petra” - but there are three gift shops/ tea houses right in a row claiming to have the best views of Petra, so it must be down there somewhere, right? I zoomed the camera all the way to the max and scoured the scene for anything interesting and found nothing. Whatever. Back on the bus and off we go to see what all the fuss is about.

Eventually, we arrive at the entrance to Petra , which is surrounded by hotels and the parking lot is jammed with buses, so there must be something to see after all.

The entry plaza is a sea of cheap souvenir stands, because of course it is. We were given a map (which I’ve marked up with some symbols) and told that we’d be going from the entry plaza (the red star on the right side of the map) and try to get as far as the Theatre (green star, centre of the map) before we’d need to head back. The path is all on uneven surfaces. cobblestones, sand, and such so it’s slow going. He said that if we got separated, to make sure to start back in time… and that it takes at least an hour to get from the Theatre back to the entrance. Yipes.

The guide explained that Petra is massive and it would literally take months to see all of it, and several days just to see the highlights. The two largest structures were the Treasury (which we would see) and the Monastery (blue circle, upper left), which was way too far for us to get to today. We set out down a long gravel path from the entry, where every five feet or so, someone would offer us a horsey ride so we wouldn’t have to walk. We walked. Eventually, we arrived at the Djin Blocks, which look like this:

At this point, I’m going to fess up a bit. I know that the Djin Blocks have something to do with spirits (‘djin’ is the origin of ‘genie’ after all) but I had just about tuned out our guide by this point. Our guide Mahmud grew up in a bedouin tribe and until the early 80s, his family lived in Petra. Not the city that sprung up around the site we’re visiting, but he lived in the site we’re visiting. They were cave dwellers and his family moved out for another area when it became impossible to find enough food/water for their goats in Petra. In fact, bedouin tribes lived in Petra until the mid-80s when UNESCO declared it a heritage site and made agreements with the bedouins to vacate the site (I won’t go into the details, but they got a pretty sweet deal, IMHO). Anyway, having a guide who spent part of his childhood in the place we’re visiting was both a blessing and a curse. It was a blessing because he had insights into things that other guides wouldn’t have. It was a curse because he had far too many stories and anecdotes and each time we stopped, we stayed put way longer than we wanted. I kept looking at the map, thinking “oh come on, there’s so much to see and we’re already only going to see a fraction of it. Tell us your story later on the bus.” But we stuck it out for now.

Then we got to a group of “Roman soldiers” who were laughably bad at marching. They were mainly there to get money from tourists for having their photos taken with them.

We’ve been on-site inside the gates of Petra for well over a half hour now, and we’ve seen next to nothing of interest. There are shallow caves carved into the sandstone hillsides, some with markings above them indicating that the person who lived there has died and that’s now their tomb as well. Finally, there was this:

Eventually, we get to As Siq, a pathway flanked by high walls of rock that have been carved out by flash floods. The pathway descends into a valley and as it descends, the walls on either side get higher. It doesn’t take long to feel dwarfed in here.

Along both sides of this pathway, water channels have been carved into the rock to carry water into the valley where most of the people lived. The Nabateans (the tribe who built all of this) were well-known for their rock carving and water management. Petra was on a significant trade route and the Nabateans became quite well-off by selling their extra water and other goods to the caravans.

As Siq seems to go on forever, with the walls getting ever higher and the sunlight completely blocked in some spots by the narrow passage’s shadows. Our guide keeps stopping to tell us more stories and every time I look at my watch and then look at the map, I’m realizing that every passing moment we spend stopped is another thing on the map we won’t have time to see. So we made a decision to ditch the guide and head off on our own to get as far as we could. There was a lot more As Siq between us and the next thing of interest labeled on the map and as fascinating as the channel was, I was back to wondering if this is all there would be of Petra. That’s when a sliver of light broke through the channel and a glimpse of The Treasury peeked through the crack.

…and now I get it. If you sat at the end of that channel, right where the Treasury finally comes fully into view, you could listen to the comments from the visitors and learn to say, “holy shit” in about 50 different languages. It’s like something out of a sci-fi movie. It doesn’t even look real.

Two things immediately run to the front of my brain:
1. Nobody built this. It’s carved out of the mountain. This is a carving. (notice the trails of footwells carved along either side for access)
2. The scale of it doesn’t seem human. Were the Nabateans 20 feet tall? Taller? That door is clearly not intended for regular people.

It’s at this point that the magnitude of the area becomes overwhelming. We’ve already walked nearly 2 km through a massive chasm with meticulously carved water channels. Ahead of us is this doesn’t-belong-on-earth house for giants. Then as the pathway continues on as a wide thoroughfare, more way-out-of-scale-for-humans carvings come into view. It’s called the Street of Facades.

A little farther and it’s obvious that the giant carvings are for the really important people (although I’m still not convinced those ‘people’ weren’t 20 feet tall) and the smaller, less elaborate caves were for the normal folks. There were lots of those.

Then more carved abodes for the giants, this one heavily damaged by an earthquake. The area suffered massive quakes both in the year 363 and in the year 639.

Eventually, we reach the Theatre, which is the largest theatre ever carved out of a mountain. It seats around 8500 people and was also victim to the earthquake in 363.

This is the place that our guide said they’d need to turn around in order to make it back to lunch and the bus on time. I’m really glad we chose to break from the group and go on our own, there’s so much more to see. For example, there’s The Urn Tomb with its archways.

Even more impressive than the Urn Tomb are the Palace Tomb, where it’s believed the kings of Petra were laid to rest, and the Corinthian Tomb with its elaborate facade. (in the next pic: Palace Tomb on the left, Corinthian Tomb on the right)

As we press on, we leave the carved structures behind and enter a new phase of Petra. While the massive carved tombs and cave homes were done by the Nabateans around the time of Moses, this part of Petra was from Roman occupation times, around the year 106 and for a few decades after. It’s during this time that the Roman road was put in.

The Romans were builders, not carvers. The ruins here are of constructed buildings, such as the Great Temple

And Hadrian’s Gate

And the Temple of Dushara

And then it was time to go back. We were about 6 km from the entrance and the whole trip back was uphill. It was really tempting to pony up the money ($15 Jordan Dinars, about $29 Canadian Dollars) to hire one of the guys in the golf carts to get us back up the hill, but we persevered and made it back, albeit with aching legs and feet. Back at the entry plaza, we were treated to a lunch buffet and then we had a bit of extra time to explore the museum, which was really well done.

An exhausted busload of shipmates mostly slept on the way back to the ship, about two hours’ drive. We were all pretty stoked about what we’d seen, though. I went in with zero expectations, even thought I knew it was on Rob’s bucket list for a long time. And even if I’d had massively high expectations, Petra still would’ve exceeded them, just because there’s no way you can translate the immensity and awesomeness of the ancient city in a photo or a TV documentary. And I look back and chuckle now at my early impressions of the place, when all there was to see were a couple of caves and a djin rock… and as long as I live, I might never see another thing on earth that hides its secrets as well as the Treasury that just seems to land at your feet from some other world as soon as you step out of the As Siq canyon. That moment will always be etched into my mind as one of the most amazing few seconds I’ve ever experienced. Rob agreed.

off to Oman!

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