Trekking Through Jordan

Dangerous Combinations

There are some combinations in the world that are more or less universally known to be unwise such as ammonia and bleach or George W. Bush and oxygen (it allows him to live) and some that are perhaps more esoteric like cesium metal and water (it explodes and catches on fire immediately), and then there is the most dangerous combination of all, me and a copy of Delta Airlines’ in-flight magazine, Sky.  For it is in this magazine that Delta route maps are to be found and this fires my imagination with the wonderful and unusual places I could fly, such as Amman, the capital city of Jordan.  I would go to Amman just because it existed, but it was the issue of Sky that featured the lost city of Petra, located conveniently in Jordan, that gave me the ability to convince Tim that Amman not only made sense to fly to, but that it was in fact a good idea.  That is the power of Sky!

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National Origins and Modern Times

The nation of Jordan is a direct creation of Winston Churchill, who drew the nation’s boundaries following the breakup of the Ottoman Empire.  The French and British divided up the spoils in the Middle East, and Palestine (Israel), Jordan, and Iraq went to Britain while Lebanon and Syria went to the French.  Brothers were made the kings of Jordan and Iraq respectively and the monarch of Jordan still stands and enjoys immense popularity.  Originally, Jordan was the land of the nomadic Bedouin as opposed to Arabs, but successive wars with Israel more than doubled the nation’s population literally overnight as Palestinian refugees flooded in.  The Jordanians were not exactly welcoming for many years and tens of thousands languished in refugee camps.  Today, Palestinians comprise the majority of the population and increasingly and with government “encouragement” the formerly nomadic Bedouin are becoming village and town dwellers, two forces that have forever changed the face of Jordan as a nation.

In today’s world, it seems that visions of the Arab world are either of oil and money soaked enclaves or of societies in disarray and upheaval.  And, in much of the Arab world, one or both of those stereotypes does hold true, but certainly not in Jordan.  Jordan has no oil and while it used to be able to import discounted fuel from Iraq (with whom Jordan maintained a historically close relationship based on the founding brothers even though the monarchy in Iraq was overthrown many years ago), the war there stalled that flow and now energy needs must be met at much higher cost through Sa’udia, which is not as friendly with Jordan as it once might have been following Jordan’s economically and socially advantageous détente with Israel.  Politically, Jordan is very stable and while it is a monarchy, there is also a parliament and the royal family is deeply beloved by most of the population.  The immediately past King, Hussein, was highly regarded worldwide as a peacemaker and master politician.  His American and British educated son, Abdullah, who speaks better English than Arabic, continues to bask in the glow of his father and to make his own positive way in the Arab and Western worlds.

Where Is the Holy Land Exactly?

It might surprise some to realize that Jordan contains at least half of what is commonly referred to as the “holy land.”  In Biblical times, the Jordan River, which today forms the border between Jordan and Israel, was not a political boundary and many of the historical and mythological events related in the Bible either took place, or are believed to have taken place, in what is today Jordan.  For example, Mount Nebu from which Moses is said to have looked into the Promised Land, the caves of Lot, and the saline formation reputed to be Lot’s ill-fated wife (a formation which routinely naturally falls and for which tour guides find a suitable replacement with some regularity), as well as, more interestingly, the reputed sites of Sodom and Gommorah, are among the many Biblical sights contained in Jordan.  As Amman is in some respects more affordable an arrival and departure destination than Tel Aviv, and since Amman is technically closer to Jerusalem and other Biblical hot spots, Jordan is increasingly a starting and ending point for Bible tours.  Of course, anyone who knows me realizes that this information is strictly anecdotal and was irrelevant to my desire to visit Jordan, which centered on Petra as well as on a general fascination with Arab culture and the world in general.

Travel Delays and Flights

Our original departure to Jordan was scrubbed by the many cancelled flights out of Atlanta and New York-JFK due to the winter snow and ice storms.  Even days later, the Interstate to the airport was not completely open and the going was slow at points, but the airport was fully functional once again and we left for JFK without incident.  I think it now safe to say that 6 hours more than suffices to exhaust the available activities in JFK although I did find some interest in checking out who was boarding for Accra, Ghana, or Dakar, Senegal, two cities that Delta is unique in serving direct from the US.  Our flight crew had to be amongst the oldest living and still working crews in the skies, but I will give ups to the lead flight attendant who took meal orders NOT by seat order but by Medallion status order, which meant that as a Diamond Medallion, I was able to snag one of only 12 of the beef filets on the menu.  The annoying gent two rows up from me failed to understand why he couldn’t have his first meal choice until it was explained to him that status has its rewards!  And because the guy just annoyed me, I REALLY wanted to eat only about 1/3 of the filet and then make sure he saw the remains of his desired meal being tossed in the trash just to annoy him…I can be like that sometimes…but I don’t think he was paying adequate attention to notice anyway.  The flight was a long 11+ hours, but as is usual for me, I laid back, pulled my duvet up to my chin and was mildly annoyed to be awakened when we were less than an hour from landing in Amman.

Queen Alia Airport is charmingly small and clearly outdated, but the new airport should be up and running in a few years.  You can’t really get lost at Queen Alia since there are all of two terminals, one for Royal Jordanian, and one for everyone else.  The trip to Jordan would be our inaugural experience of renting a car and driving ourselves in a foreign country (having done it and even having driven on the “wrong” side of the road in St. Thomas doesn’t count as it is technically US territory).  To be completely fair, it was Tim who was doing the driving and realistically, it was the easiest way to reach Wadi Musa, the town associated with the Petra ruins.

Driving Jordan

We found that Jordan had some excellent multi-lane highways and that road signage along heavily touristed routes was adequately signed in English for us to make our uneventful way to Wadi Musa.  It wasn’t until we were actually in the town itself that we managed to get turned around and slightly lost, a situation that quickly corrected itself.  We drove the very modern Desert Highway for most of the drive, an aptly named route since it is decidedly in the desert of Jordan.  Jordan does have rather high mountains, reaching up to almost 5,000 feet.  Up in these heights, while it is still dry, there are some trees and a fair amount of scrub brush.  Dropping down to the west from here, one falls into the Dead Sea depression, which is the lowest place on the planet, upwards of 1,000 feet BELOW sea level.  The eastern desert, where we were driving, is a classic dry, stony, and sandy wasteland that causes one to wonder why in the world anyone would ever bother to fight over it.  If I hadn’t known better, I could have believed that I was in the Mojave Desert of California.

The Desert Highway is lengthy to be sure and the signposts indicate that one could theoretically follow it to Sa’udia and Yemen.  Of course we wouldn’t be doing that since Sa’udia is one of the hardest places on the planet for which to obtain a visa and we clearly didn’t have time to drive to Yemen, and last we checked, Yemen fell into that category of Arab society that is in disarray and upheaval, especially in the northern areas that the road would have to pass through.  But still, it is fun to see signposts on roads that indicate that one is on the path to places that one is likely to never actually see.

Hotel Bliss

Once we found our hotel, the Movenpick Petra, which was conveniently literally right next door to the entrance to Petra (the other upper end hotels were at least 5km drive away from the entrance and that would have been annoying to have to drive and park to enter the site…well at least it would have been for spoiled travellers like us), was outstanding.  The Swiss do hotels like they do chocolate: to perfection.  The building was designed to blend into the area architecture and had the look and feel of an Arabian palace complete with wooden screens and enormous brass chandeliers.  The food at breakfast was nice although everything was of course chicken or beef based, even the sausage and “bacon” in accordance with local religious sentiment.  I suspect the male housekeeping staff was a consequence of local cultural norms that wouldn’t support sending women out to work, and especially not in an environment rife with men, and foreign men at that.  The shops were very fond of themselves, with a delightful little silver teapot that I thought would make a dandy addition to my souvenir collection until I discovered the $1,000+ price tag!

Don’t Worry, It Isn’t Egypt

In general, Jordan was more expensive than its neighbor Egypt, and everything remotely associated with or close to Petra was even more astronomically expensive yet.  But other dissimilarities between Egypt and Jordan were delightful.  Vendors in Jordan were happy to take your money for anything from pizza to jewelry, but unlike in Egypt they were not pushy, they did not stalk you in the streets and make every walk a game of dodge the tout, and you could walk into a store, look about, ask questions, and then leave without buying anything with no hassle.  After the Cairo experiences, this was a breath of very fresh air.  If Egypt is your only experience of the Arab world, don’t despair, it isn’t all like that.

The food in Wadi Musa was mostly pretty basic with kebabs or pizza about the only choices to be had, which isn’t a problem although it can get repetitious.  But one thing they did have that I loved and could hardly get enough of even though their prices were dear, was the fresh squeezed lemon juice.  Note, I do NOT mean lemonade, I mean lemon juice, sold alongside orange juice.  You just get the juice which is frothed in the blender for some reason, but even with a slight addition of a pinch perhaps of sugar, you are drinking some seriously sour stuff, which of course I loved as it mimics a habit I have at home of eating lemons like one normally eats an orange (peel and eat, preferably with some salt) or squeezing the lemon like an orange and drinking the juice.  Now I know I am not alone in doing this in the world and that I just have some Arab taste buds mixed in there.

Hiking Into Petra

But of course the point of the trip was to see Petra, the lost city of stone, established sometime around the 6th century BCE as the capital city of the Nabataeans.  To see the sights of Petra, one first has to purchase a pass, which is pretty dear at 55 Jordanian Dinar (about $77 USD) each.  Tourism is Jordan’s number two money maker (number one is minerals extracted from the Dead Sea) and I couldn’t really begrudge them jacking prices to help make ends meet.  And Petra is a truly international destination as we encountered visitors from several nations in Europe, as well as other Americans, along with the usual Japanese ,and our hotel booked in a group of 8 Brazilian tourists while were waiting to ask a question at the desk.  By the way, as a measure of economic growth, the amount of increase or decrease in the spending of a nation’s tourists is pretty reliable, and it was recently reported that Brazilian tourist spending abroad increased by over 50% in 2010 while British tourists by comparison actually spent 4% less.  Maybe we should all head for the next economic miracle land and learn Portuguese quickly!

We actually received a discounted entry rate over those not staying in Wadi Musa; day-trippers from Amman or Aqaba pay considerably more as a compensation for not supporting the local economy through hotels and restaurants.  After passing through the gate, one starts walking as it is a good kilometer at least before you start to see much of anything interesting.  Most modern visitors approach the site from the east. The impressive eastern entrance leads steeply down through a dark, narrow gorge [in places only 3–4 m (9.8–13 ft) wide] called the Siq (“the shaft”), a natural geological feature formed from a deep split in the sandstone rocks and serving as a waterway flowing into Wadi Musa.  The Siq itself is an impressive walk with tombs, doorways, and the remains of statues.  Perhaps most impressive are the remains of the water channels that once carried water into the city.  Not surprisingly for those familiar with deserts, which most people assume are always hot, it was COLD on the walk through the Siq, especially since most of it is in shade the majority of the time.  To put “desert” in perspective, remember that it is defined by precipitation amounts, not temperature, and one of the biggest deserts in the world is the continent of Antarctica, not exactly a place known for heat.

Tim’s photos will really shine in showing what the Siq looks like, and they do an especially good job of showing the tease view of the Treasury, the most famous of Petra’s cliff hewn buildings.  The forecourt of the Treasury is probably where most visitors turn around and go back, which is a shame, although the Treasury certainly is impressive in its own right.  Moving onward from the Treasury there is a colonnaded street, more temple ruins, more tombs, and an enormous amphitheater.  From this point, one has a fantastic vantage point for viewing the tombs in the cliffs, which can be visited more close up, but there is zero lighting inside, so there really isn’t much to see, which is perhaps a blessing since Petra is in danger of being loved to death by tourists, not all of whom are sensitive in their treatment of ancient sites.

At the site of both the Treasury and the Amphitheater, there are shopping and restaurant options, indicating the wisdom perhaps of stopping there.  But for the adventurous and the brave, there is a hike, euphemistically described as 800 steps, up to another magnificent cliff hewn ruin known as the Monastery, which is the largest of the ruins to be seen.  Surprisingly, we actually hiked this walk, and while I didn’t count the steps, it was a LONG walk UP the mountain.  Steps is a misnomer for what you actually climb, which in some cases are simply worn areas of the native stone where one can, barely, put a modern sized foot.  Ultimately, I think the pain was worth it (I could barely walk the next day due to the pain in my legs, and most especially the pain in my right foot, which to this day, almost a week later, has not abated) as the Monastery is truly impressive and there is also the sheer sense of accomplishment in having survived the hike.

Along the way are sprinkled make-shift stalls selling souvenirs ranging from jewelry to actual chunks of rock, which impressed me as an enterprising means of making money out of nothing (pick up rocks and sell them to tourists…genius!).  As I was walking past these places, I was thinking how impressive it was that these women, for almost all the vendors were women as the men were busy trying to get you on to the backs of donkeys for the ride up, although one still had to hike down, carried these goods up and down the hill daily.  I later would discover that these Bedouin women are among some of the few remaining people to live in the caves and hills of Petra, so they really weren’t walking that far daily after all.  Most of Petra was abandoned by the 4^th century of the Common Era, but there are still to this day some hold outs.

Petra was a magnificent and wonderful sight to see and I still cannot imagine how the Nabataeans managed to create such masterpieces.  I am also unclear how the city remained effectively lost and forgotten until 1812 when it was “discovered’ by Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt.  I think a more accurate description of Petra’s status would be that it was unknown to Westerners but was clearly well known to those local inhabitants who still lived amongst its caves and tombs.

Onwards to Aqaba

Given our pain levels and given that we had managed to see the major sights of Petra on day one, we forgo using the second day of our two day pass and instead opted for a road trip to the second major city of Jordan and the only port, Aqaba, located on the Red Sea at the narrow point at which Israel, Jordan, and Sa’udia come together.  The drive was mostly uninspired, unless one is really not at all accustomed to rocky desert scenery.  There were a few very small Bedouin settlement villages on the way, but we did see truly wild roaming camels and did have a traffic jam consisting entirely of sheep and their shepherdesses.

Aqaba is attempting to become a Red Sea resort along the lines of neighboring Eliat in Israel, but admittedly it has a way to go before it can realistically compete with the massive commercial developments so clearly visible across the border.  Just for kicks, we did drive as close to the border with Israel as we could without actually having to cross, which we didn’t want to do nor could we likely have done with a rental car anyway.  Odds are it is as close to Israel as I am likely to get as I have zero desire to visit the country.

One advantage Aqaba did have was that compared to Wadi Musa, it was dirt cheap and we were both able to eat an enormous lunch, more than we could hope to finish, for less than one of us could eat something small in Wadi Musa.  To our bemusement, there was a Royal Caribbean cruise ship, Brilliance of the Seas, the ship made infamous by being damaged in a storm in the Mediterranean in December, docked in Aqaba the day we visited.  The ship was on a 14 day journey from Barcelona to Dubai, a journey that it has not quite yet finished as I write this.  As we drove back to Wadi Musa, the impact of the ship’s visit became clear as we passed no less than 26 tour buses that had departed from the ship to visit Petra.  We estimated that each bus carried approximately 60 passengers, meaning that Petra had been flooded with some 1,500+ people on top of other visitors.  We congratulated ourselves on having chosen an excellent day to NOT be in Petra.

On our way out of Aqaba we decided to get as close to the Sa’udia border as we could/dared.  What we discovered was that the approach is blocked by hoards of tanker trucks heading back to Sa’udia to fill up with the fuel that Jordan so desperately needs.  So many trucks are headed south that there are actually marshaling yards several kilometers back inside Jordan to control the traffic and backup at the border.  We couldn’t quite figure out how to get back on the road headed north and we passed the safe machine gun equipped Jordanian military jeep several times, a feature which highly motivated Tim to figure out the correct routing.  I suspect we were not the first lost tourist they had seen but big guns really are not a feature of my experience of American life, although perhaps with the rise of Sarah I should get used to it.

GPS Interference??

We did take our navigation device with us on this trip since we would be driving, but bafflingly enough, it was mostly useless.  It rarely ever showed us on the road we knew ourselves to be on, and at one point had us driving in the Red Sea by about 100 yards, and then suddenly we would appear to 100 yards inland from the road we were on.  Tim is convinced that the US military, which operates the GPS satellites that civilians are also now allowed to use, are intentionally vague about positions in a region bordering sensitive nations such as Israel and Iraq.  I tend to be skeptical in general about claims of government interference in my life but in this case I think Tim might well have been correct.

Sort of Lost In the Mountains

On our last day, we had plenty of time before a late night flight out of Amman, so we decided to try the scenic route along the mountain ridge tops, an area replete with ancient Crusader castles.  The route was more scenic than the desert routes, true, but it was also not as well marked and had multiple detours as well.  We had intended to at least look at the Dead Sea, but we found ourselves making very poor time and instead opted to head back to the boring, but efficient and well-marked, Desert Highway to head back into Amman.  We chilled out at the partially finished Golden Tulip airport hotel, drinking Beck’s beer on special, while we awaited the airport experience of multiple and redundant security checks to board our aircraft for the 12.5 hour flight back to New York-JFK.  I, of course, was asleep before we passed over Greece and was blissfully unaware of the hours passing away before landing.  We sailed through Customs and Immigration with our Global Entry membership, and suddenly we were back on a domestic flight to Atlanta, with the memories of Petra, the mysterious city of rose red stone, seeming more unreal with the minute.

Final Thoughts

Overall I think I agree with the BBC which has declared that Petra is one of the 40 places to see before you die, although I admit that I don’t know what the competition is.  Petra is beautiful, but if you decide to visit, do it and the people who live in the area justice by not just blowing in on a day trip.  Instead, invest in a couple of days, take your time, and enjoy the humor and hospitality of the Wadi Musa area population.  These folks built a magnificent city before Europe had much of anything to show for itself and they are still magnificent and hospitable people to this day.