Petra - Tourist Day at a Tourist Site
Trip Start
Jan 06, 2006
1
36
120
Trip End
Sep 02, 2008
Wadi Musa,
Jordan
Thursday, March 9, 2006
If you saw Indiana Jones and the Holy Grail, then you have seen a glimpse of Petra. It is a magnificent city carved from sandstone. Indiana Jones went there to find the Holy Grail, hidden by Crusaders back when they conquered it in the time of the Crusades. The Nazis were after it too... Okay I deserve a bit of flak for this Hollywood - Peabody (remember Rocky and Bullwinkle?) sort of history lesson. And now for something a little closer to the accepted version of history.
A group of people called the Nabateans lived in the canyon-city carved Petra. The Naba-who were traders, and their canyon lay along an important trade route between the Orient and the Mediterranean. Like most every people in antiquity, at one point they too were crushed by the Romans. Their concern for the after-life in carved tombs is their historical legacy, which lives on long after Roman legions sacked Nabatean cities and carried off Nabatean women. The Crusaders actually were here too, but their only contribution to the site is a very few crumbling stone blocks at the top of a cliff.
Dougal, God bless his soul, is an early riser. He conviced me (I was in a very groggy state and no position to argue) to put on my clothes because it was 5.30 am and time to go to Petra. The sun was just about up and dust made the fresh air hazy. From our accomodation in Wadi Musa, Petra was a half hour walk. At six o'clock, we arrived at the ticket office, along with the ticket clerk. We both bought two day passes, in case we didn't see Petra all in one day (it was about three dollars extra on a twenty dollar student ticket).
We entered Petra by what is known as the Siq. It's a kilometer-long corridor-canyon in the rock. Infrequent rainfalls over the eons shaped it, and the Nabateans expanded it as necessary and fortified it in some places (although the fortifications are now gone). It is not very wide at times, and I probably couldn't drive a Smart Car up it (and not because of snow - it was 24 degrees but windy). We walked and walked, admiring the sediment in the rock. That in itself may have made it a place worth visiting.
But there it was. We glimpsed it and Dougal started singing the theme from Indiana Jones. At a quarter past six in the morning, the light on the Treasury was perfect,* and there was no one there but ourselves. I can't quite call it a building or a structure (because it was carved out of rock and still comprises a part of a cliff face) but the carving was magnificent (the word carving seems yet too diminuitive). The facade is about five stories high and fourty meters wide. It looks as if it had been carved yesterday. There is not much iside, but in the dawn light, the red stone positively glows.
Dougal and I decided to see the most distant part of the ancient city and walk our way back. An approximate description: in the midst of a rocky mountain range is an intersectio of canyons and an irregularly shaped clearing about a mile square. Cliffs surround it on all sides and there are only a handful of narrow passages out.
Almost no one had came through any of those passages at six thirty in the morning, and we were half way there to the most distant thing to see. But "almost" no one isn't no one, because one boy (with the most pronounced buck teeth I have ever seen) who rode on a donkey was there to pursuade us to ride his emaciated animal. The expression on my face was probably more severe than I actually felt; I didn't want a ride.
At seven am we reached the Monastery. This is another trompe d'oeil carving into a rock cliff. It imitates Greek temple style to an extent but it is something else at the same time. About the same size as the Treasury, it has a cavern inside that was a Pagan cult temple. Some centuries ago it was rebaptised as a monastery by Byzantine monks and hence the name, which is probably making you think that it looks very different than you will find out when I post the photos.
We admired the "Monastery" for a time, and then debated going back down. Our map indicated a "view point" a few hundred meters out to the right. Did we go back down with or without seeing "the view point?" Dougal and I hypothesized about meeting other tourists who had been to Petra. Hypothetical conversation:
"Yeah, I was at Petra."
"It's so beautiful."
"The Treasury was something."
"Yeah. But did you see the "View Point?"
(We imagined saying no).
"Oh, no! You missed the best part."
Forseeing this version of the future encouraged us to press on and see the view. It was hazy but offered a pristine geology textbook diagram: volcanic rock topped by sedimentary rock and all sorts of crooked, folded over layers of all that stuff. It looked like the evidence of a billion years of rock history.
Climbing down to the main part of Petra, tourists had finally arrived. Dougal and I continued our tour through the dry riverbed called the "quarry" and then on to a line of rock tombs as long as ten city blocks. Of course the tombs weren't evenly carved like storefronts, being shaped out of cliffs. We walked straight up to them to see the sandstone and carved detail and the interiors.
Up close it is easy to see why the Nabateans carved the cliffs around their city so prolifically. They could. By this I mean that probably anyone could carve something into these cliffs. They are comprised of the smoothest, softest sandstone. A soft touch of the cliff face takes off a few grains of sand. Pressing onto it will take off as much sand as will stick to a sweaty finger. In certain parts (like the ceilings of the tombs) the layers of sediment are peeling off. I imagine that with a chisel I could make relatively quick work of anything here, even without any carving skill. By no means do I mean that I could do it, but anyone could. The sand-rock is just that soft.
The Nabateans were reputedly rich, but carving the trompe d'oeil Monastery or Treasury would have been a lot easier than raising real buildings out of granite or limestone. Today as tourists I think we are really lucky that these people lived in the midst of such an easy medium to work with. Unfortunately, I can't say the same of its preservation. In a lot of cases the work of the Nabateans looks a bit like melted ice cream. In another two thousand years tourists will be lucky to see anything: the wind alone must do a real number on the rock - certain formations like buckets in the rock (formed by little whilwilds of sand) are proof of that. Unless by the year 4000 everything is covered with glass.
Wandering around the tombs was fun enough. Sometimes the carvings were covered with dust so it all looked brown, but when it was cleaner it was worth a few photographs. Also like icecream, the sandstone of the tombs looked like strawberry, cherry, bubblegum, vanilla, coffee and licorice ice cream in multiple layers of only a few inches. Some pebbles seemed hard, but when chucked at other rock would burst into dust with a poof. Inside some tombs, locals had tied up their donkeys (most tombs had places for rope to be tied carved into the walls). As I entered the first such tomb a donkey neighed and I jumped right out of my skin.
By lunchtime Dougal and I were already feeling beat and starved, so we opted for the quite expensive buffet where every tour group was eating. But for my investment I got my pound of flesh (kebab and chicken). It was a good thing because our afternoon comprised two tough hikes to see the rest of Petra.
We climbed the "altar of sacrifice" and braved the wind at the top that drove most of the tourists away that day. Then we climbed one more hill, to overlook the treasury just before sunset. The cop in civilian clothing - Dougal - pestered me along the last 500 meters to the summit. The view was pleasant, and I wish that I had been with someone feminine or at least a bit more attractive. Ha! Dougal, you can't complain about that.
Our guidebooks had a path down marked on the map which we couldn't seem to find. We walked to the edge of a lot of cliffs and were just about to give up and walk all the way back when we found a very steep (70 degree) rockfall. If we had been a bit less cavalier I think I would have walked the long path back some four kilometers. But that wouldn't do, so down the rock fall we descended. All I can say is that it was very dodgy and does not belong in the guidebook. It is probably too hard for 90 percent of people. One point included a 12' climb down a rock face that was only possible for us because we both are taller than 6' and in our invincible twenties. I have no idea how I managed it.
We left Petra like we entered - by then most everyone else had gone home for the night and I trudged through the Siq because after 12 1/2 hours of walking my legs were jelly. It would have been serene but someone still had the energy to whistle the Indiana Jones' theme!
We did get our Holy Grail - only one bar in Wadi Musa sells beer and it makes a mint profiteering. Our quest was pretty easy to Indy's - we didn't have to evade Nazis, but I'm sure I could. I got through the wire at Birkenau, but that's a whole other story I'll write about in a month, inshallah.
*I promise to put up photos as soon as I can get my camera online!
