Petra and Wadi Rum

Trip Start May 11, 2005
1
147
259
Trip End Ongoing


Loading Map
Map your own trip!
Map Options
Show trip route
Hide lines
shadow

Flag of Jordan  ,
Thursday, October 12, 2006

We left Nair's Kibbutz loaded to the gills with apples, 8 snitzels and a monster box of dates. We then set off to the border of Jordan. The bus dropped us off 2k away from the border and we walked the rest. The Israeli border guard saw us coming in the distance and met us at the gate with 2 cups of cold water! Can you believe it??? Talk about nice!
We crossed into Jordan and then had to figure out how to catch a bus to Petra. Being Ramadan the buses did not leave until the next day and a private taxi there and back was only slightly cheaper than renting a car. So after comparing all the cost and time it would take we decided to rent a car.

Our first stop was Wade Rum. This is the desert that Lawrence of Arabia lived in for a couple of years and it's very similar to Moab in Utah. We got there as the sun went down and were lucky to see twilight colors on the massive desert rocks. Since we did not really have a guide book on Jordan we had no idea of what to see or do. We saw some people eating dinner and decided to ask them. They gave us some tea and we shared some dates and one thing led to another and the owner of the place let us sleep on his roof for free. The next day we got up and wondered around the desert for a couple hours until we realized that it was just too much work to walk around in the burning hot sun just to see a desert with massive rocks. So packed up and left for Petra.
Petra is city that is carved out of sandstone. The city was the principal city of ancient Nabataea and was famous above all for two things: its trade and its hydraulic engineering systems. a)Sign we saw as walked to the Jordan border
a)Sign we saw as walked to the Jordan border
 It was later taken by the Romans, but enough history.... You would recognize it from the movie Indicia Jones and the Last Crusade. This is the place were Indiana Jones finds the Holy Grail. This place had been lost to the western world for ages until the 1800s. A nomadic people called the Bedouin had been guarding it as there treasure causing it to be undiscoverd. Bedouin are nomadic tribes in Egypt.. they are everywhere just like Berbers in Morocco. In 1800 something....A Swiss guy overheard the Bedouin talking about a lost city and vowed to find Petra. He pretended to be a Christian Pilgrim because Aarons grave is very close to Petra and basically found Petra.

Petra was very interesting and the civilazation that lived there at one point would have been amazing to see. The Bedouin still live in and around the area so whenever we would go into caves or old structures they smelt like a toilet. The Bedouin are constantly pestering everyone with "camel ride", "donkey ride" and so on. Typical 3rd world country style. We spent over 8 hours checking out the ruins here and were totally exhausted at the end of the day.....but it was worth it!

The next day I found out that we could take a ferry from Jordan to Egypt instead of going back through Israel. So we high tailed it out of Petra and back 2 hours to the port to catch a ferry to the Sinai Peninsula.
Slideshow Print this entry Amman hotels