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Holy FUCK this place is astonishing
Aug. 26th, 2006 09:21 pmWe got across the border into Jordan this morning- a long but not terrible process, including a rather creepy walk across barbed-wired no-man's-land. Took at absolutely insane taxi ride for an hour and a half (lanes mean nothing!). The desert remains indescribable. We drove past the area used in filming Lawrence of Arabia. It's bizarre- you see the presence of water everywhere. The wadis are these steep water-carved desert valleys- the entire place looks like rivers and flash floods and it's dust-dry. Truly strange. Bedouin everywhere, with little herds of goats, and some donkeys and camels, and their big open-sided camel-skin tents. Hard to believe it's all real.
Wadi Musa is the city outside Petra- grown from a tiny encampment to a city of 30,000 local booming with hotels. But with the war in Israel, there are simply no tourists. Everyone is desperate- the taxi drivers, the hotels, the restaurants. All the ratios between tourists and services were off. We stayed at the CleoPetra (cute) a little family-run hotel absolutely overflowing with the rituals of Jordanian hospitality- the little rituals of tea-drinking and effusive thanks and elaborate conversation- a culture I would not do well in at all, frankly, but is wonderful to experience as a guest. Everywhere you go: "Where from? Welcome American! Welcome to Jordan!"
Petra itself is bogglingly huge. From the visitors' center it is a 20 minute walk to the canyon entrance. It's then over a mile through the canyon into the actual valley, and from there it's another mile or more through the outlying tombs to the Roman city proper- another mile through the city, and another hour's climb up the far edge of the canyon to the monastery. Something like 45 square kilometers. It's so huge that it could never conceivably all be excavated, will never even be well-mapped.
The canyon- Roman road, Roman water-pipes running along the sides with horse troughs, older Nabatean tomb niches and Roman niches everywhere, little stairs leading up to these little goat-path guard stations up top. And the colors! Yellows to oranges to pinks to REDS, swirling and beautiful. The canyon is so high, and so narrow, and the final turn opening on to the treasury is infinitely more dramatic in real life than in Indiana Jones.
Wadi Musa is the city outside Petra- grown from a tiny encampment to a city of 30,000 local booming with hotels. But with the war in Israel, there are simply no tourists. Everyone is desperate- the taxi drivers, the hotels, the restaurants. All the ratios between tourists and services were off. We stayed at the CleoPetra (cute) a little family-run hotel absolutely overflowing with the rituals of Jordanian hospitality- the little rituals of tea-drinking and effusive thanks and elaborate conversation- a culture I would not do well in at all, frankly, but is wonderful to experience as a guest. Everywhere you go: "Where from? Welcome American! Welcome to Jordan!"
Petra itself is bogglingly huge. From the visitors' center it is a 20 minute walk to the canyon entrance. It's then over a mile through the canyon into the actual valley, and from there it's another mile or more through the outlying tombs to the Roman city proper- another mile through the city, and another hour's climb up the far edge of the canyon to the monastery. Something like 45 square kilometers. It's so huge that it could never conceivably all be excavated, will never even be well-mapped.
The canyon- Roman road, Roman water-pipes running along the sides with horse troughs, older Nabatean tomb niches and Roman niches everywhere, little stairs leading up to these little goat-path guard stations up top. And the colors! Yellows to oranges to pinks to REDS, swirling and beautiful. The canyon is so high, and so narrow, and the final turn opening on to the treasury is infinitely more dramatic in real life than in Indiana Jones.