An Ode to the Rose Red City: Three Days at Petra

Safely to Petra! Alhamdilleh

 So....Monday we had a bit of an adventure. We took off for Petra, armed with a map and a GPS. The route should have taken about 3 hours, and we headed out of Amman about 9:30am. We were looking forward to getting to our hotel in Petra, which had a pool, as a reward for our drive. Our GPS seemed a little off, but it had taken us safely to Jerash and back the day before, so we trusted blindly in technology. Our first sign something was off-kilter: Rob asked, "So...what are all these signs for Iraq and Syria for?" We passed multiple exits for Syrian border crossings, which was really strange, considering Petra is in the opposite direction. Also, none of the names on the exits matched the names on my paper map, but our GPS said we were doing fine, so we kept driving (technology knows best, right? Right?). We drove past the exits for Saudi Arabia, the Jabir crossing into Syria, Iraq, and ignored the fact that the paper map showed mountains and ragged terrain around Petra and the land kept getting flatter...and the temperature kept going up.

Our hotel had warned us that the US embassy encouraged all US citizens to avoid the Desert Highway near Ma'an in Jordan, which is usually what you'd take south out of Amman towards Aqaba, and turn off at Ma'an to take mountain roads into Wadi Musa and Petra. Apparently rival tribes have shut down the freeway a few times, and these events have been violent (not systematic, but enough for the embassy to tell Americans to take the Dead Sea Highway or the King's Highway instead). Due to this warning, we had been on the lookout for any road blocks or sketchy circumstances and had planned to get off the Desert Highway long before Ma'an. At about noon, we saw two buses parked in the middle of the road and a bunch of people gathered around them in a throng. My heart started palpitating immediately, and I told Rob to flip a U-turn. I was incredibly nervous, knowing that I had brought Rob here (Nancy Lee will kill me if something happens to him here!), and it was my Arabic skills that we were surviving on...and according to the GPS, we should have been 50km outside Ma'an and therefore in no danger...

Both freaked out but trying to be calm for the other one, we drove a few miles back up the road and took the first major road heading west, towards the interior and away from the troubled territory. But the road we were on, and the town the road led to, weren't on the paper map and the GPS kept saying we were still on the road to Petra with no mistakes or corrections...confused, I rebooted the GPS, and it said something really strange...we were 72 kms from Amman. How could that be? We should be something like 250 kms from Amman...

Well...our GPS had been simulating the trip from Amman to Petra, not updating with our actual progress - we had been off the actual route for 2 hours. Turns out we were in northern Jordan, pretty close to the Syrian border (hence...the signs for the Syrian border). So whatever it was we saw in the road, it wasn't rival tribes from Ma'an closing the Desert Highway - because we were not ON the Desert Highway.

Lesson learned: technology is great, but trust the paper map first and foremost, and make sure that analog (paper) map matches the digital (GPS) map. Also, if you're seeing road signs for Iraq and Saudi and Yemen, no matter your destination, you're going the wrong way.

Our lengthy tour of northern Jordan meant that we actually ended up getting to Petra much later, as we had taken a 3-hour detour and then when we did get to southern Jordan, we got off the Desert Highway well before we got anywhere near Ma'an (safety first! Our Syrian-Jordanian roadblock, whatever it was, had seriously freaked me out). Taking the King's Highway was a much slower process, and I would argue that "highway" is a fairly generous term. Despite the slow pace of the road and its continual winding through tiny villages where cows, goats, chickens, camels and children played in the road when cars weren't double parked across all lanes of traffic, the drive was beautiful, through canyons and mountains and wadis. We were so relieved when we finally got to our hotel, having definitely taken the scenic route. We left Amman at 9:30am, and got to Wadi Musa around 6pm....most couples would have been at each other's throats in these circumstances, but Rob's patience, once again, carried us through unscathed. We rewarded ourselves with a drink at Cave Bar, a Nabatean cave that has been converted into a restaurant and bar. It was a lovely way to close a rather stressful day.

The next morning, we got up early and went in to Petra. It's 1.2 km from the entry gate to the Treasury, which is the famous (Indiana Jones) scene. But the Siq, the canyon that you wend through on your way down, is incredibly beautiful, with towering walls that are occasionally inscribed with Nabatean graffiti. I know my words and pictures are a poor substitute, but please believe me when I say this place is magic. The rock walls are every shade of rose, red, brown, charcoal, and earth, and the most azure sky is visible above you in snippets.

And then, when you think the Siq will never end, you see it. The facade of the Treasury is nothing short of magnificent. I have wanted to see this masterpiece of human civilization for myself for so long, and when I looked up to see it, I felt a stone in my stomach. It was just so beautiful.

And then I was there, standing in front of the Treasury, the Khazneh. I had goosebumps. I know it's silly, and so nerdy, but there are some places that are just holy in a way that has nothing to do with religion, and everything to do with the possibilities of humanity and our greatest aspirations and capabilities.

Petra is not just the Treasury/Khazneh, though. It keeps going. There is so much to explore. When you walk further into the valley, there are so many more ruins. The valley is covered with them: the facades of tombs, homes, an amphitheater, a temple to Artemis, a monastery, a place of sacrifice, a colonnaded street...this massive valley and its walls are laced with traces of civilizations past: Nabatean, Roman, pagan, Ottoman, Mamluk...all these styles melding together in one place, all this beauty created around the time of Jesus that has survived 2000 years.

View from the High Place of Sacrifice, into the valley

Looking down onto the Tombs (in the cliff face)

The stone roof of one of the tombs

This is a facade of a tomb - musta been a big shot!

the facade of the monastery, ad-Deir

The path up to the monastery

Lunch after hiking to the top of the canyons to see the monastery

Tombs in the rock face

The Khazneh/ Treasury

New friends, who borrowed my sunglasses

We spent two days exploring Petra, getting completely filthy and covered in dust. It was worth every fils, every dinar, every time we had to say no to donkey rides or horse rides or Bedouin kid-hustlers selling postcards or jewelry...it is still one of the most beautiful places on this earth that I've been blessed enough to visit.

Last night, we bought extra tickets to go to Petra at Night. Growing up in New Mexico, I learned young that luminarias signaled the advent of Christmas every year. Luminarias are paper bags with candles inside, that line the paths and rooftops to shine the way for the Christ-child. Petra at Night evoked these memories of my childhood: luminarias lined the path down the Siq, winding through the canyon with inky black sky overhead pierced with the clearest of bright shining stars, and no real lights to dampen their beauty for miles and miles. We held hands as we shuffled our way over the stones and pebbles in the half-light, and made our way to sit in front of the Treasury, illuminated by hundreds of luminarias.

Sitting there with the man I love, with the light of hundreds of candles dancing on the facade of the Treasury, I was overwhelmed with gratitude: gratitude for all the travails of the past two years, because they brought me here; gratitude for those who came before me, who preserved this incredible piece of heritage that I might see it; gratitude to have chosen the at-times difficult but stimulating and rewarding profession that I have committed to (who gets to nerd out about interesting things in other parts of the world and go experience other cultures and others places? This is the best job in the world!). But most of all, I felt gratitude for the man sitting next to me, who loves me so much he'd drive to Syria, who understands the meaning of the word partner, who sees how crazy beautiful this ravaged, delicate, feisty world is and wants to explore it with me. I must be the luckiest girl in the world.