Petra -Jordan

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Petra. Not what I expected.

Tuesday morning we drove to Wadi Musa. This is large town on the doorstep to Petra.

I imagined that the Nabatean city of Petra was in some out of the way canyon far out in the desert. I could not have been more wrong as I would find out in the morning. For the rest of the afternoon it was a “free time”. It was too hot to walk into town so most of us stayed around the hotel pool or watched Indiana Jones in the hotel lounge. Our accommodation for the next two nights was in a common room sleeping on mattresses on the floor.

We had hot water and flush toilets for the first night but this quickly changed to cold water or no water and the toilets not flushing. Not healthy for 27 people.

It was my groups turn for cooking dinner and we have a triple whammy. Dinner preparation tonight, breakfast preparation on Wednesday morning and truck clean Wednesday night. I am sure we will cope. My group has Luke who is 22, a chef from the UK. Sandra is from Germany and Meagan is from Australia. The plan was to do creamy cheese sauce with vegetables and pasta. The Veggies and Sauce went OK but first the pasta was rinsed in water (after warming it for 5 minutes, then the pasta was put in cold water and cooked. Oh Oh! We had a gluggy mess that was edible. The good news is that we had some left over so we can use it to retread the truck tyres.

Today I went to Petra which if you have been paying attention you now know is in Jordan. It is an amazing place. Apparently about 22 years ago the local Bedouins used to live in the caves and the valley and the government recognised the tourism potential of Petra so they build a complete town not far away and relocated the Bedouins to it. They still have the rights to operate shops and stalls within the World Heritage area. What surprised me most was I was expecting Petra to be way out in an isolated area but if fact it is a bit like the Launceston Cataract gorge as it is immediately at the end of the main street of the town of Wadi Musa.

Our Hotel provided a complimentary mini van to take us to the visitor centre at 7am. And that was when I discovered it was at the end of the main shopping precinct. After paying 21JD (Dinar) which is about $40 Australian we walked about one km to the “Treasury” which is the facade that is most recognised or probably most publicised photo of Petra. The rest of the day or at least until 2pm we wandered the site past some amazing ruins and of course many shopping opportunities. We did a long hike known as the “High Sacrificial Route” which included a climb up 400M and then again. I am guessing that overall we did 6 to 8 Km for the day and possibly more. Hot and thirsty work indeed.

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Comments

[Belinda]

Wow
How beautiful. The sheer age of the place must blow you away. Hope you are keeping well. Cheers, Bel

[Nick]

Petra
It sounds a bit over developed now, I went there in 1964 and it was still fairly free, slept in a cave.