Today was Petra day. I think I was looking forward to visiting this new wonder of the world even more than the old wonder pyramid. I tend to like big sites rather than the one off structures, perhaps because the crowds don't seem as bad.
To maxmise our visit we got to the entrance at 8am when it opened. The initial offer of a horse ride from the visitor centre to the entrance to the city itself was rejected when we found out it was only 700m. It is not like we are fat Americans (no offence to any Americans but the majority taking the horses seemed to be American, the fat French walked). To be honest I think the time taken to get on and off the horses would probably have taken longer than any time saved using them. As it was downhill and on a fairly flat path, even Toby's ankle stood up to the task.
We met up with out guide, Ibrahim, who began to give us the lowdown on the Nabataeans who built the town, and its history. According to him they inveneted everything, although it is more likely as traders they borrowed it from the Greeks, Romans, Arabs and so on. Still it is quite impressive, they diverted rivers and dammed them to ensure a decent water supply. Our first sight of the city is the water channels at the entrance to the Siq. The Siq is the narrow canyon which was the entrance to the city. It is about 1.2km long, and averages no more than 3 or 4 meters wide. It is no wonder that nobody found the city for 100s of years. Although like most lost cities (Ankor Wat and Machu Picchu earlier in the blog) , it turns out the natives always knew it was there.
Anyway we walked down the Siq (we are still going downhill) we looked at the various religious carvings and the water channels down the side. There were both ceramic channels for humans, and earthen ones for animals. But the 'gods' were probably the strangest things, they looked like old computer characters, the aliens from space invaders, or pac-man.
Finally we rounded the corner and saw out first view of the Treasury, one of the two most spectacular buildings in the city. This is the iconic sight that is the last scene of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. This is the film that brought the city to the attention of the world. The Tresury is a building carved directly into the stone rock of the canyon. It was a tomb for the kings, the normal tombs are a lot smaller, all the buildings in the rock were tombs. People lived in normal huts, but these haven't survived the years thanks to earthquakes. It is all the rock tombs that give the city its name, Petra, which of course is the Greek for rock.
The Treasury itself is very spectacular, there are lots of Greek, Roman and Egyptian influences on the carvings on the front of it. But what is in some ways more amazing is the inside. It is barely more than a single square room. It doesn't sound very spectacular, but when you remember that this is hewn from solid rock, it is amazing that they got it so well defined. It turns out that only recently they have discovered more underneath, so it maybe even more amazing than it looks.
Leaving the Treasury, and all the crowds, behind, we continued on into the main part of the city itself. All the smaller tombs are here, and a very large amphitheatre. In some ways the way it unfolds out in front of you are you walk around each corner makes the city even more impressive. Just as you have seen one part, the next is there in front of you. I think the Treasury also suffers from the over exposure it has had in films. We saw a number of other royal tombs in the distance but we skipped over these and fairly raced towards the end of the city. The city is quite linear, over 3 or 4km from one end to the other, and our guide took us on a sort of short cut on a road overlooking the main street so that we could get ahead of the crowds. It was a good idea, get ahead of them, and then look into everything on the way back, as you go back out the same way you went in.
Our guided tour ended a bit early, maybe we move a bit faster than the fat tourists, but our 4 hour tour lasted less than 2 1/2 hours. Having said that we might have been better off without the guide, as he didn't really know that much, except that the Nabeteaens invented everything. He did recommend we head up the other side of the valley to look at the Monestary, the largest of the buildings, which for some reason is located a bit of a distance from the rest of the city, up a flight of 850 stairs.
It is not a particularly hard climb though, the only hard part is avoiding the donkeys, and the donkey ride sellers. It looked like you were taking your life into your hands if you got onto one, but getting in the way of one isn't much better. The safety of the donkeys is so bad that our local guide told us specifically not to get on one, even though it is probably his mates that rent them out. The other thing we had to avoid were the traders trying to sell us the usual junk. What was funny were two, one who had learned from Del Boy (his stuff was pukka, etc) and the other one who actually had a Birmingham accent, she must have grown up there.
When we got to the top of the mountain we saw the Monestary, which was pretty big. As we had got there before the crowds we had a bit of time to explore and eat our picnic lunches. I reckon we deserved it as we had probably done 7km by that point, but at least that was the end of the linear city. We had also beaten the sun, as it still hadn't gotten too hot by then. The interesting thing is that the guide books say that sunset is spectacular up here, but the place closes at sunset, and as it is 7km from the entrance, I couldn't figure out how you could watch sunset and get out in time (not to mention how dangerous the stairs would be in the dark - although I had brought my torch, now standard for all tomb sites).
We headed back down the mountain, and passed the Crowne Plaza restaurant. Turns out they own half the site, but at least they have blended in. You might get a bit annoyed about the modern buildings in such a site, but it is necessary, the fat tourists need to be fed. We had our picnics, which we ate at various points, and therefore didn't need to eat there. But they were doing great business. At this point, 1pm, we began to make our way back out, but we were able to take our time and look into all the temples and tombs we had bypassed on our way down. Most of the caves began to blend in after a while, seen one room carved out of rock, seen them all. They all smelt of camel pee anyway (or at least I hope it was camel pee, in at least one place it might have been human).
By about 3 we were getting pretty tired, so we began to head out, and again we ran the risk of being run over by camels and donkeys. As the route out of the city is uphill, the fat tourists needed a lot more help. While it is a long day, and we did maybe 15-16km, it really isn't that tiring, as it wasn't that hot. Still when we got back to the entrance we decided to go for a beer in the Cave bar.
This bar purports to be the oldest bar in the world. It may or may not be, but it is one of the most unusual locations. It is built in a 1st centuary AD cave. Still now it is part of the Crowne Plaza empire (which I'm fairly sure does not predate the Roman empire). And although we expected it to be an absolute rip off, the pints were no more expensive that they would be in a Crowne Plaza hotel in the UK. Actually so far the prices of drink in Jordan have been about the same as London. Not a cheap place to go for a drinking holiday, but that might be the idea. If you can't stop us from drinking, making it more expensive might make it less likely we get drunk (and less likely locals will take part in the drinking).
After a couple of drinks, we headed back to the hotel, and then later we went out for dinner and then to find the local Irish bar. Unlike the magical one in Dahab, this one actually existed, we had all seen it. Actually it was not an Irish bar, it was just a hotel bar that had signs for Guinness, Kilkenny and Magners outside it. Still it had beer and so we went in. We only had one beer, I had a Petra beer, locally brewed 8% beer, which felt like 12%. It was probably the exhaustion of a long day.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_7_wonders
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petra
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