Before going to Petra, I knew very little about it and was not aware that it was an ancient city in a mountain. I thought it was just an ancient city, so I deemed flip flops and a skirt an appropriate exploring outfit. So keep my attire in mind as I describe our day (from 9AM to 6PM) in Petra.
Petra is entered by walking through a sort of canyon. At the end of the canyon, there is a structure built into the rock. It is massive and magnificent, and it is a common misconception that this is all there is to see of Petra. There is actually so, so much more. We spent most of the morning hiking up to what we thought was the top of the mountain and then back down again, exploring and climbing on various tombs and structures as we went along. When we reached the bottom of the mountain after a full day of climbing, we were informed that we hadn't technically made it to the top of Petra or to see the Petra chapel, which is very near to the top. We decided we couldn't pass up these opportunities, so we set out again. After seeing the chapel, we hiked to the highest point and relaxed there for a bit before finally heading down a final time to catch a bus back to the Valentine Inn.
The fact that Petra is so vast is amazing. It cannot have been easy to build, yet each structure and tomb is magnificent and there is such a abundance of them. It goes on forever. We spent a nine hour day there, and I would guess that we only saw about 70% percent of the city. The structures are also interesting because of the Byzantine influence. One of the tombs is actually called the Tomb of the Roman soldier.
Two funny things worth mentioning happened while hiking through Petra (and I am not referring to the several hundred times I almost fell, only during one of which did I actually almost, ALMOST fall, as in down, on my face). The first happened at a small shop on one of our trips down the mountain. There were many of these shops selling jewelry, pottery, etc. The woman running this shop was an older Jordanian. As we approached her, she came up to me and began to fix my shirt. I was wearing a tank top and a three-quarter length sleeve V-neck sweater, which I thought, given the extreme heat was definitely appropriate by cultural standards. Throughout climbing, I guess my tank top was a little low on my chest and the V in my sweater had fallen open a little. The woman pulled up my tank top and pulled closed my sweater. I was a little embarrassed and apologized to her, but I came to realize that she was not offended, but was only trying to be helpful to me. She said something about it being hot, and then showed me all the clothing she was wearing. She had on pants, a long sleeve shirt, a dress to below her knees and then a black robe covering her whole body and head. We agreed with her about how hot it must have been for her and I thanked her for her help. We talked a little more with her about it getting cooler when the sun went down and assured her that the day was almost over. I am glad we met this woman. The way she treated me was almost motherly and it was an interesting and enlightening experience, as we don't feel much of the cultural stigmatism that Muslim societies place on women in Cairo. It was definitely something I am glad I experienced first hand. It was also a funny foreshadowing to something that would happen in Jerusalem, but I'll describe that in another post.
The other incident was not as much educational as just solely funny, and it is possible that it was so funny just because it happened at the end of the day and we were utterly exhausted at that point. On our final trip down the mountain, we saw a donkey running down ahead of us with a Jordanian running after him. This was a bit odd. We had seen donkeys and camels (and even a herd of goats, which actually do make the exact noise 'Baaa') all day being offered to climbers, but none had been leading the men with them on any kind of chase. When we reached the bottom of the mountain, we saw that the donkey had been caught by the man chasing him. This man was now standing on a ledge above the donkey holding a large rock. The three of us walking together at this point were alarmed and stopped to tell the man not to hit the donkey. He told us he would not, but we were skeptical at best of his answer considering that he watched us until we were out of his view. A little further along the path, we saw some other men with donkeys and we told them the story and asked whether the man had hit the donkey with the rock. The answer was an absolute yes. One of the men provided some more enlightening information when he told us, direct quote, "Sometimes donkey doesn't walk. Then you will hit it in head. Then it walk." That's sad and awful I know, but at that point I could not help but become hysterical. As I said, most of that was probably related to exhaustion, or heat exhaustion, or a combination of the two. The other man then began to explain in half-English, half-Arabic something about feeding the donkeys. We didn't know if he was angry about tourists feeding the donkeys or if he was advocating withholding food from the donkeys for their misbehavior. Considering what we had just witnessed and heard, we figured it was anyone's guess.
After all the excitement, it was definitely nice to be back to the Valentine Inn for dinner and a good night sleep before the Bedouin adventure we had planned in Wadi Rum the following day!
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