Travels: Petra

The flight out of Africa was interesting. We traveled north over Kenya and Ethiopia, across Sudan, following the Nile over Khartoum and then into Egypt up to Luxor and then, a right turn across the Red Sea. A left turn over the Sinai to transect the full length of the Sinai from south to north. We followed the great rift from Africa to Asia. Aqaba, where we landed in Jordan, is on the border with Israel and is a sister city with Elat, Israel. We were minutes from Israel, 30 minutes to Saudi Arabia, and 20 minutes to Egypt. It was a two hour drive to Wadi Musa (Arab for Moses) through arid, rugged desert. Wadi Musa is believed, by Muslims, to be the location where Moses struck a rock and water came forth. There was a lot of excitement in town. King Abdullah had sacked the parliament two years ago. He decreed elections for parliament be held while we were in Jordan. There were many political gatherings, most with Bedouin black tents forming the perimeter for the rallies. Posters pasted to cars, horns honking, and chanting youth in the backs of trucks.

I'm quickly running out of adjectives to describe our many adventures on this trip. Again, we had under-estimated what we would see. It is a 2-1/2 mile winding walk through the narrow split or ciq before we got our first glimpse of Petra, the famous Treasury.

It was actually a temple but is called the treasury because it was believed King Solomon's treasure was hidden in the large urn topping the facade.

We foolishly thought that this was Petra, or at least, the bulk of what we'd experience. We were surprised; Petra covers several hundred square kilometers and I think we trekked through it all. The ciq began to widen at the Treasury and led into the necropolis.

You can differentiate the tombs from the houses, the tombs all have staircases at the top for the spirit or soul of the Nabataean to ascend to heaven.

The necropolis and acropolis were roughly divided by this theater that would hold 2,000 people.

The estimated population of Petra in the second century BC was around 25,000 people. There are houses carved all along the cliffs and up every side wadi winding up into the dry, rugged mountains.

There were two large tombs across from the theater. The largest is referred to as the Cathedral because it was used by the Byzantines as a church. The acoustics were great. As we entered, a group of Italians were singing hymns. The cut stone arches were added by the Romans after they conquered the Nabataeans.

There were also free standing buildings in the city center but all but one collapsed due earthquakes. There were huge column stones lying everywhere.

From the city, we hiked into the mountains to see the Monastery. It was a beautiful climb up about 3,000 feet. Most of the climb was up stairs cut into the sandstone more than 2,000 years ago.