Grand Canyon with Culture - 3rd Jan 2002
Rose Tinted Spectacle
The Thin Pink Line
We stayed in a hotel by ourselves, but this did mean that we had the portable radiator and the only towels.
Petra is wow. The site is huge and despite seeing Indiana Jones etc. you get no clue as to the real vastness and intricacies of the sites. We have spent the last three days climbing up ancient stairways cut into living rock of rose coloured sandstone and discovering structures hidden down deep narrow gorges. It seems impossible to believe that a city that is so huge could have been lost to the Western world for 300 years. The idea of 'lost' makes me smile a bit. Clearly the city has never been 'lost' to the Bedouins that still use the ancient tombs for homes, garages, stables, chicken coups and tearooms.
I do feel for the Bedouins a little who were happily residing here until it was decided that the place was a tourist attraction and they were turfed out of the bijou residences into low-grade tombs on the outskirts. I have to say that the treasury (as seen in the Indiana Jones film) would have made a rather nice place to bring up the kids.
The facades of the tombs and other buildings have been worn away in differing degrees. Some of the features that are left are demonstrations of exquisite carving and extraordinary masonry in very difficult conditions.
Other 'buildings' have been transformed from their original carved frontages to reveal a wind-eroded synthesis of mans skill smoothed by Mother Nature. There are wood grain effects in the stone complete with knots. There are objects that seem to be worn away statues but may well be nothing at all, merely eroded stone. For those who enjoy gazing into the fire making pictures in the flames, this place has enormous potential for hours of pleasure. For climbers, the rock is as sticky as it comes. There's something here for everyone.
The site is riddled with Bedouins who now find that a handy supplement to their goat rearing lifestyle is selling tat to the tourists. Who can blame them? They still live in fairly poor conditions while the hoteliers of Wadi Musa are doing quite nicely. (or were until this last 'closed' season) Most amusingly, kids pop up all over the place trying to sell pieces of Petra rock. Granted they have been selective in finding pieces for sale, but it takes only the bending of ones back to select from an almost infinite number of identical pieces. I sincerely hope that they succeed in their quest to sell rock, as it will simply show that tourists will buy anything. My how they must laugh.
It would take forever to see all of the tombs here (from the tops of the hills, tombs can be seen in mountain ridges as far as the eye can see, like a rash over the countryside) and to be fair, one is much the same as another apart from the ones that have been named and put on the tourist map. The views are indeed spectacular and perhaps best seen in winter when the climbs do not leave one on deaths doorstep gagging for water. We actually got a bit cold today even with our bike jackets on. On the other days we were sweating and on the verge of sunburn. I think 20-odd degrees to about 5 on two successive days is more fickle than Blighty Yesterday we came across a bunch of blokes surveying in a winding gorge which at points was only two feet wide. For the surveying minded out there, they were running a traverse along this gorge where their sight lines were down to about six feet. I fancy going back in a few weeks to see how far they've got. I only hope they're paid by the hour on this one.
We had to take a quick time out to get our visas renewed which called for a visit to the police. Our first instinct was to break out into giggles as our first sight as we came though the door was a couple of coppers (both male of course - I mean women coppers, surely not) kissing each other in greeting. While one soon becomes accustomed to hand holding and kissing in this culture, it seems strange when you see 'tough' armed, uniformed blokes doing it. After managing to keep straight faces, we managed to explain our request and were dealt with most courteously and promptly by the staff. A nice touch in their office was a small ghetto blaster with disco lights playing Jordanian pop music in the corner. When would you see that in the Met?
We might manage a sunrise in Petra tomorrow. No promises