Exploring Petra

Petra, Petra, Indiana Jones, Petra. So hopefully Petra was famous and on some must-see lists before Harrison Ford’s adventures boosted it into Hollywood legend but yeah, the theme song was being hummed out loud as we made our way through some very famous sites.

Upon arriving in Wadi Musa, emergency brake necessity parked on a vertical hill, we decided to walk around checking out places to stay for the night. Again, the bliss of no packs on our backs, staying wherever we wanted to regardless of distance from sites was just divine! Settled on a lovely little place named “Peaceway” and unloaded the car. Poor Liz was getting a pretty nasty cold so she wisely decided to hunker down, power nap, and take it easy so that she wouldn’t be out flat missing too many days of her travels. Late afternoon so Laura and I headed down to Petra to see what we could see before it closed for the night. Some dreadfully embarrassing car moments on deadly steep hills getting to the site entrance but I managed without splitting poor Laura’s head open on the dashboard.

Entrance to Petra is again, ridiculous. I have spent more on entrance fees than accommodation, food, and travel combined. Shameful but keep justifying that I will never be back and it’s a must see. The entrance fees were one set price plus 10% of that price for an extra day. We were going to get every single penny worth of it. Late afternoon, sun was hot hot, but we were in Petra and there was lots to see.

It’s a two kilometer walk down from the entrance, initially a wide open dirt road with some ruins and temples carved into the rock walls along the way but then it narrows into an enormous gorge. Dirt path the width of a single lane road winding through smooth, colourful mountains that you can’t see the top of. Apparently the gorge was separated by tectonic forces but water has flowed through and smoothed it out like fine marble. Colour swirls of brown, purple, red, yellow, grey, and white make it look like it has been painted. So very beautiful. As you near the end of these two kilometers and strain your eyes ahead through the opening of the gorge, you see it, the sliver of the Treasury, a sight that makes everyone’s mouth drop as they exit the canyon and file out into the open air. My pictures do it no justice, please look it up online. A Treasury, an entire building, carved INTO a mountain. Impossible to imagine the work that went into this. Impossible.

The open area in front of the Treasury had places to sit and lounge about, souvenirs and snacks to buy, and an assortment of locals with their resting camels wandering around trying to get you on for a ride. As it was late in the day, we were able to bide our time and wait patiently enough to snap a few photos with no one else around. Yeehaw! Again, so lucky!

Laura suggested we find somewhere high up to watch the sunset so we wandered past the Treasury, into the old city and came upon the theatre. Like old Roman ampitheatre, not modern day movie theatre. There, a local showed us a way to climb up and behind the closed off theatre and into the mountains behind. Treacherous and maybe a little dumb, but so much fun. Did it in flip-flops so really, it couldn’t have been that bad. We made it up to a top spot after much route searching and decided to just sit and look around before attempting the way down. It really didn’t look good for options down. As we were silently gazing at the brilliant sun setting ever so slowly over the enormous ancient city laid out far below us, we heard a ruffling and shuffling behind us. Out of nowhere, a small herd of goats had appeared up on top of our mountain top! Completely unexpected and wonderfully hopeful as that meant there was maybe a reasonable way down. I checked out where they had come from… yep… easy breezy way out. Thanks goat friends. Thanks.

After the sun had set behind the gigantic cliffs, we figured we should get a move on. It was coming up on pretty dark as we found our way back to the open area of the Treasury and thankfully Laura was smart enough to bring her head torch. We were so surprised to find that the souvenir stalls set up all along the way were obviously closed up, but all of their wares were still laid out, on tables, unlocked and uncovered, free to any unscrupulous souls who may have wanted a free gift or two. These Canadian chickies had no intentions of indulging in filling our pockets but wow, I wonder if all people who are still in the park after dark are so trustworthy. Very, very strange.

Seems as if no one really cares if you leave at night. They say there’s no sleeping or over-nighting but there’s no way they can check. They didn’t even seem to bat an eye when we stumbled out, 2 hours after their official closing time, in the pitch black, chattering away. Yep, we’re getting our money’s worth.

The next day, Liz was ready to go but still feeling pretty stuffy. Laura has problems with her back and Liz was sick but these two girls are troopers. Carry on – let’s go see stuff!

So back we go, and the exploring continues. We planned for a full day heading all the way to the very back of the city grounds and up to the Monastery, which is up another cliff far off in the distance. Our first feat was getting up eight hundred and some steps to “The High Place of Sacrifice”, used for exactly what’s its title suggests, and then venturing down the back of this mountain over towards the back end of Petra. The Crown Plaza hotel chain has set up a restaurant in the middle of this nowhere land so we chilled out on their picnic tables restoring some of our energy for our next big journey up to the Monastery. Yeah, yeah, not a very authentic ancient experience but it that heat, the modern luxury of a shaded place to sit was a life-saver.

Horses, camels, and donkeys are used in abundance to get some of the less energetic tourists from one spot to the next. The horses and camels look relatively well cared for and treated with some dignity, the donkeys, not so much. SEVERAL conversations were had with nasty boys hitting or whipping their animals and although I know I had zero influence other than to stop that immediate incident, there was little else I could do. Some laughed at me, some were shamed and apologized, some made temporary changes to the way their animal was tied up, and some got angry and nasty with me. It’s hard to keep quiet when it’s right in front of you, I know animals are just animals here, but it’s just too hard to ignore. I’m not very good at handling these situations. Obviously.

The second long journey up to the Monastery was a tough one and I went on a little ahead of the girls who were suffering with their colds and sore bones. Again, gasp and take your breath away. This place is all the magic of The Treasury but on TOP of a mountain. Wow! And THEN, you can wander up all these other cliffs and rocks and mountain tops to see the entire WORLD at your feet! So that’s what I did. As I was slowly making my way back down to the front of the Monastery where the girls were, I saw a dog off in the distance barking into a cave. As I got closer, I saw that the dog was chained up with links and a padlock so heavy he couldn’t hold his head all the way up and barely any room to move around. There was some old food there for him, no water, and a heavy, heavy chain bound with some wire. *sigh*. I’m gonna get myself killed…

I unwound the wire and set him free. Somebody OBVIOUSLY owned him but he was OBVIOUSLY never let off this chain and yeah, I’m a retard. He bounded away like a bunny, bouncing, running, stopping, starting, jumping, tail wagging, freedom. Came back to check on me and say thank you a couple of times too. Sweet, sweet dog. Then I heard was he was barking at. A small sound, like a baby. Puppies? I peered down into this cave that was purposely blocked off with debris… a very small baby goat, foaming at the mouth, blind, stumbling and stuck on the dead end steps out of the cave. Oh no, oh no, oh no. I frantically scraped and scrambled my way down and got him out. Filthy and leaking from his mouth and his poor behind, nothing but fur and bones, this little one was dying. He curled up in my arms as I made my way back to people trying hard not to fall to pieces.

Well, needless to say, my reception wasn’t warm. The few workers who were left looked at me with disgust and told me to just leave the goat, others said they knew the owner but the owner was out with his other goats and too far away to do anything, others told me to take the goat with me and stop being so crazy, others just got angry, shook their head, and stomped away. I was persistent. Mostly desperate. There was one man, one very gentle man, who saw the fragile state of both me and this dying goat in my arms. He talked to a few other people, phone calls were made, and eventually someone showed up on a horse who claimed to be cousin of the man who owned the goat. He was very kind, said all the right things, took control of me and the situation, took the baby goat in HIS arms, looked him/her over, tried to clean the goat up as best as he could, wrapped him/her in an old warm jacket and then laid the goat down in an area covered by a tent to sleep. He promised me that the owner was on the way and that they would take care of the goat. He kept saying “I promise, we have medicine, I promise.” His English was very good, he was very gentle and smiled as I tried to control my tears from turning to sobs. Damnit, I’m crying now as I type. Poor baby goat.

I had to leave, the sun had set, it was getting dark, Liz and Laura had so sympathetically been waiting HOURS and we needed to get down a mountain still. There was nothing else I could do except trust this man. There’s a good chance that the goat was left for dead or even more likely, eaten by the damn dog I set free and last saw climbing straight UP a cliff like he was a goat himself but I had no options. There are no vets here, I don’t speak Arabic, what can I do with a dying goat? Oh poor baby goat. I’m terrible at this animal thing. Terrible.

We three girls wandered out of a pitch black gorge under shining stars, a full day of exploring behind us, exhausted but giddy with all that we had a chance to see. Petra was wondrous, a physical challenge, an emotional train wreck, and an adventure all of its own. I had FABULOUS exploring partners. Indiana Jones has nothing on us, baby! Nothing!