"You Are Named After the Dog?!"

Petra, for those of you who were asleep during 2007 (or who has, shamefully, never watched the action classic Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) is a series of temples and tombs--a city really--carved into the side of a canyon in the mountains in southern Jordan.  It was nominated in 2007 for one of the new seven wonders of the world (the previous seven having been mostly destroyed/disappeared), and it won one of the seven spots.

Personally, seeing Petra is on my bucket list (along with the remaining seven wonders and a mixture of other lofty (and some mundane) life goals).  Our trip to Jordan this winter was largely to see this one site, all though we did see some other attractions Jordan had to offer, the tale of which can be found here.

Without further ado, Petra.

Getting to Petra is an adventure in and of itself.  From Amman, it's about a 3 hour drive through some fairly fantastic countryside.  Mountainous and lovely and green it was a startling--and much appreciated--contrast from the largely flat and sand-colored Bahrain.  The greenery eventually gave way to the browns and reds of of the mountains.

Once arriving in Ma'An Jordan, the site is simply a few curvy, crowded roads away.  We stopped and got some shawarma's (sort of like a lamb, french fry, veggie taco) and a ton of water.  We were dropped off by our wonderful driver, Mr. Ramadan, at the ticket office (50 JD, which is roughly 70USD per person).  What we were unaware of at this time was how far the ticket office is from Petra proper.

We exited the visitors center and began about a half mile trek leading to the canyon.   The first thing that hits you after leaving the visitors center is the smell (and overwhelming presence) of donkey/camel/horse poo.  Throughout the tip, you have the option to ride a camel or donkey through parts of Petra (even up stairs!!) for about 5JD (or so they say).  We opted to walk, although it was not due to a lack of offers from some very persistent camel chauffeurs.

The path leading to the canyon

So many options for transpo...and so many sources of poop. 

Along the way to the canyon are caves and some carvings--a teaser for what is to come.  After that initial trek down a well marked path you enter a canyon.  You are in this canyon for about another half mile, give or take--the canyon is gorgeous and we spent far too long meandering through, admiring the colors and shapes of the canyon--and again the occasional hint-carving at what would be coming at the end of the canyon.

The canyon

Hints...

The canyon opens out into the stunning and highly memorable (again, you gotta watch Indian Jones) view of the treasury.  From here, you continue downward, where the canyon opens up.  Here you have some options, as there is so much to explore.  You actually could spend a couple of days here at Petra and I think that if you were to come visit it, spending an overnight in Petra, or Ma'An and getting a multiday pass is probably your best bet.  There is literally so much to see.

The Temple of the Crescent Mood...erm, the Treasury. 

We had heard from an Petra veteran that the place you want to get to, besides the treasury, is the monastery.  The monastery is located almost at the end of the park. Since the park is so big (according to an iphone, we walked 10 miles that day), we headed towards that monastery almost immediately, photographing the views along the way.  To get to the monastery, you must not only walk to the end of the park, but you must also climb up the mountain.  And as it was in China, climbing a mountain in Jordan means stairs.  Lot's and lot's of stairs.  Which some of you may know, are my arch-nemeses.

The stairs...so much stairs. 

Eight hundred stairs later, we reached the top (actually, you could continue for what I am told is a pretty spectacular view of the mountains) and rounded a bend and saw the monastery, which is just as spectacular as the treasury.  We had arrived in Petra around noon and at this point it was almost 2:30.  We decided we had better start back in the direction of our driver, a he was supposed to pick us up to take us back to Amman at about 4:30.

The Monastery

We made our way back down the stairs, surrounded by some truly amazing views of the mountains--and better able to appreciate them now that we were gong down the stairs instead of the much-more-arduous-up.  We paused along some sites on the way back to the entrance, including the tombs, albeit from a distance.

We also purchased some souvenirs along the way, including these bottles with designs inside made from sand--they use ground up rocks from the region for the colors.  A simple thing to remember Petra by, especially with the camel detail, as we passed several camels and their very vocal riders. I had read about these before leaving for Jordan, and was warned to get the ones with the natural colors as the dyed sands fade over time.

Again, you could easily spend several full days in this park, exploring every one of the numerous nooks and crannies, and if Petra is the only thing you wish to see in Jordan, I highly recommend you do--the city of Ma'An has several options for boarding, although it may be difficult to do on a budget as Petra is Jordan's biggest tourist attraction in a country whose economy is dependent on tourism (plus the U.S dollar does not win against the Jordanian Dinar).

"I suddenly remembered my Charlemagne. Let my armies be the rocks and the trees and the birds and the sky."

Despite the stairs (and the persistent camel-ride pushers), there is nothing disappointing about Petra. We definitely did not choose poorly.

Adventure in Amman

So our trip to Amman was not the smoothest of trips--although I don't think this reflects poorly on Amman itself, but getting their and leaving there was a regular pain in the butt.  Luckily the middle part--being in Amman and elsewhere in Jordan--was largely pleasant.

We booked our trip to Jordan through FlyDubai, a relatively newer airline in the region offering low fairs for shorter flights.  It's sort of the like the Jet Blue of the gulf.  And as you might know with Jet Blue, the fares are really not all that less expensive than other airlines.  But this is the thing about living in Bahrain--it's an island, so if you are going to travel, you gotta fly.

We booked our trip with one of their agents on the phone after struggling with their website for a while.  We booked this trip about a month before we left.  I went on to hostelworld to find accommodation and found a hotel that got good reviews on trip adviser (more on that later).

So we left Bahrain, excited, anxious, and ready for adventure.  We got a tad delayed leaving Bahrain, which made us all a little anxious that we were going to miss our lay over in Dubai.  We landed, ran to our gate (nearly leaving some of our luggage behind) only to discover that the helpful man at FlyDubai who booked our ticket...booked us for a 12 hour layover and did not say one darn thing about it.

Views from our airplane...Bahrain, the Gulf, and then Saudi

So, after a fruitless and frustrating battle with the very unhelpful woman at the gate, we found a reasonable hotel not too far away from the airport and crashed their for the night. Actually, if I ever return to Dubai, that is where I want to stay--for 89 USD per night you got an entire apt.  Two bedrooms, a full kitchen, living room, and two bathrooms.  It was kind of crazy.   We walked to a nice Indian restaurant where we ate some great food and laughed off our lay over as part of our Jordan Adventure.

Views of Dubai and our excellent dinner!

We finally landed in Amman and our hotel picked us up, at about 9 in the morning.  My first impression of Jordan is just how pretty it is.  It could be partly due to how flat and mono-toned (tan) Bahrain is, but Jordan is green, filled with olive trees, and wonderfully contoured--so many hills and mountain. We arrived in the Jordan Tower Hotel and despite the Hotel part of it's name, it is definitely more of a hostel.  It was clean and safe, but very basic.  As far as my hosteling experience has been throughout China, I would rate Jordan Tower as about average.  The staff was very helpful and prompt, (especially in fixing the hot water tank that was not working--cold showers = uncool) and as soon as we arrived, we put away our things, and booked a tour of Amman, including the Amman Citadel.

This is some prime ruins located right in the heart of Amman, including a Temple of Hercules and a Church, all in beautifully crumbling ruins. This was also where I realized the camera I brought was not charged (ooops) and my battery from my phone was at 20 %.  And I call myself an experienced traveler?!

Views of the Temple of Hercules

From the citadel we drove about an hour--maybe longer--to get to the Dead Sea.  We changed into our swimsuits--which felt strange, as I have yet to be that unclothed in Middle East.   We walked the short distance down to the beach and flung ourselves into the sea.  Now, it was only about 55 degrees outside, but the water was so warm!  We were a little concerned about this leg of our trip in December, but I highly recommend Jordan in the winter; the weather is mild--at most you would need a light jacket, and even the Dead Sea is warm. And I cannot describe the salt content.  It was the saltiest encounter I have ever had.  You really do not need to swim.  You can be standing up right--straight up pencil dive- and you just bob around like a fishing lure. You do not sink.  If anything, your lower body starts to float to the surface.  So you can just chill in the water forever and never sink or have to make any sort of effort at swimming.

The Dead Sea

Well, maybe not forever.  The salt does get to you after a while.  Any cut you have is going to be made known as soon as that water hits.  Also, the dehydrating is a risk and they tell you not to be in for more than about 20 minutes before re-hydrating and rinsing the salt off.   And if you are an idiot like me and dunk your head under the world's saltiest water, you are going to (blindly) make your way to the shore to dump fresh water all over your face and eyes to wash away the intense burning and spit out the can of salt that is now taking up residence in your mouth.  So. Much. Burning.  Literally the 3rd or 4th worst pain of my life.   Do not, under any circumstances, dunk your head under that water.

Frolicking about the Dead Sea.  The smiling occurred before I dunked my head under the water.  I do recommend bringing flip flops or water shoes.  The bottom of the sea is rocky, and I managed to tear up my toes nice and good as I blindly struggled to shore for fresh water to make the burning stop. 

All that salt, however, is great for your skin, and we were all feeling real exfoliated and smooth when we left. The next day we went to Petra and that experience can be found here.  On our third and final day in Jordan we visited Jordan's second biggest (after Petra) tourist attraction and that is the Roman city of Jerash.

This place is so cool, and huge!  I mean, its not on the same scale Petra is on, but it is literally the remains of the center of a Roman city located in the middle of a modern city.  We entered via a visitors center and were greeted with Hadrian's Arch.



Right inside the Arch were the remains of a stadium for some sweet chariot races.  You could climb on the remaining seating and wander the ruined remains of the rest of the stadium.

After the stadium you were presented with some options.  You could either head through the Forum and along a long and really cool bumpy road or up the dirt path to explore the Temple of Zeus.  We opted for Zeus and had fun exploring the remains of his temple.

Temple of Zeus

We then made our way up a path overlooking the Forum and here we split up.  Half of us went to look at these beautiful preserved mosaics on the floor of what used to be a Byzantine Church.  The other half passed the rear St. Theodore's cathedral and made our way up to the Temple of Artemis.  We reconvened at the the Temple of Artemis and then split again (we needed to see those mosaics too!).  We met again in front of St. Theodore's.

Above: The Forum
Below: View overlooking Jerash

Remains of  a Byzantine Church Mosaics

Temple of Artemis

St. Theodore's Cathedral

We made our way back to the Arch via the bumpy road and through the Forum.  We did no research on Jerash before going to Jordan (Petra being our goal) but our driver talked us into it and we are so glad he did, because it was awesome. (My history-teacher heart was nearly exploding all the history and the ruins!).

We returned to Amman and found dinner at a great cafe called Jafra's.  We found a sweet shop, again recommended by our driver, that sell something called kanafeh, a.k.a the greatest thing ever. It's basically pastry, fried in butter with a layer of soft cheese (also fried) and then covered in syrup and garnished with crumbled pistachios.  I like to just call it heaven.

I give you: Kanafeh

We went to bed super early that night, partly due to the exhaustion of all the walking, climbing, and stairs from the past couple of days.  And partly because our flight was at 8: 45 am the next day, which meant we needed to be at the 50 minute away airport at about 6:45. We made to the airport on time...noticing with some trepidation along the way that we were surrounded by some pretty heavy fog.

We got through security, got to our gate and waited.  And waited and waited and waited.  We constantly plagued the very nice personnel at Queen Alia airport every time they made an announcement in Arabic but not in English to make sure that they were not talking about our flight.

But no representatives from our airline, FlyDubai.  Finally, about 8 hours later, they said the flight would leave at 10:30...at night.  So they took us to the airport hotel, fed us, and put us up for a few hours (I had the shower I didn't have the energy to take at 5:30 that morning).  We got back to the airport about 2 hours before our flight left.  They took us from the gate via a bus and stopped the bus about 20 feet from our now 14 hour late plane. They then did not let us off the bus or tell us why for about 10 minutes. This is when all the people who had been murmuring "FlyDubai first and last time" and "FlyDubai, never again" began yelling to get the ground crew's attention. When that failed, they began pounding on the windows with fists, canes, whatever.  Let's just say the overall atmosphere was 'rage.' They finally let us off the bus to get on the plane and the grounds crew got reamed out by our very vocal, very upset, fellow passengers.

We left a little late--shocker, I know--from Amman.  We landed in Dubai after a 2 1/2 hour flight and had a 3 hour layover in Dubai.  At this point, we'd been awake for 24 hours.  But we landed in Bahrain at about 7:30 am, safe and sound.  I've pretty much been sleeping since I returned, but Jordan, overall, get's two thumbs up.

My super cool Jordan-filled passport!

FlyDubai, however, gets a slap across the face and poop slung at it.  Terrible airline.