MyTLVadventure: It's Petra time...and more

Last night I deleted a post called “A Story in Three Cafes” because of the offensive postings by anonymous web visitors (among other things, I was called a “liberal” – OK, that really crossed the line!). Thank you to those of you who managed to read my post, the comments and my single rebuttal before I took it down, and have emailed me your support. I owe you one! And now I shall move on and continue blogging about my personal experiences during the visit, the people I meet and talk to and the things I do, hoping the blog doesn’t get hijacked again.

Jenn left over a week ago. While she was here, we mostly hung out but managed to do one special trip to Eilat and Petra.

On May 7 we flew to Eliat for a three-day getaway. A couple of weeks earlier, Jenn had been at "another" sort of beach, Hall Beach, in Nunavut, Canada, right above the Arctic Circle, so a getaway to a really warm place seemed in order.

Before: Jenn in Hall Beach, in Nunavut, Canada

After: Jenn poolside at the Hilton in Eilat, Israel

Eilat, part of the Southern Negev Desert, is Israel's southernmost city, a port as well as a popular resort. It is located at the northern tip of the Red Sea, on the Gulf of Aqaba, with a population of about 50,000.

It is pretty much adjacent to the Egyptian village of Taba to the south; the Jordanian port city of Aqaba to the east; and really within sight of Saudi Arabia to the south-east, across the gulf. (Yes, Israel is a very surrounded small country.)

Since Rafi and I had been there 4 years earlier, I was completely aware of Eilat’s well-deserved reputation (tacky) and its nickname ("Las Vegas with waterfront"). The place lived up to all of it.

It takes about 5 hours to drive to Eilat, so we flew instead. But rather than fly through huge Ben Gurion airport, we flew out of the small Sde Dov airport, which mainly handles scheduled domestic flights and is about a 20 minute cab drive from the apartment. It is a really small airport, so the hassles were minimal. The flight took about 1 hour so we left early and by 9 am we were there.

We stayed at the Hilton, which unfortunately did not live up to its reputation. The room was nice, with a lovely view of Akaba in Jordan, but the pool area closes at 6 PM (which is crazy, as it is long before sunset) and the staff has a penchant for housekeeping the common areas and gardening the grounds at peak times. On our first day, we wanted to lounge by the pool and did so until it got unbearably hot (it is the dessert after all) so we went to our room until about 4, when we went back to the pool area. Well, at around 4:30 the pool workers started stacking the chairs all around us. The noise of deck chairs being dragged on the pavement was drowned by the power tools the hotel gardeners were using as they started trimming the palm trees and making the area dusty, with leaves flying all over.

Hilton Hotel palm trees, pre-haircut

Outside the hotel in Eilat

The highlight of the trip was our day excursion to Petra the next day.

Petra is a historical and archaeological city in Jordan, famous for its rock cut architecture and water conduit system, established around the 6th century BC as the capital city of the Nabataeans. At its peak, the Nabataean Empire stretched from modern-day Yemen to Damascus and from western Iraq into the Sinai Desert ... at least, according to some historians. No one is really sure how large their empire really was. That is how illusive and mysterious the Nabataeans were. While their caravans traveled widely, it is hard to be certain of the borders of their kingdom, or the extent of their travel. Incredibly, they were able to control the water supply that led to the rise of the desert city, creating an artificial oasis.

During the Roman period a road was built to link the area where Eilat is located with Petra. So Jennifer figured we had to go.

Going to the dark side...

While four years ago on our tour of the Negev we learned a lot about the Nabateans who built and lived in Petra (which motivated me to read up on them and Petra after we got home), I wasn’t particularly excited about the idea of crossing into Jordan.

I sought advice from Israeli friends. To my question of "Is it safe to go?" my friend Nurit, hedging her bets, wrote that "safe is relative." OK... So when I emailed back, she seemed a tad annoyed and wrote back "Don’t be ridiculous! You aren't going to Kabul!"

(Jenn pointed out that I think comments like that when coming from friends are funny and I laugh, but I get mad at her when she makes them. Precisely).

Since I was lukewarm about going, Jenn took care of everything: initiative, research, insistence, persistence, longing eyes, phone booking… (OK, I did something: I gave her my credit card). We only told Rafi about the trip after we got back to Israel by emailing him a picture of us in Petra with the subject line "Where are we?" He guessed. (I had left clear instructions with Nurit as to where to contact Rafi and what to say should we end up, well, "unable to call").

For our visit to Petra the next morning, we had to get up at 6 am so we could get a decent, non-hotel cup of coffee (we weren’t in Tel Aviv). Luckily, the local Aroma was just across the street from the hotel and open 24/7.

The tour company's jeep picked us up at 6:45 and drove us to the Jordanian border where we met the rest of the group to cross the border and get on the escorted tour bus.

Our ride to the border

At the border

Once on the bus on the Jordanian side, not surprisingly, the landscape looked the same as on the Israeli side, but it took me a full 45 minutes to start breathing fully. The tour staff consisted of Ali, the guide who did an outstanding job in English and Hebrew (there were Israelis on the tour as well; they weren't worried about going to Kabul); Mohammed the driver; and the (armed?) guard (didn’t catch his name...). Every 50 km or so, I saw a police patrol parked on the side of the road. Being guarded by Jordanian soldiers didn't quite feel the same as by Israeli soldiers but, with my understanding of the contribution Tourism makes to the Jordanian economy, I figured they were all "motivated" to get us back home safely.

<Note: Rafi just pointed out that "very 50 km or so" would not be much... Yikes!>

The drive to Petra is about two hours. We first drove through Akaba, the port town (could be the "sister city" to Eilat, but not) with a population of about 110,000. Akaba is 320 km from Amman, the capital, and is the only Jordanian coastal town -- so much depends on it. It looks like a newer town and I saw a lot of construction cranes all over, mirroring what Ali told us about it being the fastest growing town in Jordan, thanks to Tourism and the fact that it is a tax free zone. It gets over 1200 tourists a day from the cruise ships alone.

On the drive thought the mountains, we saw lots of villages that had black Bedouin tents as well as homes, lots of farming going on, breathtaking desert areas, lots of camels and donkeys, sheep, goats. A few shepherds here and there. Lots of old men wearing red kaffiyehs on their heads, lots of women and little kids, in traditional clothing but their faces weren’t covered. (Unlike Saudi Arabia, for example, Jordan seems to consider religious compliance a matter of personal choice - and who would choose to wear a blanket over their face?).

As we drove North to Petra past small and dusty villages, we were able to see Israel all along.

The Israel–Jordan Treaty of Peace was signed in 1994. It normalized relations between the two countries and resolved territorial disputes. Jordan is only the second Arab country (after Egypt, and let’s see what happens after their elections coming up) to normalize relations with Israel. In Israel there is a strategic doctrine that states that even if their implementation is not perfect, the peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan must be preserved for as long as possible. The very existence of the treaties prevents an all-out war.

(I read today that a senior Israeli defense official believes that given the current state of affairs in the wake of Arab world uprisings, Jordan would have trouble maintaining the peace treaty with Israel should Egypt annul the Camp David Accords. “For Israel, peace with Jordan is an asset that is no less precious than the agreement with Egypt, and even more so at this time.”)


Entering the road to Petra...just walk 750 m to get there. Then start walking.

Petra was the capital of the Nabataeans, and the center of their caravan trade. I had seen many pictures but can honestly say the pictures, which are impressive, don’t do it justice. Jenn and I were in awe.

Entering the road to Petra

Once you get to the entrance area, you have a choice of walking in, hiring a horse and buggy (which the Bedouin drivers whoop up to amazing speeds), or getting a ride on a donkey.

High-speed horse buggies

There are also horses and horseback riders (but I can't say I saw anyone but locals riding them; Lawrence of Arabia would have swooned).

A Bedouin on camel

Bedouin horseman

Kitchy locals dressed like Nabateans

From the eastern entrance one walks steeply down through a dark, narrow gorge (in places only 3–4 m wide) called the Siq ("the shaft") which is a natural geological feature formed from a deep split in the sandstone rocks and serving as a waterway flowing into Wadi Musa.

Siq

A tree grows from the rock

At the end of the narrow gorge stands Petra's most elaborate ruin, Al Khazneh ("the Treasury"), literally carved into the sandstone cliff.

The Treasury. Pictures do not do its majesty justice.

The Treasury

Rock formations

A little further from the Treasury, at the foot of the mountain, is a massive theatre. It was placed that way so as to bring the greatest number of tombs within view. At the point where the valley opens out into the plain, the site of the city is revealed -- and it is striking.

The amphiteatre area

The amphitheatre has been cut into the hillside and into several of the tombs during its construction. Rectangular gaps in the seating are still visible. Almost enclosing it on three sides are rose-coloured mountain walls, divided into groups by deep fissures, and lined with knobs cut from the rock in the form of towers.

So impressive!

Closer to the caves

Bedouin family selling pop...

Local police

We could have stayed there much longer, as you are actually allowed to climb into the caves and explore. But it was already about 3 pm and lunch was beckoning, so we walked back for about an hour and reconvened with the group at the "Indiana Jones Snack Shop" (Petra was the location for parts of the 1989 film Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade).

Indiana Jones Snack Shop

Lunch was a bit disappointing (who serves lasagna at a restaurant in Petra!?) but plentiful and after hiking for so many hours I was starved. The ride back to the border was smooth and most people on the bus (us included) napped.

Itzhak Rabin Border Crossing

Back on the jeep

The trip to Petra was remarkable and memorable and definitely worth doing. I am glad I went - and that is wasn't Kabul. That night we were too tired to even go to dinner - and fell asleep while watching a movie in our room.

Next morning we cabbed to the CoralBeach Nature Reserve, "One of the world’s most beautiful marine reserves." The last time I did this here I was 18 years old, so it had been a while.

"No Lifeguard on Duty"

While the beach is very arid and quiet, the underwater "place" is amazing. The moment you put your head in the water (with a diving mask, of course) one is captivated by the scene (dinner?).

You don't really dive but float with the right goggles and watch the corals and the fish. The views here are spectacular. There is a coral reef some 1,200 meters long parallel to the beach. It is one of the most ‘densely populated’ coral reefs in the world and the only one in Israel.

"There is a combination of strange and beautiful corals that create colorful underwater ‘gardens’ navigated by a variety of wildly-hued tropical fish. These include butterfly fish, parrot fish, Julie fish, nocturnal fish, and many other species, along with sea lilies, giant shells and much more". OK, to be honest, I did not see all of these, as I was too lazy/scared (no lifeguard) to float too far away from the shore, but the photos on their website look great.

The water is very cold, which is OK because outside the temperature hovered around 40 C.

The beach

There are many reasons to visit Israel (cultural, religious, archeological, political, etc) but not all are high-brow. The country receives many sun-destination tourists as well, and the highest concentrations are here in Eilat and the Dead Sea. Around us at the Reserve were mostly Russian tourists interested in baking. A group just next to us had a table stocked with the most quantity and greatest variety of alcohol I have seen outside a liquor store, and spent the whole time imbibing.