Petra, the lost city

* All pictures on this post by la elfa

Last weekend Mona and I decided to take a short, and cheap, trip to discover the lost city of Petra. Little did we know that it would end up being a terribly long, and expensive, adventure. However, it was such an awesome discovery that it was worth all the pain, problems, delays and money.

To begin with our bus to Amman, the capital of Jordan, was delayed and once we finally left the driver decided to take a rest after just 30 minutes driving (the trip is supposed to take just 3 hours). At the Syrian border a very corrupted, selfish, arrogant guy confiscated my passport saying my visa was expired, when he realized that wasn’t true he argued I had overstayed in the country, another lie, and then he had an issue with my residency…. It took an hour and a bribe from the bus driver for the guy to let me leave the country!

When we finally made it to Amman, over 3 hours late, we discovered there were no buses or shared taxis (very common way of transport in this part of the world) to go to Petra that night, it was too late. We had a 5 star hotel paid in Petra and hated the idea to have to spend the night in Amman, not only because of the money, also the waste of time involved! To make the story short, hotels were expensive in Amman and someone offered to arrange a car and driver for us. After discussing the pros and cons (many more cons btw, taking into account we were two girls, foreigners, we were approaching midnight and had to drive 3 hours across the desert) we finally decide to take the risk.

I’ll tell you something funny before I keep going. The few times I am scared being home alone in Madrid I sleep with a bottle of wine next to my bed. I always tell myself a knife would be useless as I would be too scarred to use it, however I would not hesitate to hit someone in the face or head with a bottle of wine, and I am sure it would be painful for the one being hit! So I told Mona this story and since we had bought a bottle of wine in the Duty Free, we put it in the seat, between our two bodies, just in case. Needless to say we didn’t need it. The driver ended up being a very nice and sweet old man who actually has a son studying in Petra and he was happy to spend the night there with him.

I must admit the first 30 minutes of the trip I was so scarred I prayed whatever prayers I could remember from my childhood, while I kept telling Mona it would be ok. The driver seemed a bit upset to see us so scarred!! And as soon as we relaxed he started chatting a bit with us. The sky of the desert at night is absolutely gorgeous and all those stars in the sky made me and Mona feel much better. Then we saw hamsters and foxes along the road, and that was a nice excuse to chat with the driver, who ended up becoming our “guide’, telling us stories about the few towns and villages we drove through.

We arrived to the hotel at 3am, we had left our office at 3:30pm, and we were exhausted but so happy to be there! We woke up early the next day, and that was tough, we both love to sleep, but we had to since the sun goes down at around 4pm this time of the year and by five it is pitch-black outside. We had a nice breakfast and drove to the entrance of the ancient city of Petra, where a 70USD entry fee has to be paid. Yes, it is expensive, but part of that money goes to preservation of the site, which as you will now discover is breathtaking (both literally and figurately). Here begins the real story of our amazing trip to Petra, the lost city (even though it covers hundreds of square miles, Petra was completely unexplored, lost, and hidden by the Bedouins, from 1189 to the 1812.

As you enter the site you can ride a horse for 5 minutes to the beginning of the siq, which we did. Little did we know that this half mile doesn’t represent much compared to the 15 miles we were about to walk…

The siq looks like a crater but actually it was not created as the result of time and water like most people think, but by tectonic forces. The siq is almost a mile long and it is in itself a masterpiece of nature. You might remember it from the Indiana Jones movie, I didn’t. To be honest I didn’t know much about what to expect in Petra, I just knew I would love it.

The siq offers the most amazing and dramatic landscape ever. Its walls can reach over 600 feet up, and its wide varies from just 6 feet to 60 in some places. The colors of the rock go from golden to pink, from red to black, sometimes even blue.

The shapes of the rock and walls also vary in so many ways that they are sometimes difficult to understand by just looking at them. I found myself touching the rock many times, the texture kept changing as well.

I wish I could describe better what I experienced then, and even though pictures are not as impressive as reality, I hope the ones posted here convey the message.

It gets to a point when you are completely stunned and absorbed by the siq, and then the most surprising and shocking image appears: the siq suddenly narrows to around 4 feet and the two walls seem to be about to touch each other, but they don’t, and that is when you realize just in front of you lays the Treasury. You discover it almost by coincidence, what a magnificent surprise, with its golden color and grandiose size. It is like a mirage caused by the heat and the hike.

The Treasury was built by the Nabateans, like the rest of the city, and it is one of the most famous, better preserved constructions of Petra. Actually, it is not a building itself, since it is carved in the sandstone rock of the mountain!! The Nabateans soon realized that there land tended to suffer many earthquakes and thus buildings didn’t last long, thus they came up with this remarkable technique. They would carve the rock from top to bottom to do the façade first, and then they would excavate the inside of rooms.

This is another reason why in Petra there are no remains of houses. The Nabateans lived in tents, just like Bedouins still do today. So the main buildings we find today were the Treasury, the Theater and Great Temple and hundreds of tombs, including the Royal Tombs. There are so many tombs that for a very long time visitors assumed Petra used to be a Necropolis.

To be honest, the majesty of the Treasury and the uniqueness of the siq were so impressive that I couldn’t expect to be even more impressed by what was to come. As you keep walking down what used to be the main street of Petra, then a quite important city for traveling merchant caravans, you reach the Theater. It was built over 2,000 years ago by the Nabateans and it could host 3.000 people. Then the Romans rebuilt and expanded it, to host 8.500 people, one third of Petra’s total population! The Theater is also carved on the rock.

A little later are the Royal Tombs. To be honest the façade is the most impressive part of the tombs, even though once inside you do wonder how they were able to excavate those huge rooms in the rock of the mountain.

I won’t tell you everything about Petra, you probably don’t want to read all about it, and it is better if you just decide to discover it yourself. However, let me tell you just a few more things. About 15 years ago archeologists started working on the Great Temple, and so far their discoveries are fascinating. My favorite is probably the capitols of columns shaped as elephants. Elephants! I had never seen anything like it, and for all I know they might just be unique to Petra.

After the Great Temple you need to decide if you are a conformist tourist, or an adventurer. We like to believe we are adventurers and thus decided to make it to the Monastery, the most amazing place in Petra. To be honest, it takes a huge effort and loads of energy, of which we were starting to run out, and many people just decide to finish their visit here.

The path to the Monastery is steep; it has over 900 steps rock-cut and climbing them takes around 50 minutes, thus many choose to ride a donkey. We refused to use a poor old and tired donkey for obvious reasons, and also because it didn’t look too safe (Susan, if you are reading this, imagine ten times worse than that volcano in the Philippines!!).

The hike is absolutely gorgeous, the views are breathtaking most of the time, and if you can manage to bargain and walk at the same time you will find Bedouin kids and women along the way selling all kinds of souvenirs.

When you finally make it to the top you will find, magnificent, splendid and glorious, the Monastery. The place deserves every drop of sweat, every breath, every bit of energy you have used on the way.

And if you still have some leftover energy, save it, or recover having a tea or a coke in the bar that is strategically located there. Then walk an extra mile to the lookout that promises views to the end of the world. It is absolutely striking and peaceful since very few people make it all the way here. It might not be the end of the world, but it is fabulous and impressive, and from here you can see Israel and the Palestinian territories!

  

And now, after walking all these miles, get ready to turn around and walk back through the same path because the entrance to Petra is also the exit! It is as if you had to go back and make sure you erase your footprints from the sand of the desert.

Petra is certainly one of the most exciting, unique and magnificent places I have ever visited.

Palmyra, the bride of the desert

A couple of weeks ago I woke up early on a Saturday and drove to Palmyra, supposedly some of the most amazing ruins in the world. I had high expectations and I was scarred to actually be disappointed. I wasn’t. It is probably one of the most breathtaking places I have ever visited.

In the middle of the desert, surrounded by an oasis of palm trees, hide the ruins of this ancient city called Palmyra. At first it seems like 50 hectares of sand and columns, but it is so much more: an amphitheater, the Bel temple, funerary towers… a journey to an ancient civilization.

There are records of Palmyra that date from the second millennium bC and the Hebrew bible explains the city was founded by King Salomon, son of David. Its unique and exceptional location made of Palmyra an important stop in the Silk Road, between China and Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East.

But it wasn’t really until the third century of our era that Palmyra reached its greatest splendor, under the leadership of queen Zenobia. Zenobia was descendant of Cleopatra, and she is said to be more beautiful, smarter and also more ambitious than the Egyptian queen. Zenobia’s reign was short but intense and in only six years she expanded the boundaries of the city, built temples and erected statues. Most importantly, she conquered territories around hers and got to dominate lands all the way to Western Egypt. She even had the guts to stand up against the Roman Empire and succeeded at it. However, this was also a breaking point in Palmyra’s history, and the beginning of its end. Zenobia ended up captive and it is said that she was taken to Rome where she was exhibited half naked with golden chains around her body.

But Zenobia’s legacy is undeniable. She made of Palmyra an empire, rich and developed, which had its own language and art. The golden limestone of surrounding mountains is a symbol of that time, and hundreds of columns are silent witnesses of everything that has happened here ever since.

Honestly, visiting Palmyra is a unique experience. While you walk through the kilometer long colonnade you suddenly travel in time, you find yourself far in the past, surrounded by a combination of cultures. After the Romans came the Arabs, and the Ottoman Empire was the one that witnessed the fall into decline of this once great city.

An example of the blend of cultures is the temple of Bel. It is half destroyed but it still has a feeling of what it must have been back in the time. It was at first a temple dedicated to the god Bel (the equivalent of the Greek Zeus or Roman Jupiter), it became a church in Byzantine times, a fortress with the Arabs and a mosque with the Mamelucs.

A bit further away hide camouflaged in the colors of the desert the funerary towers that used to belong to the rich families of Palmyra. They are quite tall and simple buildings, which could host several buried bodies. It is the Valley of the tombs.

But truth is the ruins are so big and they take so much space that it is only possible to gaze at them and admire them from one spot: the Qalaat Ibn Maan, an Arab castle built on the top on a nearby mountain in the 16th century. These are pictures taken from this fantastic viewpoint of the stunning views. (you can clik on the image to see it larger)

* All pictures taken by la elfa