Petra and Dana

Feeling a little better about Jordan after the good time we had at Wadi Rum, we headed north. The land continued to be bleak and desolate.

Weirdly, a lot of land was ploughed up. What on earth are they going to grow here?

Our destination was Wadi Musa, the town next to the famous ancient city of Petra. We drove into the town and it was horrible. The narrow streets were crowded with cars and one-way streets made navigation difficult. In Jordan in general, drivers toot at everything - taxi drivers toot at people walking down the street in case they want a lift and other drivers toot at anyone who isn't moving even if it's obvious that they can't move.

We found our hotel. When we book rooms, we always request a quiet room. We met the guy at reception and he handed us our key. "Is this a quiet room?" we asked. "Quiet?" he responded, clearly not understanding the English word. We knew we were in trouble then. As it turned out, the mosque was really close by and had unusually loud speakers. The call to prayer woke us at 5.30 every morning. The neighbours were noisy again. Jordanians just don't seem to have a sense of keeping quiet at sleep time. Our room was ok but it had an especially tiny bathroom. Anyone bigger than us would not be able to have a shower or sit on the dunny!

A bit about Petra: the UNESCO World Heritage listed site is an ancient city spread across a huge area. What remains of the city is largely its tombs, stunning buildings carved out of rock. Remember Indiana Jones galloping his horse through a canyon to the amazing building carved out of rock in the desert? That was Petra. 

Petra is an entire ancient city and it's possible to spend days exploring it. We bought tickets for three days. By the time we got our bags into the room we still had about 4 hours before Petra closed so we thought we'd get started as it's supposed to be quieter later in the day when most of the tour groups have gone. We drove to the car parking area and were shocked to see dozens of buses lined up alongside many, many cars. The street to the entrance was aptly called Tourism St. That about summed it up. Our hearts sunk.

It's a long walk into Petra. It's about 15 minutes to the start of the famous walk in through the canyon then another 20 minutes to the first, and most famous, monument called The Treasury. There were a lot more people coming out than going in so we thought it might not be too bad. 

We started seeing tombs before we even got the canyon.

We soon came to the 'siq', the incredible canyon that leads to Petra. Even with lots of people in it, the siq was spectacular.

Finally we turned one last bend and there it was - the famous Treasury! - plus hundreds of people, camels and souvenir sellers. Nobody was up close to the building though. I assume that's because it's hard to take a photo from there. Even looking over the tops of people's heads, the building was strikingly beautiful. 

I don't like crowds but John hates them so we moved on. In a few hours we got a basic feel for the place. The longer we stayed and the further we got from the entrance, the thinner the crowds became.

There's an ancient theatre which was built by the Nabateans, the original builders of the city, then extended by the Romans.

The tombs are scattered along both sides of the canyon where it opens out into a wider valley. Sadly the later we got in the day, the duller my photo's became!

We mostly explored an area called the Royal Tombs. I don't think anyone knows if they actually had royalty interred here but they give names to all the tombs for convenience. The reason they chose this name is because the rock here is particularly striking. It has bands of different colours running through it. This is the ceiling of one tomb.

This tomb was particularly elaborate.

By the time we left, most people had gone and we could see the Treasury almost uninterrupted. Sadly, but understandably, we weren't allowed inside it.

The siq was even better on the way back. The lines running along both sides of the canyon are ancient channels for carrying water into the town. They run along the whole length of the siq. We didn't like the concrete base of the canyon but understand that you can't have thousands of people a day scrambling over rocks and injuring themselves. Also, they drive horses and carts and golf buggies along here to carry tourists.

Back at the entry gate, some places unashamedly used whatever promotion they could.

By the end of the day we felt that we had seen quite a bit in that time which was just as well as it turns out that we wouldn't be coming back! We had a terrible sleep thanks to banging doors, loud conversations in the hotel passageways and the pre-dawn call to prayer. John had had enough. He wasn't going to go back to face more crowds at the main entrance to Petra. We had learned though that there was another way into Petra from what's called Little Petra. This smaller group of tombs is to the north of Petra and apparently there was a shuttlebus that could take people in that way. We drove there but didn't immediately see a ticket office or a bus so we started to explore Little Petra. It was really good! The crowds here were far less and we found that we could just keep walking into a stunning canyon. There were no horse-drawn vehicles or golf carts taking people through the smaller siq here.

This was the worst musician in the world. If tourists paid him he would play and sing - but it was the same five or six notes over and over.........

Many of the tombs here were just as striking as Petra. They just tended to be a bit smaller as the canyons here weren't as high.

One unusual tomb had Roman paintings inside of cherubs, grapes and leaves. It was so different to everything else. Apparently the original tombs were all painted but nothing much remains of that paint now.

Even though it was much quieter here, we still had to walk through souvenir stalls to proceed through the canyon.

Once we got past the canyon, it opened up and we had an amazing short walk through the wild, rocky landscape.

The problem was that by the time we did all this, the last bus had gone! I was disappointed that we wouldn't see any more of the old city but it was my fault as I wanted to explore where we were.

We had read about a famous bar that is inside a 2,000 year-old tomb. It's outside the park so I guess they're allowed to do this! I was sceptical at first that this would be ok but I realised that they weren't doing any damage at all. In fact, the reason most of these tombs are so large is that the bodies get interred in a small space at the rear of the tomb then the rest of the area is for banqueting. The grieving family would continually return to have feasts in honour of the deceased person. 

We sat in an area outside the main tomb/bar.

The inside was really cool. Individual tables were set up in the smaller spaces originally intended to store the bodies. Creepy!

One good thing about the hotel we were staying in was there was a restaurant nearby that specialised in a local dessert. The restaurant had one guy whose sole job was to make and serve this dessert, called kunefe. He first heated up cheese in huge trays. The cheese was then topped with a fine pastry and crushed pistachios then syrup was poured over it. It sounds weird but it was amazing!

One night there was a storm and the sunset before it was striking!

Again, we counted down the days until we could leave our hotel. We even tried to find somewhere else to stay near Petra but we had no luck. We did manage to drop one night off our booking though and replace it with an extra night at our next destination. We were in the unfortunate position of having booked all our accommodation and flights home so we couldn't really speed up our stay.

The weather had now turned cooler as it is almost winter here.

We were so happy to finally leave that town and soon were on the King's Highway heading north to Shobak Castle. This is an old Crusader castle, built in 1115. Like so many other historical buildings it was built on top of a number of times by successive invaders. 

Arrow slits were set in thick stone walls.

Numbered rocks for archaeological purposes. How on earth they figure out where they go amazes me.

There were also steps leading down to a prison. A sign at the top said not to enter due to danger. Check out how steep those steps are and there was no light. We didn't go down....

We were most looking forward to exploring an escape tunnel that runs under the castle but it was locked. 

The dry, bleak, flat land of Jordan is split at intervals by huge canyons that are even dryer and bleaker than the land around them. It was one of these canyons that Dana Biosphere Reserve is located in.

We had booked a room in the guest house in the park run by the national parks services and were relieved to find it was fabulous! The rooms were simple but nice and spacious and every room looked out over the stunning canyon. Even our shower had the same view! The first night was noisy with guests banging doors at all hours but the next two nights were fairly quiet. We could sleep at last!

The park lies beside the village of Dana, which is perched above the canyon. This village is hundreds of years old but was abandoned just one generation ago. When they started up the Reserve, people started to move back as there was now work here. There are now a handful of 'hotels' and a few little shops. It was a magical place. The old stones blended in with the surrounding landscape so well that it was often hard to see the village from a distance even though I was looking straight at it. More than half of the buildings were still abandoned so the whole place had a ramshackle, ruined feel but was still very much alive. The only way to tell an abandoned house from a lived-in one was that the lived-in ones had a roof. 

The cold and mist added to the atmosphere.

This was the walk into the village from our accommodation. John's coffee shop was in one of the buildings on the right. I loved that places like this had no signage.

A couple of young donkeys just lived freely around the town.

Each day men and boys would lead sheep and goats out to graze for the day. They would ride donkeys and the sheep and goats would just follow along until they came to a spot to graze. We would often see them heading out for the day as we walked into the village. Can you see a man and a donkey plus the herd of sheep and goats in this picture? Everything seems to just blend in here.

The sheep are a breed that we're not familiar with. They have long, droopy ears and fat tails.

It was cool and windy when we arrived on our first afternoon but we set out for a shorter walk. We headed out through what they call the village 'garden'. This was really the old terraces where crops have been grown for centuries. Old trees are scattered throughout the area - pistachio, walnut, almond, pomegranate and figs were some we could recognise. One of the nut trees was 450 years old! We even found spearmint on the side of the path. As romantic as all this sounds, it was ruined by the rubbish that was scattered through the whole area. Plastic bags were everywhere. It was such a disappointment.

Away from the village though, the rubbish diminished. The views as we walked were amazing and birds wheeled overhead.

We came to the end of the canyon and found a boy and his uncle just hanging out watching their stock. The boy spoke reasonable English so we got chatting. Soon they invited us to have a glass of tea! We had heard that this is normal Bedouin hospitality but we had never come across it before. We accepted, partly out of curiosity and partly because we thought we might offend them if we said no. They grabbed a few handfuls of dry grass and small sticks from the scrub nearby and soon had a fire going. Out came all the ingredients, seemingly from nowhere, including a small kettle and soon the tea was ready. They didn't drink with us but at least we had a nut bar that we could share with them. It was a really great experience.

Showing us the only lamb in the flock.

They told us that the uncle had about 50 sheep, 50 goats, two donkeys and five dogs. Dogs always trailed along  with the sheep and goats. I don't think they were there to help round up the animals - they were there to protect them. All their animals looked in really good condition. The donkey was gorgeous!

I'm glad that was so good because the next morning John came down with a rotten cold. We've actually kept ourselves fairly healthy while we've been away so I suppose we were due to catch something. As it turned out, the weather turned bad that day anyway. The previous night the wind had howled around our ill-fitting windows all night and it didn't stop for the next 48 hours or so. The morning John got sick, it started to rain. We took the opportunity to have a down day and spent most of the day indoors with the heater going. It was actually lovely! We could look out over the stunning view all day and we had wifi so we could catch up with things.

We ate breakfasts and dinners at our guest house but we found a wonderful place for lunch. A group of old buildings had been turned into a very basic hotel with a restaurant. Hmm, 'restaurant' isn't the word. Even 'cafe' is a stretch. Let's go with 'a few plastic tables and chairs where you can eat'! To enter the 'hotel' (again a very vague description) we went through a wooden door and along an open passage lined with stone walls and rooms. We turned into a very narrow stairway and climbed a few stone steps to the roof. We crossed over a short bridge over the passageway and onto another roof which formed a deck where the tables and chairs were. 

We looked down onto the rabbit-warren of stone walls around us. The closest '"room" had no roof and was full of rubbish though. We must have eaten at a similar time each day because every time we were there, the call to prayer started. The local imam sounded a bit rough around the edges and his call was a little different in that he kept the microphone on while he carried out the whole ceremony, rather than just having it on to call people in. The thing that struck us though is that he would often cough right in front of the microphone. So we would be enjoying our lunch when there would suddenly be this "harrcckkk" coughing noise! I got part of his call recorded, but not his coughing.

The food here was amazing! When we asked what they had we were told "meatballs with hummus and salad". What we actually got was a plate of each of the following: meatballs in tomato sauce, hummus, Arabic salad, a delicious grilled eggplant dish, some sort of wonderful vegetable curry plus more flatbread than we could eat! It was incredible!

On our last day I went for a longer walk, timing it between the rain showers. I walked past where we met the Bedouins and along the other side of the canyon wall. The views were spectacular!

I was surprised to see a bit of green growth after the rain.

I was wandering through a mob of sheep and goats on the trail on my way back when suddenly the herd's dogs spotted me and went berserk. One in particular was being very protective and would rush at me every time I turned my back on it to continue to walk through the mob. I could see a donkey partly hidden by a big rock so I waited for the boy or man to call the dogs off, which is what they usually do. Nothing happened. I realised that the kid wasn't there. He had left his stock on the track that people were walking along and wasn't close enough to call the dogs off! By scrambling off the path to get around the stock I got through and saw a group of boys having tea a bit further up. Grrrrr.

The communication here was better than it had been elsewhere. Ironically, a deaf/mute guy worked here and I could understand him much better than almost everyone else we'd met so far!

It was a truly wonderful place.

Heather and John