Sojourn to Egypt and the Holy Land: Day 12

We arrived in Aqaba before 7 am and had a pancake breakfast on our verandah as we sailed into port. Aqaba shares this bay at the end of the Red Sea with the Israeli city of Eilat. We were soon cleared to disembark and our tour bus was waiting to take us to Petra. The drive through Aqaba and the following two hours on the highway to Petra were filled with a myriad of information about Jordan by our tour guide Mustafa, a most colourful man; a Bedouin who was born and lived in the secret city of Petra until the tribes were relocated to New Petra, a nearby village built for that purpose. Mustafa interspersed local facts with personal stories about his childhood as the only one of sixteen children (all from the same father and mother) who left the community to go to school and eventually become a tour guide. Back in those days education was not compulsory for all children as it is now.

First the facts: Jordan's population is seven million, with another 3 or 4 million refugees (and more pouring in every day) from neighbouring countries besieged by wars and internal conflict; approximately 17,000 of its citizens are Bedouins, their goat-hair tents and goat herds can be seen throughout the countryside. Educating every child is considered so important to the future of the country, that school teachers are paid three times as much to go teach the children of Bedouin tribes who are always on the move. Without much by way of natural resources, the country relies on tourism and commerce. King Abdullah II runs a tight ship which provides free education, including university level, to all of its citizens, and taxes the heck out of every one of them with each tax Dinar paying for health care, education, the military, etc.

The landscape is stunning; the wadis evoque scenes from Lawrence of Arabia, wide and dark granite veins scar the mountains as sandstorms slow traffic down here and there.

Bedouin tent

As we arrive in Petra -a city carved out of the rock by the Nabateans and which flourished between the 2nd century BC and the 4th century AD- and begin the long walk to the Siq (the "shaft" or narrow canyon which leads to the hidden city), the tombs and temples carved out of the rose-red sandstone blend with the natural rock formations creating an astonishing sight. The city went into decline after powerful earthquakes destroyed the water management system which enabled life in this desert area with a fresh spring as its single supply source.

The Siq is almost 2 kms long and there are horses and horse-drawn carriages available for tourists who can't, or prefer not to, walk on the uneven and often treacherous surface, and instead suffer the most teeth-jarring, spine crushing rides. The pictures speak for themselves, and as we walked along, I thought of all my geologist friends who would have a field day identifying all the different minerals which give the rock such amazing colours.

Finally, the Siq offers the first glimpse of the Treasury, the most famous of the structures in Petra. From then on, the city opens up to vast areas filled with caves, tombs, temples and even a theatre, all carved out of the rock. Only a very small percentage of the site has been excavated (it was "discovered" in the 1800s and was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the 1990s) but what we see is truly unbelievable.