Day 8--No words to describe...

It would probably be best if all I said in today’s post is “Petra…enough said” because Petra is one of those places in the world that leaves you at a loss to find adequate descriptive words. But, of course, you know I can’t do that. Petra was the capitol of the Nabateans about 100 B.C. These people carved temples, tombs and houses out of the colorful sandstone mountains that covers the area. The colors in the stone are simply breathtaking,, and the views are unbelievable.

Breakfast at the hotel was overlooking the mountains of Petra. Such a beautiful setting for a hotel! Dan proudly modeled his famous “made in China” Petra shirt.

Once in Petra, we rode horses from the entrance to a narrow passageway called the Siq, and walked down into ancient Petra from there. The first view of Petra from the siq is of a structure called the “treasury“. This is the traditional photo of Petra that is shown in all the books, and is a site not to be missed.

From that point several “mavericks” on the tour left the group and went sightseeing on our own. The guilty parties were Olen, Jane, Barry, Tabatha, Dan and Sharon. (“By the time we get back home we will have thoroughly corrupted poor Sharon. There is still hope for Dan.) We climbed to the “high place” used for worship and sacrifices by the ancient Nabateans. It is estimated that there are about 850 steps from the base of the mountain to the top of the high place. I would not argue with those figures. It was an experience of a lifetime because I do not plan to do it again, even though I would not give anything for today’s experience. It was a difficult climb, especially for those of us in our sixties, but we made it to the top. The mistake we made was not having sense enough to return by the same route. We did not find out this detail until we were back, but we should have returned using the same route we took up. We followed the other path, which was the scenic (think l-o-n-g!) route back. Because of this, it took us much longer than it should have.
Once on top, breathing hard and exhausted, we met a Bedouin girl who had a display of jewelry for sale near the high place. Strangely enough, Olen remembered her from having made this same climb two years ago. From that point on we had a friend. Tabatha engaged her in so much conversation that I thought they were going to exchange phone numbers before we left. The girl is 22 years old, single, an lives in a Bedouin village “just down the mountain”. She walks two hours every day (including climbing the mountain!) to get to her work, which is selling jewelry on the high place. Needless to say, she was not overweight and was in excellent physical condition! She showed us around the area of the high place and was interesting to talk to.

By the time we reached the high place, we were out of fuel, and Olen stopped to eat a snack. As soon as he got out his beef jerky he made another friend. From out of nowhere came a cat, who kept Olen very close company until he got to the dried apricots and raisins stage of the meal. (Obviously, cats…even hungry ones who live on the top of high mountains…are not hungry enough to eat dried fruit). The “high place cat” even followed Olen around for quite a while, in hopes he would drag out the beef jerky again.

We did not bring a sacrifice to the high place, of course, but thanks to Sharon we have been provided with a visual of that.

The route down the mountain was not only longer…it was also more scary than the route up. I have a fear of heights, and this entire trip was ‘way out of my comfort zone. However, I made it by hugging the mountain from time to time, and even scooting down some areas on my backside (like the grandchildren bump-bump down the stairs at home before they are trained to be stairs-worthy). Whatever works…right?

By the time we had reached the bottom of the mountain via the “scenic route” we had very little time to make the schedule back to the bus. By this time I was totally “spent” and we were under time-pressure to make it back to the bus on schedule, I convinced Olen that the charge to rent a buggy back to the bus area was more affordable than shipping my body back home for burial, and that accurately describes the way I was feeling at the time. So, we rode the buggy back, passing other members of our group that were going to be even later than we were trying to make the deadline.

Still, the plan was not perfect. The horse that pulled our buggy was as exhausted as I was, and he got slower and slower the farther we went. Even some of our tour mates passed us walking the same route! I got the distinct impression that the particular horse pulling our buggy was one step away from the glue factory. I felt like I was on one of the teams on the “Amazing Race” that gets behind the other teams because they happen to have the unfortunate experience of getting in a slower taxi! It all worked out for everyone, and the bus left the area only a few minutes behind schedule. We do apologize for any inconvenience we caused.

We headed toward the Dead Sea, with a stop at Kerak for photos. While taking one photo of the valley, a local shepherd (goatherd?) had his flock of goats on the hillside, just like they were posing for photos.

We arrived at our lovely hotel on the Dead Sea late in the afternoon. Several members of our group went in the Dead Sea before dinner, but our plan is to try that adventure early tomorrow morning. I try to limit myself to only one great adventure a day, and climbing to the high place in Petra took care of that requirement for today!

Tomorrow we head back to Israel for the remainder of our trip. The days are passing much too fast, but we are experiencing so many wonderful things and making so many memories to last a lifetime. Here is hoping you made some memories today. Until tomorrow…