Aqaba is the only coastal city in Jordan and it’s centrally located between Africa and Asia. It’s also the sole port of the nation. As we traveled the desert, Israel was on our west and Turkey to our east. We signed up for the 10-hour excursion to Petra and we’ve been waiting for this since about a month into this trip. During our 2 ½ hour bus ride we see wild camels, goats, sheep, Bedouin camps (Nomads) and wind-sculpted rock formations. We passed Wadi Rum, which the base camp used by Lawrence of Arabia when he helped the Arabs expell the Turks from Aqaba during the great camel charge. Most of us were mesmerized by the mystical beauty of what we were seeing. We watched the Lawrence of Arabia movie for the second time before this excursion and much of what we were seeing outside the bus window was identical to what we saw in the movie. This bus ride was anything but boring.
We finally arrive in Petra, a famous archaeological site, which is a city carved in red sandstone. It is one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Sculpted into cliffs and rocky mounds 3,200 years ago, it was once a bustling trade center that controlled ancient routes between Arabia and the Mediterranean. There were options of hiring a donkey cart, a horse or a camel, to carry you through the ¾ mile long narrow siq, a gorge formed by an earthquake surrounded by towering walls that block out the sun. We walked the slim passage dodging the donkey’s, horses and camels (no kidding) and all of a sudden in front of us was the Treasury carved into a 10-foot cliff that was featured in the movie “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. We continued on another 4 miles to see a vast repository of homes, temples, royal tombs and an amphitheater, all sculpted into the rose-red rock. There were remnants of an irrigation system and toilets. They built walls to stop flooding in the siq; hard to believe that they had the ability to develop and build what we were looking at. Temp this day was about 102 degrees. Walking in was not so bad. Coming out, another story but we made the whole 9 miles and were rewarded with a most amazing buffet lunch at a wonderful hotel across from where our bus was parked.
On our bus ride back to the ship we stopped for a bathroom break and many of the Viking Crew were there to greet us. They all wore the red/white head scarfs (kufiyah) and served us mint tea, fresh dates and baklava. What a treat! It was a great break on the long return bus ride.
