July 4, 2012

Trying not to wait too long before I forget half the stuff I want to write about, so here's what I've been up to since last entry.

The Caverns at Petra

Last weekend was pretty active. I went to Petra and Wadi Rum, two locations south of Amman. Petra is considered one of the "new" Wonders of the World (with the likes of the Taj Mahal, etc.), and is more or less a city carved into a series of canyons. Imagine a smaller grand canyon but with huge buildings carved into its walls. Wadi Rum is a desert where some of Lawrence of Arabic was filmed and had a lot of scenery to it which was pretty nice. Overall it was pretty cool and I got to take part in a lot of really cool experiences.

We left for Petra immediately after my last class of the day on Thursday (remember, Thursday is the last work day of the week here with Friday being the holy day). The bus ride was a few hours long, but we arrived in Wadi Musa (the neighboring town) sometime around 8:30pm, and we got to stay in a four star hotel that was pretty nice. The best part about the hotel was unlimited water, so I could take a shower longer than three minutes for the first time since I've been here. However, I didn't bring any soap or shampoo with me to the hotel and there wasn't any in the bathroom so I kind of just stood in the shower for about five minutes before getting out since I had nothing to do.

The Treasury

The next day we woke up early in the morning so we could spend the whole day at Petra, which was well worth it. If I had to put a number down on how many miles I walked that day, it'd be somewhere around eight, including up and down mountains. One of the more interesting facets of Petra is the Bedouin population that inhabits it, mostly selling trinkets and what not for hardly any money. Some of them spend the whole year up in the mountains with just a tent, a bit of food, and a kettle to boil water and live their entire lives that way. Pretty fascinating. To get to the mountains, you walk through a series of caverns with various carvings and what not in them stemming back from the original inhabitants of the area some thousands of years ago, then there's a bit of open land with ruins of theaters, governmental-looking buildings, and some other architecture before heading up into the mountains to get to the Monastery. Now, before this hike up, there's a structure called the Treasury that is pretty captivating in its own right. Interestingly enough, it's called the Treasury not because it served as a financial center for the Nabateans (the civilization that constructed the site), but because many people thought that a vase atop the building held gold, treasure, and riches or what not. The way these people tried to acquire the riches was by shooting at the vase from the ground with guns and trying to bust it open. They achieved their goal of riddling a historical monument with bullets, only to find no riches inside. Bummer. On another note, for those that have seen Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, this is the building the crew enters to get to the Holy Grail at the end of the movie.

The Monastery

Climbing up the mountain to the Monastery was pretty exhausting and took a lot longer than I originally expected, and numbered somewhere around 900+ steps from our initial level to the very top. Some students in our group weren't man enough to make the whole trek and rented donkeys for 5 dinars, but they also were in way better condition when we made it to the top when I was so I'll give them a pass on this one. The Monastery was one of the most impressive sights I've seen in my whole life, and the long walk was most definitely worth it. Another bit of movie trivia, the Monastery is the building that houses some of the Transformers in the second movie, although I never saw it so I may have screwed up my facts a little bit. Regardless, at the top there was another Bedouin who hung out with us in his tent where we drank some tea and listened to him sing a bit before just chatting about his life, what he does all day, how he learned English, etc. All in all it was pretty enlightening and ended up being a great experience.

The Sunset at Wadi Rum

After that, we took another bus ride to Wadi Rum and spent the night in the desert with more Bedouins. After watching the sunset over the mountains, we had a pretty excellent meal which they had spent the entire day cooking underground in pits covered with sand, roughly five feet deep. They basically function like a slow-cooker.. but nature-ized. A few hours after that we hit the sack and woke up the next day to go a jeep tour of the desert for a few hours, and even got to climb a bunch of the rock structures which was a good time. The Bedouins with us were crazy agile and were basically Spider-Maning all over the rocks while most of the group was moving at a snail's pace to avoid falling and cracking a vertebrae or some other debilitating injury. Being a pasty white guy almost could have been a problem, but luckily I brought SPF 50 sunscreen to keep any shred of a tan from reaching my skin and retain my status as La Flama Blanca. After the jeep tour we ate lunch with the Bedouins and had some maqloub (rice, chicken, lebna, and vegetables that basically look like pico de gallo) and tea before heading back to Amman.

Since the trip I've been really busy at school once again. I don't think the workload I have is going to let up anytime soon so I've basically just accepted the fact that I'm going to be swamped during the week and then have the weekends somewhat free to do stuff. This weekend I'm going on another trip, this time to Jerash, and I'll update the blog again after that. Peace out, girl scouts.

P.S. I realize the formatting for the pictures is a little weird but I've tried fixing it to no avail. Blonde hair don't care.