Buckle up for a whirlwind tour of our 4 day trip to Jordan, Indian Jones style. Long bus rides and insane border passport
control resulted in a bus full of angry students. Okay, so maybe I was the only one
miffed. Things were immediately reprimanded
by several things-
1-I learned to covertly tune out my long winded tour guide with some Alt-J
2-Amman was a trendy indie mecca with a very fun mall which allowed a short
escape from some of the people I see all day, every day.
3- A mad dash for the best gelato in Jordan is never a bad idea, even if it
makes you a tad bit late.
4- KFC is always an interesting experience, especially in a foreign country.
5- Bucket List: Petra. Status:
Completed.
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| The Treasury at Petra. Wow. |
Our four day trip to Jordan was a bit of hodgepodge of awesome. The country itself was very similar to the Palestinian
Quarter in the Old City which is something I didn’t expect. My main gripe is that our tour guide
blathered 90% of the time, which included bus rides. See point number one above. Thank you Alt-J. Our first day was mostly bussing but was met
by quite the show at our French Hotel.
Don’t ask me why, but all the hotels we stayed at were French. I think it could have something to do with
French occupation that I may have learned in one of my classes, but hey, I also
got pretty good at playing hangman in above mentioned classes so who knows. That evening we arrived to our first hotel to
men in traditional garb who met us with singing and dancing and quite the dinner
spread. Love that saffron and cardamom
rice. Day two was the highlight of the whole
trip. We walked 5 minutes down the road
into the enormous red stone gorge to begin the tantalizing descent to the city
of Petra. That walk was long, with each
of us knowing what lay at the bottom.
Like a photo out of National Geographic, I looked up to see the corner
of the enormous stone Treasury peeking out behind the red stone gorge. A step out of the channel allowed that
impressive façade to be seen. That’s something I’ll never forget.
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| View from one of the "best" viewpoints |
After antsy waiting for instruction, a group of us split to fully take
advantage of our free afternoon in Petra. Tombs were explored, sand wormed its
way into every crevasse, rocks were for sale (Literally-there were little
stands selling bracelets, coke and rocks….Not like you can just pick on off the
ground…) And heavens, hundreds of stairs
were climbed. We made our way to the
Monastery at the top of this huge mountain, and climbed every one of those 800
stone carved steps. But it was worth
it. The Monastery is more impressive in my
opinion than the treasury. I also appreciated the view from the “Best Viewpoint”,
the “Very Best Viewpoint” and the “Better than Grand Canyon Viewpoint’. Tired, but still resisting the pestering
locals begging you to take a ride on their donkey or camel, we made our way to
a delicious lunch (I love hummus. Love
it. I’m going to need to find a pita
provider in Provo, I can’t go cold turkey) and off to climb more stairs. We made our way to a real sacrificial altar
which you can imagine provoked lots of reenactments. Tired and worn, we cut our timing real close
on arriving in a timely manner. I couldn’t
resist though- I happily paid the Bedouin man cash to grab his horse and trot
up the gorge, Indian Jones style. It was
sweet. After a graceful dismount, the
most delicious and expensive Dr. Pepper with Cherry soda (It seemed like an
appropriate beverage after the horse ride) and a literal run to get Gelato
ended our afternoon in Petra. It was
quite the day.
Jordan ended with an interesting day, but fun all the while. I say interesting because lunch was delivery
KFC to a meeting point, which happened to be on the many indoor bazaar/shopping
mallish places that dot Jordan. You walk
inside and it’s an explosion of costumes, painted ostrich eggs, coffee tables,
mosaics of Jordanian jewelry, camels in every size and Dead Sea Salt. And Magnum Bars. The last two nights were
spent meandering around Rainbow Street in Amman, and our last day was spent at
the Jordan River. That was quite the
experience. I learned to shut off my
running commentary completely and take time to think about where I was. It was a very contemplative experience to sit
on the banks of the Jordan River and have some quiet scripture study to
myself.
Most bus rides and a fiasco at border control brought us home to Jerusalem,
tired and stair sore. But let’s not
forget my triumphant gallop out of Petra. We’ll end on that note.
