Sean and Amy Do Petra.
One of our main reasons for visiting Jordan – really, everyone’s main reason for visiting Jordan – was to go to Petra. Petra is an ancient city carved into red-rose rock. It was established sometime around 6 B.C. by the Nabatean people. Petra is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the New Seven Wonders of the World. Visiting Petra, like much of Jordan, was totally Sean’s thing and not mine, but it turned out to be pretty cool.
The most famous building, and the first one you see upon entrance, is the Treasury. You may remember the Treasury from the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade; it is the building holding the Holy Grail at the end of the movie. (Which we know is a fiction, because we saw the Holy Grail in the Cathedral in Valencia!)
Before you get to see the Treasury, you first have to walk about a mile back into the city flanked on either side by towering red rock formations. We caught our first sight of the Treasury by candlelight. On our first night, we joined a couple hundred people in the tour back to the Treasury. The candlelight gave enough light only to give a sense of the towering rocks surrounding us.
The next morning, we woke up early and ventured in again. This time, we could see just how large the rocks lining the path are.
You walk, and walk, and walk, and finally, through a crack in the rocks, you get the big reveal. In between the rock formations, you see a hint of the Treasury peeking through.
It isn’t until you get all the way through the rock formation path, however, that you truly can take stock of the Treasury and all of its grandeur. It is a huge building, as you can tell from this picture of me standing in front of it. It is carved into the rock with such detail that you can hardly believe that humans could have done this, by hand.
Besides the Treasury, there are other buildings and things carved into the stones, such as the amphitheatre and tombs. Sean convinced me to engage in one of my least favorite activities – walking up steps. Over 800 steps, to be more precise. You could hire hand-led donkeys to take you up the narrow steep pathway, but if I was going to fall off this mountain, I was going to do it on my own accord.
The destination was Petra’s second grandest building, the Monastery, which was located at the top of a steep hillside. As I trudged up the hill, soaked with sweat, with the morning sun now beating down without relief, I was reminded of my failure to “summit” a similar hillside in the heat in Morocco. This time, I was determined to make it to the top. We kept seeing the same two elderly women chugging along. Although I felt pathetic to use their progress as a benchmark, I was pleased that at the very least, we beat them to the top, where the Monastery stands just as tall and grand as the Treasury.
Although the buildings are what earned Petra its acclaim, the rocks themselves fascinated me just as much. Their red-rosy glow earned Petra the nickname of the Red Rose City. In certain areas, the rosey rocks swirl into beautiful blues and purples. It is gorgeous.
If you go: We stayed at the Sun Set Hotel, a no-frills budget hotel with wifi in the lobby within walking distance to restaurants and Petra. It was nice not to have to rely on transport to get to Petra, and it allowed us to get up early to see Petra before it got too crowded and before the sun got too hot. We spent 2 nights in Wadi Musa, and thought 6 or 7 hours was enough to see everything we wanted to see. If you are interested in seeing everything in Petra, you will want to allot at least two days. When they say that you will do a lot of walking, they are not lying – you will do A LOT of walking. And it will be hot. Water is readily available to replenish your supply in Petra, even at the top of the mountain with the Monastery. You will need it. Be prepared for the sticker shock of Petra’s price. It is now 33 Jordanian dinars – about $46 USD. In November, it is going up to a shocking 50 JD – about $70.60 USD. Not too long ago, it was only 15 JD/21 USD. Petra is definitely a special place that deserves to be visited, and I am sure that there are continuing research and archaeological costs, but paying $70 to get in seems extreme. What is extra frustrating about the price increases is that it does not seem like any of the money is going back in to improve the attraction for the tourists that support it. Most of the few bathrooms inside are basically porta-potties, and many of the paths are not in good repair. I don’t expect Petra to be in perfect condition, considering it is an ancient city, but I expect some basic improvements if I am paying $50 or $70 for something that formerly cost $21.
Hello to Fellow Fighters
If you’ve come from 1000 Places to Fight Before you Die, welcome! Mike and Luci, who tell what it is really like to travel as a couple on their blog, very kindly re-posted SurroundedbytheSound’s most recent blog post about race in South Africa over on their site. Mike and Luci also recently traveled through South Africa. They posted about their visit to Soweto Township, a place we didn’t get to visit, and about South Africa’s neighboring country, Swaziland, another place we would have liked to have seen but didn’t get a chance to. If you’ve never visited 1000 Places to Fight Before you Die, check it out!
Observations about Race in South Africa
I can’t help but always take note of race; it is a byproduct of being an employment discrimination lawyer, I suppose, where I was paid to analyze issues in racial terms. (And to my friend Tony – yes, I am mentioning race because it is relevant here).
Shortly before we traveled to South Africa, Karen Waldrond, one of my favorite writers and photographers, who I’ve mentioned recently, wrote that she believes that everyone should spend an extended amount of time outside of their home country, in a place where they are a visible member of the minority class at least once in their lifetime. I thought of her words while we were in South Africa. The percentage of blacks and whites in South Africa and the United States are roughly flipped: 79% of the population in South Africa are black, and 9.5% are white. 75% of the population in the United States are white, and 12.4% are black. (Of course, I realize the issue of race is more complex than black and white, but I am focusing upon the biggest majority group in each country). Early on in our trip, we walked into a crowded department store off of Long Street, a trendy street in downtown Cape Town, and realized we were the only white people in the store. This experience repeated itself again and again during our month in the country.
Being in the minority kept race on the forefront of my mind. Even more than that, the relatively recent fall of apartheid made it impossible to travel throughout South Africa without thinking about race. Like many of the other countries we have traveled through that have gone through significant historical transformations, it was fascinating to learn about what life was like before and what life was like now.
Pass cards listing one's deemed race that controlled where a person could go during apartheid
Apartheid – literally the state of being separate – was similar to segregation and Jim Crow laws in the United States, but much, much more extreme. And its official demise was only 16 years ago. Which means that during our lifetimes, blacks lived without the same rights as whites. And now blacks live with the same rights as whites, at least legally.
At the District Six Museum in Cape Town, we learned about the forced removal of 60,000 people from a neighborhood during apartheid. On our trip to Robben Island, the island where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 18 years, we learned a little about what prison was like directly from a former political prisoner. The most informative experience, by far, was the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg. We’ve been to a lot of museums on this trip, and I felt this museum was the most educational and organized out of any of the ones we have visited. What I liked best was that you could choose to only read a brief overview of each section, or delve into the details should you so choose. The museum also packed an emotional impact just by presenting neutral facts. You are randomly assigned a race as you enter. I was white. Sean was “coloured” (a racial category used for people of mixed race that had more rights than blacks but much fewer rights than whites). This meant we were separated upon entrance and each had different experiences in the beginning of the museum. When we left the museum, together, we could peek back through a slit to see the entry point, where the races were separate. A reminder about how far the country has come.
Old sign displayed in the District Six Museum
The seven pillars of South Africa's current constitution displayed outside the Apartheid Museum: democracy, equality, reconciliation, diversity, responsibility, respect and freedom.
Renewing my education about apartheid made me scrutinize race relations much more closely than normal. I’ve read that the biggest issue today is the drastic differences between the haves and the have nots, and not the relations between the races.
This may be true, but I didn’t see any white people living in the townships and shantytowns on the outskirts of almost every city and town we drove through. At the beginning of our trip, it seemed like all of the owners, managers and patrons were white in all of the places where we stayed and ate, but the staff was black. Most of the suburban enclaves we saw were white, with the exception of maids. The rural, poorer towns we drove through had all black inhabitants. It wasn’t until East London and further north that we saw more upscale neighborhoods full of black people living and eating there. Finally, one of the B&Bs where we stayed was owned by a black person. But in these more upscale neighborhoods, we still didn’t see much integration between blacks and whites. In Johannesburg, we finally saw much more diversity. One of the places where we noticed this the most was at a secure suburban mall, where people of every race and color shopped and hung out.
Like crime, race is a sensitive topic in South Africa, so I only have my observations to go on. I always have the feeling that any observations are incomplete, and can only help facilitate learning more instead of being the final say on any particular topic when I travel. I’m not sure what all of my observations mean, but my suspicions are that the society has come a long way, but progress is slow. The fall of apartheid means that both a black and white cop can stand together and demand a bribe from two white people in lieu of a speeding ticket – thank goodness for progress, right? – but the effects of years of discrimination, oppression, and violence can’t be erased overnight or even in 16 years.