where in the world is rahima?: the lost city of petra

here is a mere glimpse of petra...my pictures cannot do it justice...

getting into jordan from egypt was supposed to be pretty easy, according to the lonely planet guide book. but as we learned, nothing is easy in egypt and now we hate the lonely plnet for its vicious lies...we now refer to it as the lonely liar.

we left alexandria at 4:30 pm and were supposed to be able to catch a direct bus to aqaba, the city in jordan on the other side of the gulf of sinai. but, instead of there being a direct bus, we had to take a 4 hour bus ride to cairo. then we had to wait from 8:30 pm until 11 p.m. to catch a bus from cairo to nuweiba (the city where we were to take a ferry into jordan). the waiting was fine, but once we were on the bus, it was miserable! the bus driver sat us in the front so we would not be hassled by all the men (so nice, considering that we were the only jezebels traveling at the witching hour). but as the 6 hour trip continued, the bus got colder and colder to the point of freezing because: we were going through the desert at night, the driver had his window open the whole time, and there was absolutely no heat. i had to put my head all the way into my fleece so i would not die of hypothermia. poor annette kept muttering with her quivering blue lips, "i am so cold" over and over. that was really all she could say, and that is saying a lot, because she is a talker.

finally, we arrived at nuweiba at 5 in the morning, when it was still dark, but the ferry building did not open until 8 so we waited in a coffee shop (an outdoor one at that!). i was so cold that as i was drinking my coffee, i kept shivering so that the coffee just kept spilling all over my hands. eventually the sun came out and the building opened so we could buy our ferry tickets. when we bought the tickets, we were told that the ferry wouldn't leave until 2, so again we had another waiting period of 6 hours. at this time jenny, annette, and i were all running on empty so we were resigned to wait. when 2 o'clock finally came, we shuffled over to the ferry boat, anxious to get over to jordan and closer to showers and beds. but the universe was not on our side that day. instead of leaving at 2, the ferry did not leave until 6:30 and apparently that is a common thing. the ferry NEVER leaves on time. when we got into aqaba (jordan), we still had to take a 2 hour taxi ride to wadi musa, the town where petra is located. so what was suposed to be a fairly simple, direct bus ride, turned into a 31-hour hellish experience.

BUT...it turned out to be well worth it because petra is absolutely mindblowing. i knew a little about petra and knew that it was one of the 7 wonders, but i had no idea how expansive it would actually be. from what i knew, it was a lost city that was carved into mountains. definitely that sounded cool, but i ssumed that it would be pretty small, witha few primitive houses carved into the mountain face. but i was very wrong! it spanned over 3 miles and there is no way to see everything in one day. there are so many little paths that take you all around the city where you can see the houses they built, but also temples, a monastery, a place of high sacrifice, and they even had a treasurey! the treasurey and the monastery were not only built into the moutain, but they were actually quite ornante as well. petra was a city built thousands of years ago by romans and nabetheans and was really an amazingly organized and functioning society. it wasn't discovered until the early 1900s. that just goes to show how much of the world there is for us to discover still...

some of the houses carved into the mountains where the romans and nabetheans lived once upon a time...all of this was created without the aid of modern tools...how did they do this?!?

a bedouin man chilling out in petra. jordan has a large bedouin population and many of them were in petra selling postcards, jewellery, and such. there is also a small bedouin village within petra where some bedouins still live.

jenny walking in front of a donkey. a lot of the bedouin kids were trying to get people to climb up to the monastery on donkeys because there are over 800 steps to get there. we refrained and decided to walk up.