Petra

The final major stop on our Israel tour was Petra, the ancient city carved into stone cliffs. Remember the Valley of the Crescent Moon in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? To be honest, I don’t because I don’t really like movies but apparently, according to M and A, that was Petra. The place was amazing, and deserves its own blog, mostly because of our guide, who was Borat (from the movie for those of you who are not familiar).

We were picked up at the hotel to be taken to the Jordanian border, where we would be met by our Jordanian guide, Abbas. One of the first things out of his mouth was:

“This Jordan, everything start and stop with our King Hussein. We are loving our king. He is very wise. If you have problem, you can look him up on the Facebox and he will help”.

Amazing.

During our 3 hour drive to Petra, I could generally be found hiding behind one of the bus chair silently giggling, as A and M went back and forth with Borat impressions. Some highlights:

“Jordan is very rich in chem-icals; phosfat and potass. We are not number one, but number four in potass.” [he’s talking about phosphate and potassium]

“I have one wife and it is excellent. But, if your wife gets sick, you can take another wife to take care of your wife and take care of you. Or, of you wife does not give you children, you take another wife. Or, if she is a bad wife, you take another wife.”

“We are hating the tourists. We try to help America and kill the tourists. Al-Zarqawi is Jordanian, but the government gave the green light to kill him, so we will kill him for you. We will help you with the war on tourists.”

Oh, terrorists.

Anyway, hilarity of our guide aside, Petra was amazing. It is an ancient city that was founded sometime in the 6th century BC and is a city cut entirely into a canyon. It was founded by a desert culture called the Nabateans and changed hands many times which explains why the architecture ranges from Greek amphitheaters to churches to pagan temples.



As we descended into the canyons (view above), the walls grew on either side, and around each turn, some crazy architectural marvel jumped out at us.



The Nabateans were big facilitators of the many trading routes crossing the Middle East at the time, and that is how they supported this town of 35,000 people (their homes are below).



More temples carved into the cliffs:


I don’t have too much more to say about Petra, as Borat didn’t give a real coherent tour, but fortunately, it didn’t need too much commentary. He was especially amusing to Koko because once he found out that she was Jewish, he included “you know what I mean” and waved his hand at her every time he made a reference to something Jewish/Hebrew. We almost never knew what he meant so that produced even more laughter.

The next morning we sojourned back to Tel-Aviv, had some delicious sushi, went to the airport, and began our journey back to Kenya.



Thus ends Israel 2K10. It was a wonderful trip and we were so happy to see friendly faces. Thank you to Dad, KCK, A, and Koko for making the journey!!