Petra: Too Big for a Single Post

After getting up at the ungodly hour of 4am and hiking by flashlight through the still dark canyons, I'd successfully sneaked into Petra.  The first attraction was the Siq, a narrow, winding, steep walled canyon that was the formal entrance to Petra.  The Siq opens up dramatically right in front of the Treasury, a sight made familiar by the Indiana Jones film (see my earlier post).

After the Siq and the Treasury comes the Storefront, so called because the tombs are so neatly lined up one after another that they resemble a block of stores.

Even taking into account that those three are diminutive Asian women, those are still gigantic tombs.

Note the Babylonian/Assyrian influence in the stepped pyramid design at the top.

Everywhere you look there are tombs both grand and plain.

The day before I was somewhere up above here, on the wrong side of these cliffs.  No wonder I couldn't find my way down.

Modern reconstructions in front of the ancient amphitheater.

Columns that no longer hold up buildings can still hold up tourists.

The tomb-riddled cliffs above the amphitheater.

This one is called the Courthouse, as I recall, due to the belief that the arched areas underneath were used as prisons.

A souvenir seller seeks shelter from the intermittent rain.

The courthouse was re-used in later centuries as a church.

Mmm.. columnar.

It's big inside.

And the flat transverse cut of the ceiling reveals stunning patterns in the solid rock.

Oh, oh, one of my favorites styles of photograph: looking out a hole/window/whatever.

A higher, more expansive view of the amphitheater.  I couldn't decide which shot I preferred..

..so you get both.

Looking back toward the Storefront, the site beginning to fill up.

It's amazing how well preserved many of the facades are.

Portions look like the masons could have put down their tools the day before.

Take a moment and try to imagine this bad boy when it was new, with all of its details complete and every line ruler straight.  Wow.

There's a restored Nabotean path that runs to a marvelous lookout above The Treasury.  Those are modern stairs beyond, but this 3m wide, 10m long cut through solid rock is all Nabotean.

The cross hatched chisel marks are very distinctive.

Original Nabotean stairs.

As near as I can figure, this is the path I saw but couldn't reach the previous afternoon.  I'm pretty sure I was considering climbing down the crevice on the left, the darker one with plants growing in it.  I'm glad I didn't.

High above the plain which contained the city of Petra itself.  The city's main thoroughfare followed the stream bed in the center.

One last look at the amphitheater and surrounds.

Oh, is that what I think it is?

It is.

I'm not normally a fan of the "Me in front of.." shot, but sometimes it's impossible to resist.

This man is on the wrong side of the Siq, nonchalantly fixing himself some tea.  Good for him.

It's a stunningly rugged landscape.  Or maybe ruggedly stunning.  Probably both.

This woman wanted to know if I had seen her goat.  I had not.

One of the most incredible things about the areas surrounding Petra proper is how tiny remnants of the Naboteans quietly abound.  Note here the niches carved in the face of the boulder.

The top side of the gorge I followed down to the Siq the night before.  As it turns out, I passed only 50 meters from the path down, but missed it.

After spending a good 20 minutes negotiating the price of some 'ancient' coins (which I didn't end up buying), the vendors invited me to lunch and tea.  I just don't get the Bedouin mindset: the coins dropped well over 50% in price before I decided against buying them (but were probably still too costly), yet they wouldn't accept even a token payment for the food or tea.

I'm pretty sure that ain't a cigarette she's smoking.

Another look back.

Petra lasted long enough to convert to Christianity.  This is the portico of the recently unearthed Byzantine church.

My photos really don't do these mosaics justice.

They are completely original, I believe, the church having been suddenly abandoned following a devastating fire.

Here, now this is a good shot. How did Gauis Caecilius do that?

Who's that casting such a devilishly handsome silhouette?

One of the large public spaces of Petra the city.  To be honest, I don't even remember what it is.  Petra is so big, I was pretty overwhelmed by this point.

Amidst a field of rubble, a fragment of an angel.

I want you to focus and hold this image in your mind.  This is a speculative architectural cutaway of the Qadr al-Bint temple complex, Petra's oldest and most venerable.  Hold it, hoooooold it..

..this is what it looks like now.  Not so much, eh?  Clearly, freestanding isn't the way to go if you're building for the ages.

The Monastery, so called because the Byzantines re-used it as a chapel.  That's me in front there.  It's big.

It might have looked something like this when new.

From the Monastery, it's a little more than an hour walk/jog down to the valley floor, back along the main thoroughfare, back up the Siq and out the front gate.  I know because I sure as hell didn't want to miss the 5pm shuttle back up to the hostel.  It had been one helluva day: up at 4am to hike an hour and a half through the pre-dawn canyons into the site, hiding while waiting for the real tourists to start arriving and then hiking all over hell and gone taking pictures of everything.

But I hadn't paid one red cent (or piaster or dinar) to get in, and damn did that feel good.

Petra: Too Much Adventure

Sometimes you go looking for adventure.  Sometimes you find it.  And sometimes you find a little bit more adventure than you'd had in mind.  My next stop after Dahab was Petra, in Jordan.  It's crazy expensive to get into Petra, but I'd heard that it was possible to sneak in.  I even had a half-assed hand drawn map.  What could possibly go wrong?

Weeelllll...

The first afternoon I arrived in Wadi Mousa (the town outside Petra), I decided to explore a bit.  Not sneak all the way in; it was too late in the day for that.  I just wanted get a sense of the lay of the land.  As such, I certainly didn't need to bother bringing food or water or a coat.  I was only going to be gone for an hour or two at most, right?

Riiiiight.

The view from the hostel. Normal Petra to the left, free Petra to the right.  Doesn't look so bad..

I found my way down and around and back up to the far side of the Nabotean tunnel pretty quickly and easily.  But I knew from my 'map' that the tunnel passed right below a tourist police kiosk, so I decided to climb up and drop back onto the path a little further on.  What I failed to appreciate is that the kiosk is just before the entrance to the Siq, the narrow, high walled canyon that was the formal entrance to Petra.  Every time I tried to loop around back to the path, I was stymied by sheer cliffs.  After realizing that the Siq continued further than I wanted to go, I decided to head for the highest point in sight.  The map from my Lonely Planet guide seemed to indicate that there was a path up there.  Once on the path it would be a snap to walk down and out.

But there was nothing up there but windblown rocks.  By that point it was probably close to 4pm and I was at least 2 hours hike/scramble/ climb from where I'd started.  With sunset around 5:30, I needed to find my way down.  It would take me too long to retrace my steps, even if I could remember the twisting, turning route I'd taken up.

Shit.

In my increasing desperation, I climbed up and down a number of rock walls from which a fall almost certainly would have been fatal.  It wasn't terrible technical climbing.  I was wearing tennis shoes, for gawd's sake.  But still and all.  Even if the hand and foot holds are large and plentiful, a 30 foot drop is a 30 foot drop.

Around 5pm I found myself within sight of a wide, well marked path down.  But it was at least 50 feet below me and across a gorge.  Could I climb down and across and up?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  But the sun was almost down.  It would be soon be too dark to climb.  Was this my last best chance before I spent a cold, miserable night outside?

I got really, really close to attempting that climb.  I even started taking my shoes off so that I would have a better grip on the rock.  But a night out, though miserable, wouldn't be fatal.  And if I muffed that climb, I was done for.  "Don't do anything stupid," I kept telling myself.  "Don't panic and don't do anything stupid."  I put my shoes back on and climbed back the way I'd come.

The next gorge I followed led me all the way down to the Siq.  Luckily, previous adventurers had left long, sturdy boards in a few critical locations, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to get down.  As it was, it was well after 6pm and very nearly full dark before I finally dropped over the last wall and onto the path.  I was exhausted from my efforts and, to some extent, from fear.  I'd been hiking and scrambling and climbing without food or water all afternoon and I'd come too close to attempting something truly stupid.

But I didn't.  I made it down safe and sound.  And the next morning I got up at 4am to try again.

And I'll be damned if it didn't work.  This is the Nabotean tunnel from the legitimate side.  They carved the tunnel through 30 meters of solid rock in order to redirect flash floods away from the Siq.

The modern dam (which extends to the left out of frame) sits atop ancient foundations.

That first morning I initially tried walking out of the creekbed right below the police kiosk, but I saw a few guys setting up the souvenir stand beyond it.  Damn early risers.  In the half light and despite the gentle drizzle, I climbed up the sheer face of the dam on the right, hoping to be able to go around the back of the souvenir stand.  No joy.  My next best option seemed to be a couple of caves/tombs on the opposite side of the creekbed, so I climbed back down to hide until the regular tourists started arriving.

Not really the best of hiding places.

It was just dumb luck that I wasn't discovered.  I was in the cave on the left and several times I heard people enter and mill about the cave on the right.  So when the coast was clear, I left the cave and hid in one of the bathrooms just out of frame to the right.  That did the trick.

A half hour later I heard tourist voices and stepped out of the bathroom like I belonged there.

I am a goddamn ninja.

And so, without further ado: Petra.

There used to be a triumphal arch spanning the entrance to the Siq, but it fell in the 19th century.

The Siq starts fairly broad and shallow..

..but quickly narrows and deepens.

Channels carved into the walls to transport water to the city.  I saw identical structures outside Petra proper while sneaking in.

Original paving.

This is where I finally dropped into the Siq the night before.  Beyond the large boulder you can just see a little bit of a modern masonry wall.  Without the boards someone else left in place, I would have been trapped on the wrong side of it.

Oh, Christ, everyone, brace yourselves for an Indiana Jones moment.

Here it comes..

..oh god, YES.

What the Treasury looked like when it was 'discovered' in 1812.

Local Bedouin call it The Treasury due to a (mistaken) belief that an Egyptian pharaoh concealed his treasure in the large urn at the top of the facade.  This explains the numerous bullets shot at the urn by hopeful locals.  As a point of fact, the urn, like the rest of The Treasury, is carved out of solid rock and could not conceal anything.

A light rain falls on the Treasury, as it has been doing for 2,000 years.

It is absolutely amazing how sharp and crisp many of the architectural details remain despite the many centuries since they were carved.

The Nabotean gift shop and cafe.

Looking back at the outlet of the Siq from in front of the Treasury.

 To the left of the Treasury, a short little dead end, chock-a-block with stairways carved into the rock (click to enlarge).  Stairways like these, and there are tons all over Petra, give me absolute conniptions: where do they go?  What's up there?  Lemme just take a quick look...

The morning light shines on rain-wet canyon walls.

Check back tomorrow for the rest of my pictures from that day. There are way too many for a single post.