Okay, I know this is almost two weeks ago, so I will try to give as much detail as possible but please bear in mind that I'm a terrible blogger and have lots more to catch up on, especially from this past weekend in Beirut!
So Thursday morning all the students met at the University main gates and were loaded into buses. The trip was about three hours or so, and midroute we stopped at a very touristy craft/souvenir shop. Made it the rest of the way to the Wadi Rum Visitor Center; Wadi Rum, just to clarify, is a desert valley thingy, with mountainous sandstone and granite boulders (probs just easier to look it up on Wikipedia for a better illustration). At the visitor center, we ate lunch and then watched a little NatGeo-esque film about the region.
After a little rest, playing Frisbee in the courtyard and stocking up on kafiyyahs for the trek, we all went out to the camel herd and boarded! It was such a crazy feeling to sit on top of this huge animal, not to mention the saddle was super uncomfortable. But it was awesome! We set out, led by the handlers walking in front of us...ours was from Sudan, and he invited Ali and me to come back there with him when the season ended :P
We rode for about three hours, stopping two or three times to go climb the rock hills and take photos of the absolutely magnificent landscape.
Ended on a dune to watch the sun set over the desert, then we all made our way down the hill to our first camp. Wasn't a true Bedouin camp, but it was loads of fun. Ali, Julie, and I got a tent together, and there was an awesome dinner with a big bonfire in the middle of the encampment that we ended up dancing around with the musicians. In our evening downtime..we ventured out of the camp into the desert, just far enough that the lights weren't in our faces and we could lay back and enjoy the absolutely fantastic views of the sky and count the shooting stars.
The next morning we had b-fast and then split into groups of six to pack into 4x4s to drive through the desert towards Aqaba. It was cool, not as fun as the camels though, just windy and sandy; I made the mistake of putting on chapstick beforehand and my lips were super sandy after 5 minutes! Our driver was a little nuts, and liked to try to race the other jeeps, but good times all around.
The 4x4s dropped us off at the main road where our buses were waiting to take us the final 10 minutes into the city of Aqaba. It's a nice little port town, looked rather high-end, and we had a snazzy little lunch before going to our yachts (yes, yachts) to go out onto the Red Sea to snorkel. I must be blunt, it's times like these, when we get to strip down to our bathing suits, that are very welcome vacations from the modest of Jordanian dress codes!!
After our evening play on the water, loaded back into buses to head to another camp close to Petra. Some people stayed out in the middle of the encampment to sleep under the stars; I'd already claimed a tent though with some other girl and thought I'd be happy to have the privacy and better sleep. The days were jam-packed with activities, and the final day at Petra would be the longest of all!
Woke up early to get to Petra; the program offered two routes: either take the bus to the Visitor's Center and then hike through the site, or take the "intense" backdoor hike, in which you end up at the far end of the site and would see everything in reverse when headed back to the visitor's center. I took the easy way out, knowing myself, I thought I'd rather not push it, not in that heat.
Let me tell you, there was nothing easy about the easy hike. Granted, it was all level land, no slinking around tight rock ledges or anything like the other one, but boy oh boy...soooo much walking. From the visitor's center, it took about 20 minutes walking through a canyon, through sand, to get to the Treasury, which is typically the main image of Petra, that facade carved into the rock face (again, check out Wikipedia to see everything I saw...still unable to post pictures here, unsure why!!)
From there, more walking, exiting the canyon into the tomb area..lots more smaller facades lining the cliffs. It was a little creepy looking into the doorways!! Passed by the amphitheater, and moved more into the residential area. The homes weren't build into the rocks, and therefore there was nothing really recognizable because of all of the erosion and earthquakes; just a large area of rubble. Up on the hill there was the tent I'd been keeping an eye out for...That was the Petra Chapel, excavated by ACOR, the folks I'm working with, and they had the display of the amazing mosaic floors open to the passing tourists. It was cool to see a completed project by them; and I also saw from afar the Temple of the Winged Lions, a project already completed but poorly so, and I'll be helping with the new organization of the data, making it available to scholars online, etc.
We all had lunch at the one restaurant on the site, and afterwards a few of us decided to brave the heat and climb the 800 stairs (and by stairs i mean terribly eroded, very steep slope that might once have been suitable stairs) to the Monastery. Along the way, the Bedouin people--who are no longer allowed to sleep in Petra but can work there during the day--had stalls set up with jewelry and drinks, and were encouraging us along the way, shouting "Just 10 more minutes! You're halfway there I promise!!" Some were even leading donkeys up that you could pay to ride.
All was well, and we made it, huffing and puffing, rather moist on the forehead... The Monastery looked very much like the Treasury; a similar facade carved into a wall of rock, so we turned our attention to a sign on top of a boulder that said "The Highest View". Yet more climbing (buns of steel, yes?), and made it to this lookout point that seemed to be the highest point in the entire area, and we had some fantastic views of the canyons and surrounding desert. Some guys had a tent up there with souvenirs, and they served tea to us; we asked if they camp out up there, and they bragged about sometimes staying up there overnight! I don't blame them...I wouldn't want that climb every day, no matter how rewarding the view from the office!! All the way back down, it was fun commiserating with the people going up, encouraging them in French, English, and a bit of broken Spanish and German to continue the last 10 minutes, 20 minutes..the view was so worth it. To give you an idea of the distance of our "easy" hike: From the High View, climbing down the mountain, stopping just a hot minute to purchase a necklace or two from the Bedouins, going back through the residential areas, the tomb area, back to the Treasury, and through the canyon to the Visitor's Center, it took us about 1.5 hours of rather hurried walking!! (Had to meet by 3:30 to catch the bus)
Needless to say, everyone passed out in the bus on the way home. Didn't get home til about 9pm, and then had to do my MSA homework!! Took the best shower of my life, and rested up for Sunday's class.
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