Petra - Hello Indiana Jones (B/C That's Not Original)

Since I feel that one of the main reasons why people really even look at Blogs in the first place is for the pictures, I've decided that I am gonna split my day in Petra into two different posts. That's mostly so that I can throw in the pictures that I would like without it being over the top, while at the same time keeping the posts "shorter" (that being relative to what is considered short for me). As a result you should be able to enjoy Petra just as much as I did.

This first part is going to focus on, you guessed it, the first half of the day which will include, the Treasury, The High Point, and the Monastery; while the second part will focus on the return from the Monastery, the Royal Tombs, The Hike to the lookout over the Treasury, and the end of the day.

Petra started with a long night without sleeping, where I woke up something like 7 or 8 times in the night, before I finally woke up at 5:45, and started to get ready. After that, I went down to the breakfast buffet, and was extremely excited to see American style food, like eggs, sausage, toast, only to be extremely disappointed by how disgusting it all was. For starters the eggs were probably powdered eggs, and when you would insert the serving spoon into them, water would seep up from the eggs, and onto the spoon, and then when you would put it on the plate all that lovely egg water would slop all over the rest of the plate. Lets just say that I stuck to toast and cereal for breakfast both mornings at our hotel.

Following breakfast, we walked down the street to the entrance of Petra and then followed the dirt trail down into the Siq, which leads into the actual city of Petra. Now, at this point if you remember what I said about Canyons in my other post, and how there are two different types of Canyons, then you should be getting excited to know how a Siq, is formed. Unlike a "Wadi" Canyon, which is formed by a river or water running through it over a period of thousands of years. A "Siq" canyon is not formed from a river, but rather from Tectonics, where the canyon is literally split by an Earthquake, or from plate tectonics. As a result, instead of seeing different carvings in the sides and different groove marks along the sides, you will see markings and grooves that match up on the opposite sides.

The Treasury - Unfortunately there are 2 fat people ruining my photo

 Along the way down through the Siq that leads into Petra, you will see an irrigation canal, that has been there since the time of the Nabateans, whom are the ones who built Petra. After about 20 mins of walking, since it really isn't much of a hike, seeing as how the road is paved, part of it anciently will cobble stones and part is newer, you finally reach what is probably the most famous view of the Petra, which is the one that everyone knows from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. It was at about this point that our program leader Dil Parkinson, renowned Arabic Linguist, translator of the Book of Mormon into Arabic, began to sing the theme song to Indiana Jones. It was rather comical to see and hear. Once you step through into the larger opening
which houses the Treasury, you are almost immediately bombarded by the Bedouin people who are selling their merchandise. "Necklace 1 JD, Necklace 1 JD!" You hear about 20 people yelling that all at the same time, and when you go up and try to buy a necklace, you find out that the nice ones they have, that people would actually want to buy are much much more. However, if you are stubborn enough, and persistent enough, you can bargain almost everything down to much, much, cheaper. Aside from the merchants walking around holding necklaces from finger tip to elbow, there is also one guy right in front of the Treasury with his camels. I am pretty sure that he is the only one allowed in that spot, and that he has the best idea, because he charges 3JD to sit on the camel, have it stand up, and then walk in a circle, and sit back down, while someone takes pictured of the rider. Essentially, if you want a picture on a Camel in Petra, then you go to him. Also, I am pretty sure that he is the most famous Bedouin in the area, since every picture of the treasury that I have seen since and before has the same guy in it.

Following the bombardment of merchants, and cheap little gimmicks, and once you are able to get past the throng of people, and have finally gotten your photo taken in front of the treasury, then you get to enter into the rest of the area of Petra. Off to the left of the Treasury, are a set of stairs that at one point in time used to lead up to an awesome lookout, looking down over the treasury; however, that has long been closed to the public, forcing everyone to follow the road down and to the right, where you pass by numerous open tombs and rooms carved right into the walls of the canyon. After a short walk you come to the next trail head, and group of merchants.

From this trail head you can hike up to the "high point" which is the old sacrificial point for the Nabateans. Leading up to the lookouts and the alter, you climb an innumerable amount of stairs, and you pass a new set of merchants, this time telling you "Its free to look! Would you like to buy something?" At the top of the carved out stairs, and switchbacks, you reach the first lookout over the valley. Which helps give
a good perspective of how large the area really is. From, this lookout you continue past a few more merchants, and a few more donkeys for that matter, and continue up yet another set of stairs, to the alter, and what appeared to be either: a) a large baptismal font or b) a large pool for blood, carved down into the top of the mountain, and which went down a good 6 feet or so from the top of the hole. Again from here, you could see all across the valley and down into the different parts of Petra.

Once you return from your ascension to the "High Place" and make your way past all the vendors again, then you get to continue down the path past hundreds more tombs, a few bathrooms, tons more merchants, all saying the same thing, except that this time they all yell out, "Buy a gift for your wife or girl friend, they will love you more. Or better yet, buy one for both of them" and then they chuckle to themselves about how funny they were and how clever they all are. One thing to be said about the merchants, is that they are really good at saying their needed phrases in about 20 different languages. I talked with one little merchant boy and asked him how many languages he spoke. He explained that he spoke English, Arabic, Spanish, French, Italian, Chinese, Portuguese, Japanese, and then proceeded to ask me what I can only assume was the same thing in each of the different languages. When he reached Spanish, I thought I would test him a little, and started talking about something completely different. He had no idea what I was saying. But I do have to give him props for at least knowing how to say something other than "Hi" in each of those languages. That's more than I can say for myself. On top of that, he was able to recognize the different languages when he heard them, making it so that he could efficiently annoy all of the tourists in the area.

At the end of the long canyon that is Petra, you reach another trail head that leads up to the Monastery. Again, here there are "So many" stairs, as the Arabs would put it, that I tried to count how many there were as I walked up and after about 150 I got bored, and decided I would trust my guide book which said that there are about 800 stairs all together leading up to the monastery. Let me tell you, I believe it. By about the 400th stair or so, I really started feeling just how fat I am, and how out of shape I am, when it comes to stairs. Surprisingly enough if it isn't a stair I don't have much trouble, but those stairs, were just brutal. I thought the ones leading up to campus were bad, but I have to say the stairs leading to the Monastery are about 100 times worse. Again as with just about every single place in the area, there are merchants that line the trail, road going up to the Monastery, and like every other sector of Petra, they have their own little niche on annoying sayings. Along this road all the merchants bombard you with "Its happy hour right now. This hour is Happy Hour." When asked what it meant they all shrugged and said they had no idea what it actually meant, which was true from the way they used. An hour later when I walked back down the trail they were still using it like there was no tomorrow.

Finally, after about the 800th stair or so, I finally made it to the Monastery and was just blown away by how massive it truly is. It is probably about twice the size of the Treasury, and conveniently located just across from the Monastery is a drinks and food stand, along with another...that's right you guessed it Merchant stand selling all sorts of merchandise, from silver platters priced in the $2,000 JD to all sorts of other things. Although cool, most of the stuff isn't worth what the merchants wanted for it. Also if you were to ask me, the only thing that was really worth while were the padded benches which faced the Monastery, and gave a spectacular view of the building. I'm pretty sure I spent a good hour or so just sitting there staring at people and the monastery. It made for a great little snack area, and rest stop, until another Merchant told me that if my friends and I wanted to keep sitting there we had to order something, so on of them bought a water, and we sat there for another 45 mins.

Karak - Think Crusaders, Muslims, and a whole lot of something

Since I can't remember anything else really worth mentioning since Wadi Mujib, I have thus decided to move on to the recent trip to Karak, Petra, and Wadi Rum. Since I know I can be a little long winded they will be split up into their perspective days and events, more or less, starting with the first event, Kerak.

Now, I know what you are all thinking...What is a Karak? And can I eat that? Well, you would be wrong in wondering that, mostly because Karak is an old Crusader Castle, and unless you are a "rock eater" from the Never Ending Story I highly doubt that you would want to be eating any of that. Karak is located in Southern Jordan on the Kings Highway. The Kings highway was the ancient highway that essentially connected everything in the region, and through which most of the spice and other trade routes went through, and which connected Egypt to Syria and Jerusalem to the rest of the Middle East.

The Castle was built by the Crusaders following the capturing of Jerusalem, and served as the capital for crusaders in the area, who would then travel to other districts of the area from there. The castle belonged to a Crusader of the time Renauld de Chatillon, who was in a nut shell, a bad guy. He enjoyed torturing Muslims, and throwing prisoners off the walls down into the valleys some 450 m (150 ft) below. More over, when Saladin began his campaign against the Crusaders to retake Jerusalem, he made a stop on his way to defeat Renauld and essentially pull a Queen of Hearts, and lopped off his head. Renauld was the only crusader leader who received that type of ending at the hands of the Muslims.

Essentially the castle served as a base for travel and trade, as well as defense and offense both during and after the crusaders. Today it is one of the more famous crusader castles remaining, and is even featured on the movie Kingdom of Heaven.

Wadi Mujib, Its like Zions. Only in Jordan.

Since I have been really lazy in my posts recently, I have decided to back track some and tell you about some of the other things that have happened in the last month or so. Thus, let us begin with Wadi Mujib. Wadi in Arabic means canyon, more or less, and more specifically it means a canyon made by erosion from water. This would be like the canyons in Zions, the Grand Canyon, and most other canyons that we know of in the US. Since Wadi Mujib is one of these types of canyons, the entire area is covered with water, and the water that is in the Wadi runs out in to the Dead Sea. If you remember from my previous post about how Utah and Jordan then you should know what's coming next...yes, this is just like the Narrows in Zions National Park.

Just like Zions, which is a great park in Southern Utah, and located in the desert surrounded by canyons and mountains etc. Wadi Mujib is the same, granted it is somewhat smaller. Like the Narrows in Zions, the whole draw of Wadi Mujib is that fact that you can hike through a river up some water falls and through a canyon all at the same time while staying cool and beating the desert heat. However, unlike the water in the Narrows which is super cold and snow run off, Wadi Mujib's river is rather warm and results from the rainy season in Jordan (not that that really exists here, since I have only seen it rain once).

The trip to Wadi Mujib is about an hour and a half south of Amman, and is located right on the edge of dead sea. Essentially you must drive along the dead sea in order to reach the small canyon that houses the river. Once you arrive at the area, you are greeted by a small welcoming center which houses somewhere between 1,000,000 and 1,000,000,000 flies all of which like to fly into your eyes, ears, mouth and nose (just like the little game for kids), where you are given a guide if you so desire to lead you through the canyon and up the river (granted you don't really need one unless you decide to do the more advanced trails that involve rock climbing). We met our guide, who initially tried to tell us we didn't have one, even though we had reserved one and put money down, and after a lot of coercion we finally were able to get him to stop being lazy and take us. If you ask me this was the first mistake of the day, but we needed a guide per BYU rules.

With our guide in front of us we all grabbed our life jackets to begin walking through ankle deep river water, for fear that someone might drown not knowing how to swim, since we live in a desert and headed for the trail up the canyon. The canyon (wadi) itself was rather beautiful, the rock like most of Southern Utah is red rock, and as you walk up the river you are able to see the different levels where the water used to run, as well as the way the river carved through the rock over thousands of years. Walking through the river is relatively fun, and if you are not like me, carrying a digital camera along with a few other things which you don't want to soak in the river, then it is really fun to wallow around in the shallow water and try to float for a few feet before becoming a beached whale on a small rock, or sand bank in the middle of the river.

Further up the river you reach a series of small waterfalls which are about 8 feet tall or so, which require some scrambling up of boulders with the aid of a rope or "ladder" mechanism to aide in moving against the "raw power" of the water flowing down the boulders. All in all, very fun, especially if you are carrying a camera, because it adds a new element of difficulty and skill in order to make it up the waterfall without getting soaked. In most cases I through the bag behind me, but the strap in my teeth and scrambled up the rock hoping with all hope that I would not slip smash my face into the rocks like many of the students before me, wash down the rock and into the pool of water below me drenching not only myself but potentially my camera as well. After making it to the top of about 3 or 4 waterfalls you reach the main waterfall of the trail which is really quite nice and maybe 20-30 feet tall.

It was here that the troubles began, seeing as how our guide was rather ambitious to return to his cushy seat back at the welcome both, after about 10 mins max, he ordered everyone from our group start heading down back to the opening of the canyon, which to me was rather ridiculous seeing as how we were paying for the experience, we should be able to determine how much time we spend at the end of the trail. So before I had time to remove my camera from the garbage bad and ziplock bag I was using to waterproof my camera and take a picture of the water fall, I had to begin the precarious descent back down the same water falls back to the mouth of the canyon. This proved to be more difficult than I imagined, seeing as how the haste of our guide resulted in us jumping down the waterfalls into the small pools at the base of each one. This required me to get to the top of the fall, and then throw all of my equipment down to the people before me and hope that they could catch my equipment without dropping it into the water. To my surprise and great relief I made it down all the waterfalls without soaking, dropping, or even remotely getting my camera equipment near the water.

On the short walk back down the river to the mouth of the canyon, and along a relatively level area I managed to drop my entire camera bag, camera, and equipment from off my shoulder into the river. Go figure, just when you think you are home free, something like that always has to happen. However, due to my incredulous cat like reflexes, I was able to grab the bag within a second of dropping into the water, pulling it out with only the pockets full of water. Upon opening the contents of my bag I discovered that no water had made it into the bag, and even more so, no water had penetrated my garbage or ziplock bags, preserving my camera in once piece, and not forcing me to curse the heavens and the stars for their wicked alignment against me that day.

The incident with my camera made me think of a similar accident with my brother and sister-in-law a few years back where they lost there camera to a climbing accident. My brother was wearing their point and shoot digital camera on his belt, while climbing up the cables of Half Dome in Yosemite, shortly before my mission. About half way up the cables, the button snap which was holding the bag on his belt unsnapped dropping the camera, which then proceeded to go head over heels bouncing down the mountain until it was launched into the sky and off a cliff and dropped about a thousand+ feet to its death. However, to make their sad story happy, they did find the camera which enabled them to retrieve the shattered pieces of their camera, and their intact memory card, preserving their memories of the trip.

The hunt for green Ocotober

During the weekend my roommates and I found that we had a bit of free time with nothing to do so we decided that we would go out exploring. One of my roommates Matt Martin had noticed a day earlier or so that there was a large patch of green forest near to where we live, and since we live in a desert, he really wanted to go and find it and see where it was. We decided that we would go along with him just to check things out, and also to simply get out of the apartment. The last couple of weekends I have gone on TV/Movie watching binges, where I literally didn't leave the apartment for about 48 hours straight, so breaking with tradition I decided I would go as well.

After about 5 minutes of walking from our apartment, we found what was the wooded area. It turned out it was just the southern part of the University of Jordan, that we walk by almost daily on our way to speak with our friends and the other students at the University. It was pretty anti-climatic, but we did find a few mounds of what can only be assumed were zombie squirrels of moles or something, and a couple of large shoulder blades, probably from a donkey that had died or something. Seeing as how the adventure had become very anti-climatic and lasted for an extremely short amount of time, we decided to turn around and walk back home by way of the main road going through the University.

Matt Found him some Grass

As we reached the main road, we came up to the Jet that sits next to the road and were on our way down the road when Garrett Root noticed something of intrigue. Just past the jet and slightly further back from the road was a large old locomotive from the early 1900's (give or take). Seeing, as how our forest search had been extremely unprofitable we went over to explore the next best thing, and old Train car.

It turned out to be pretty interesting, especially since we were able to open up just about everything on it, and since, my two roommates, having no sense of limits decided to open up everything that they could find, leading to all sorts of interesting treasures, such as: garbage, pants, shoes, and things similar to that. After about a half hour or so of scrambling all over this locomotive, and Matt and Garrett going on and on about how much this was like being in Back to the Future III, we left our little discovery and headed for greener pastures near the south gate of the university. It was here that Matt and Garrett both found a new love, in one of the only patches of grass that exists in Jordan.

 

 

What's in a Grade? A grade by any other number would still be just as bad...

The other day while I was at the University of Jordan I learned a very interesting fact about the university. That fact is that the university, which is supposed to be the "best" university in the country has decided to change the way that grades are evaluated. It seems that too many of the students are getting bad grades and bad grade point averages such as 2.0, 2.3, 2.5 etc. Moreover, the university feels that job opportunities for graduating students has greatly declined in comparison with some of the private universities within the country. As a result, and in an effort to fix the situation, the university has decided to change the grade scale so that a 2.3 is now really really really high, as opposed to a 4.0. In my mind this doesn't really seem to solve the issue at hand, and demonstrates the way that Arabs tend to view problems.

In general it seems that when there is a problem in the Middle East, whether it is within society, the government, or some other organization, the largest hindrance to the problem is the fact that they don't actually focus on the real problem, rather they focus on the easiest solution, which is usually not related in any way and tends to focus on things that don't need fixing. The grades issue is just one of those examples. Other examples can be seen in the way Arabs ignore social issues, i.e. abuse, education, health, or in the way that the governments go about fixing their issues, i.e.: by releasing political prisoners, or making worthless changes to a constitution that has no influence on the government, or re-organizing the representatives of the people, when the king can simply ignore, remove, or veto any decisions or members that he feels like at a future time, (in most cases the representatives aren't even in power long enough to make a real lasting difference, thus keeping a status quo while holding up appearances of change). All in all, I feel that the biggest problem that Arabs face with their future is the relative smoke and shadows approach to all problems. This however, does seem to be changing and evolving more with the advent of the internet and social networks such as Twitter and Facebook which is helping to educate as well as provide a forum for political and social debate concerning major issues. Hopefully, with the rising generations, which will have lived through the Arab spring, we will see a change in approach to the problems, and an increased awareness with open dialogue approach to solving the issues in their country's.