Petra

OH MY GAWD... we went to Petra today. It is absolutely devine. It was a city carved
out of rock by I don't know who, the hettites? The Nabians? Who knows.. but anyone
that wanted to attack that place had to be nutz because it is about 1000 degrees there. They did have a very elaborate system to catch water, beautiful carvings and
lots of tombs. We left our hotel at 7:00 am and it took us 3-1/2 hours to walk the
2 miles into the "treasury".. why did it take so long? Because we had two guides, that knew quite a bit about ancient civilizations (Stewart Smith our resident
archeologist) and Jafar our ever faithful guide. ( It took me and MIMI 47 min to walk out!!)
Once inside Petra you can ride camels, shop, drink tea and well, walk some more
in the desert. You are besiged by children as they peddle everything from gum to
jewerly. You are fair game for the Bedouins and other tradespeople.If you can
believe I was too hot to shop then you know it was just too hot. Mimi and I left
the group at 11:30 and made it out of the park in 47 min..from there we went
to the "MovenPic) a swiss hotel and had a little pick me up. Then we made it
to a "pizza" resturant where I swear to you the crust was Matzo! But yummy anyway.
We were poolside by 1PM. I have seen only two people make it back so far but oh well,
I went and had a turkish bath (steam and massage) and now I will head back to the
hotel for a little nap, before I go out with Mimi, Marylin and who knows, maybe Kathy. We leave Petra for Aqaba and other parts tomorrow. Tomorrow night we
will be home at the Al Manar in Amman.
The reason that the Bedouins are allowed free access to peddle there goods is
because the government kicked them out of Petra so they could make it more tourist
friendly. There are tourist police all around and I saw an army hummer with a Machine
gun crusing the streets last night during dinner. Tourists come to Petra from all
over, including Japan, Germany and quite a few from Spain. There were a couple
groups from Israel, they come with their own security. I even saw one guy wearing
a T Shirt with Hebrew writing. We all thought he was quite an idiot for doing this.
The word Israel isn't really said here, its Palestine! Yes, there is a peace
agreement but that can't change what is in a person's heart. Will try and upload a couple pictures but I don't know how that will go.
Suzi