Eilat and petra

I'm in Eilat! In the Caesar Premier, just steps from a boardwalk as tacky as any in New Jersey, only with fewer tattoos and lots more Russians. Just got back from my two day trip to Petra and Wadi Rum, and it was full of surprises.

My trip down to Eilat was perfectly arranged to play off my already tight travel nerves: the night before my trip, i got a phone call from the airlines that the flight was changed to depart from Sde Dov airport instead of Ben Gurion. I had already arranged for a minibus direct from the yeshiva, so now I had to figure out how to make my way to Sde Dov, a tiny airport in the outskirts of Tel Aviv. Sde Dov has no public transportation, so in the end I had to take a taxi to the central bus station in Jerusalem (delayed 10 minutes at a light as they stopped traffic to allow UN envoy George Mitchell's entourage to pass by), then a minibus to the train station in Jerusalem (10 minute walk from the drop-off point to the station), then 3 train stops to Tel Aviv University, then a taxi to the airport where a security guard then grilled me for 10 minutes on Jewish holidays, where I went to Hebrew school (you don't remember the name of your hebrew school? Why not?), and my parents' names (how would she know that?).

Flight to Eilat went well, arrived at the hotel around 10:15. Got picked up by the travel company at 6:45 the next morning and rode hillbilly style in the back of a pickup to the border crossing with 3 people that I recognized from the flight down. We had to cross a scary DMZ-style zone on foot to Jordan, where we had to fork over $38 in cash to pay for a transit visa.

In preparation for my trip, I'd worn a disguise--a muslim-green t-shirt and baseball cap. I'd also bought a muslim-style skullcap in the Old City to use as a spare kippah, and packed it into my backpack. It took the border guard about 0.5 seconds to see through me and he yanked the "muslim skullcap" out of my bag in the first shot, gave me a look, and put it back, then trotted off to post the "Jew" alarm on the appropriate networks.

Trip to Petra from the border took about 2 hours by fast SUV that used all four lanes of a two lane highway (both lanes, plus both shoulders at 60 miles per hour). We went immediately to the Petra park. The first 40 minutes is a winding walk down a gulley in the mountains through drippy red rock that reminded me of Bryce Canyon state park. Red, yellow, and black sandstone walls carved by water into wild shapes and hollows, rising up 100 feed above the canyon floor. The site dates back to about 300 BCE, and includes a complex irrigation system and plentiful carvings along the walls of the canyon, but nearly no writing. Suddenly you turn a corner and reach the entrance to the main Petra site, located in a canyon, and the first site you see is the money shot--a straight on view of "The Treasury," which is the building featured in the third Indiana Jones movie. It's enormous, and breathtaking. The canyon is lined with unbelievably carved facades that are thought to have been burial chambers and locations for religious ceremonies. These caves are carved square inside, and empty, mostly consisting of one or two enormous rooms carved by hand out of the rock. The workmanship is outstanding.

The dwelling quarters of the people were thought to have been freestanding stone buildings that were destroyed in a series of 2 or 3 earthquakes. Remains of these buildings are visible further down the valley. We hiked from about 10 AM to about 4 PM down the valley and back. You can see the pictures here.

The entrance fee included a crap buffet lunch in a restaurant halfway down the valley. Something I discovered about Jordan: meals all seem to be included in package deals, but drinks are not. Ask for a glass of water, and prepare to take out your wallet, as I found out later at our hotel, where a cup of tea and a bottle of water at dinner cost me $5 in cash (they use the 7-11 method of rounding currency exchange, where all prices are rounded up to the next $2 mark in US dollars).

All the men working the tourist stuff in Petra are done up like Captain Jack Sparrow, for some reason. Black goatees, dark skin, kohl around the eyes, pirate rags over the hair. Excellent English, too.

Day 2 was down to Wadi Rum, sort of a Nevada/Arizona red rock experience. I expected it to be just treading water, but it turned out to be on par with Petra in my book. Wadi Rum is a region with crazy mountains poking abruptly out of a flat desert floor. The mountains, which loom up to 1,500 meters high, are made of sandstone that look craggy from a distance, but when you see them close up they have the same melted-candle appearance as the mountains at Petra. Our guide drove us around the sandy desert floor in the jeep, driving up to narrow-seeming cracks in the mountain that turned out to be 10' wide fissures lined with Nabotean carvings and post-Islam graffiti from passing caravans. We climbed and slid down a tall red sand dune, climbed up a scary stone archway, and ate lunch in a giant fissure in the mountain. Our guide made a small brush fire and cooked chicken and vegetable skewers and super-sweet ginger tea. he didn't ask me what I wanted to eat when he bought supplies in the morning, so I ended up eating a lunch of pita, onions, and tomatoes.

After 5 hours of driving around, we came back to Aquaba and crossed back to Israel, where another border guard grilled me on my reasons for coming to Israel, and gave me another short Jew quiz. They always ask if I have family in Israel--why do they ask that? Do they think that they'll know my family? Do they want an invitation to dinner?