Thursday, June 17, 2010

Petra



A quick report on Petra. All eight of us made it to Petra and back at least to Philadelphia. Our drivers from Shepperd's Tours were efficient. On the way to Petra we stopped at Mount Nebo. What a view, except it was pretty hazy. The Byzantine chapel would probably be beautiful - if it was not undergoing reconstruction.

Crossing the border - both at the Jordan River (northern) as we went into Jordan and at the Allenby/King Hussein Bridge on our return - was interesting. Our passports have many stamps and labels now. More little pieces of paper, too. I almost didn't make it back into Israel. I think because they didn't label one of my bags. Well that is the official line...

Petra is quite a place. Lots of walking, lots of uneven paths; but still very beautiful. Luckily for many of us there were various methods of transportation - horse, horse carriage, mule/donkey, and camel. Except for the camel, I use them all.
Some of us also went to Petra at night - that was something special. The stars were so clear. Even in the day I think the sky was the bluest I saw during this trip.

My photo is of the Monastery (a.k.a. al-Deir or ad-Dayr in Arabic), which is about an hour's climb north of Petra's city center and was probably a Nabatean temple. Brochure indicated "800" steps. I took a donkey/mule most of the way up and walked down in about 2 hours. I had many pleasant conversations including singing "Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom" with some people whose native language was not English. It really was an experience.

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