Petra and Wadi Rum

Jordan is an incredibly beautiful country. It's also incredibly hard to get around in.

I guess intercity buses in Jordan aren't a real big thing. If you want to get anywhere - even major destinations - there's maybe one or two buses each day, and only in the early morning. This information probably exists somewhere on the internet, but I was unable to find it. Nor could I coax it from the very polite but terse representative of the Jordan Tourism Board I emailed. They don't seem to be terribly interested in helping you travel on the cheap.

So I ended up taking a very expensive 2 hour taxi ride to Petra. (And an even more expensive ride on my way back, because I had to pay for it twice. But that's another story.) Petra, by the way, is awesome. I'm not sure if it's quite the best thing ever, but then, the girl who represented it as such had never seen the West Edmonton Mall.

The Treasury (the place you see in The Last Crusade) is just the beginning. It's probably the most impressive facade, but not by much. The Nabateans really liked their rock-carved monuments.

Petra rose to prominence in the first century BC, and was later ruled by the Romans, Byzantines, and Crusaders. And any good empire knows that if you conquer some people and they have an Awesome Old Thing, it won't do merely to pitch a tent in the AOT's shadow, collect taxes, and stab anyone who gives you lip. Either you've got to smash the AOT (expedient, but generally considered to be bad form) or you've got to build your own reasonably awesome thing nearby. Happily, the lords of Petra took the latter approach.

So in addition to the massive cliff carvings, you've got the remains of an amphitheater, a Roman temple, a church with incredible mosaic floors, and a mountaintop crusader fortress.

The landscape itself is also quite incredible. South Jordan is hard land - sand and rock and scorching sun, and precious little else. The route from the Red Sea up to Petra is a bit like BC without trees.

On the way back I stopped at Wadi Rum, Jordan's great nature reserve. It's quite breathtaking. I won't try to describe it to you.

Now I'm off to see the Israeli desert, Massada, and the Dead Sea, and then hang out in Bethlehem for a while.