This was to prove a jam-packed day. After a breakfast of corn flakes in the apartment we decided to check out Arabic television before our ride arrived to take us on the long trip south to Petra. After seeing snippets of several Arabic soap operas and a basketball game where apparently the court extended for a good ways behind the nets, we got word it was time to set off.
We walked several blocks through the Mahatta district to arrive at a main road crowded with chaotic drivers and the roadside people who accosted the drivers they knew and stopped them to have a word. After a few minutes of waiting our tour bus pulled up. Inside we met our guide for the next several days, a Jordanian man named Ra’ad. Ra’ad proved to be an excellent tour guide. He was one of those people who has an incredible zeal for knowledge, and loves to share it with others who are interested in hearing it. He was also a man whose arm muscles led me to believe he was an Arab reincarnation of Jean Claude Van Damme cloned from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s bicep cells. This fact is something we would later be quite thankful for. We drove through Amman as Ra’ad outlined our plan for the day. We were to drive through the town of Madaba to visit Macheras (Arabic: Mukawir) fortress, continue south through Wadi Mujib canyon and the town of Karak to the ancient Edomite city of Sela. From there we would drive south to “Little Petra,” a smaller version of the famous city featuring a “sneak peek” of what we could expect the next day when we visited Petra proper. We’d finish by stopping for the night at the Petra Palace Hotel.
We started by driving through the countryside until we arrived at Macheras fortress. Macheras, or Mukawir as it is known locally, was once a palace/fortress built by Herod the Great and frequented by his son Herod Antipas. It’s also widely believed to be the location of John the Baptist’s beheading at the order of Mr. Antipas as well. Macheras sits atop a steep hill peppered with cisterns, part of the Roman aqueduct system which supplied the fortress with water. We climbed up the hill (which I thought was rather impressive until about four hours later) and arrived to one of the most spectacular views I’ve ever experienced. We could see literally across the whole of the Dead Sea into Israel and even make out the Herodian pyramid all the way in Bethlehem. What remains of the fortress is several pillars, a few walls, a small bathhouse structure, and a huge pile of rocks at the bottom of the hill which make up the remains of the massive siege ramp the Romans constructed when they attacked the fortress just before its destruction. Legend has it that Macheras ultimately fell when the hero of the defenders, Eleazar, was captured by a Roman soldier. This so demoralized the defenders that they surrendered immediately, and legend also has it that most of the defenders, including Eleazar, were spared as a result.
We climbed back down the hill and returned to the visitor area, which was quite a nice tent over a stone foundation, where we purchased some tea and listened to a local man playing his aoud, the predecessor of the guitar, as Ra’ad explained to us. After we finished our tea we loaded back onto the bus and set off for Wadi Mujib
Wadi is actually an Arabic word referring to a dry streambed which has carved out a canyon for itself. Wadi Mujib, then was a massive canyon, and in fact is often called the Grand Canyon of Jordan. When we arrived we took a brief moment to stop and take some pictures at a rest station. Wadi Mujib was absolutely massive. We learned from Ra’ad that this was the location referred to in the Bible as the boundary between the kingdom of Moab and the Kingdom of the Amorites. Looking around at the scale of the thing, it was easy to see why. Also while we were at the rest station, a very friendly Jordanian shopkeeper, in an attempt to be friendly and make conversation, remarked that Alica Chatterton (one of our group members) was “sweet, like Barbie,’ which gave us all a good chuckle.
Back on the bus we drove over the Wadi Mujib dam and over into what had once been the Kingdom of Moab. Along the way we stopped for just a moment to examine a pair of Roman milestone markers, which although graffitied by locals, were nonetheless amazing. Mark explained that frequently the Jordanian government had found the old Roman roads so effective and well placed that they simply paved over them and used them as the current highway.
Speaking of highways, the road we travelled on going south was what is known as the King’s Highway. This road was once the major trade route of the entire region, carrying goods and travelers from Egypt through to Turkey. This road was so prosperous that many historians believe that a great deal of the wealth that Israel enjoyed during its golden ages came from tolls and taxes along the Kings Highway.
Our next stop was in the town of Karak, which was built in and around an ancient Crusader citadel. When I say “in” I mean it. Houses and apartment blocks sat next to centuries-old towers and walls and children played amongst the ruins. Throughout the day I was continually surprised by how much access we had to these historical places. No “do not touch” signs, no guard rails, no fences preventing us from going right up to a cliff edge. It was spectacularly freeing. While in Karak we loaded up on bottled water and snacks for the afternoon. I purchased an Arab snack cake and a bottle of water. Other snacks chosen included Chili powder potato chips, a fig Newton with sesame seeds on it, and so-called “pizza rings,” which came in a bag and only tasted like pizza about 4 minutes after you’d eaten it.
Here jet lag finally caught up with me, and I fell asleep from Karak until we reached the area around the mountain city of Sela. Sela is believed to have been an Edomite city and is notoriously hard to get to. We hired a pair of locals with heavy duty vans to drive us down the steep slopes to the site, then we set of to climb this massive mountain. It took us about two hours to get up and back down again, and the view from the top was absolutely stunning. It was easy to see why this location had been chosen for a city. Getting to it was an absolute nightmare and once you finally did reach the top you were way too tired to fight. We explored the mountaintop, climbed back down, and loaded back into the vans.
Unfortunately when we reached the tour bus we encountered a problem. From what we could gather from Mark, the locals we’d hired to drive had agreed to do it for a very small sum, but were now insisting that they had agreed to more than double the original price and refused to let us leave. Ra’ad left the bus and began a heated argument with the group of men. It was at this point we were very thankful to have Ra’ad on our side, especially since it looked as though he could have snapped on of the weedy swindlers in half without even trying. As the argument became more and more heated we began to worry for Ra’ad, but soon the greedy men agreed to a sum slightly more than agreed to and let us go. Ra’ad was understandably angered by his countrymen’s behavior and explained fervently that they do not represent Jordan as a whole, and that they dishonor only themselves by acting this way.
After that slight hiccup in the plans I…fell asleep in the car again and awoke at Little Petra. There we jumped out and examined a painting inside a giant archway carved into the cliff face. The painting depicted Dionysius throwing a party of some kind and was very colorful. On the way out a shopkeeper attempted to entice me to look at the bottles of colored sand he was selling by shouting “Wonderful gift for your second wife!” The now exhausted group piled into the bus one last time and we drove the short distance to the Petra Palace Hotel, where we would stay the night. While the hotel was not amazing by American standards, it was an excellent place to crash for the night and featured a buffet of Jordanian food that was spectacularly good. After diner, we headed off to sleep before we tackled Petra in the morning.
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