DAY 4 Petra and Jordan

Today is the day I've been waiting for.

The plan for today was to cross the Jordanian border and trek up to Petra, the ancient city of the Naboteans. Breakfast was extra early (to the consternation of the staff). It was easily close to 90 degrees as we start our morning.

We grouped onto the bus which only took us to the border crossing between the Israeli Red Sea resort town of Eilat, and the only Jordanian seaport 'Aqaba. (FYI, Eilat is also near the border to Egypt on the Sinai desert.)

Jordan and Israel have been at peace since the late nineties, but it's a wary peace. So it's nice to spot on one of the checkpoint buildings a mosaic of people making a journey, and below a plaque that says "Austrian, Palestinian, Israeli, Jordanian. Bruno Kreisky Youth Peace Forum. Eilat, Aqaba, Bethlehem. A new generation crossing borders. September 1996."

Once across the border, we board a Jordanian bus, and are given a driver, a guide, and (by order of the US State Department) an armed tourist police officer. The drive from the border to Petra is nearly two hours. It was getting hotter.

Our Jordanian guide (for today only) is named Basil, and he took the opportunity to give us some background on the area, pretty much starting with Moses and working his way up to the 20th century with the current ruling dynasty. But he always tied it back in to areas familiar to Jews and Israelis, just from an Arab perspective.

Basil directed our attention to a distant mountain. The mountain is very high, and not only overlooks the Jordan valley on the east, but the Negev and the ancient land of Judea (southern Israel) on the west. Aaron supposedly died there when he and Moses climbed up to see where to take the Israelites out of Sinai. In fact, we saw the dome of a mosque built on the traditional site of Aaron's grave.

Petra itself is a city whose tombs and temples and houses were carved out of the glowing red sandstone of the desert mountains. Because the sandstone is soft, erosion has carved some amazing canyons into the mountain, where people could live more or less out of the blistering sun. There were also ways to create rainwater reservoirs to hold a sizable population. Archeologists have uncovered a reservoir there that dates back almost 3000 years, next to a castle built in the sixteenth century by the Holy Crusaders. There are bits of Roman roads built by the Emperor Trajan, about 100 CE.

Most of Petra, however, dates from about 100 BCE to 300 CE, and was engineered by the Naboteans. The Naboteans were a Hellenistic Semitic culture of the Near East. Petra was on the Spice Road from Arabia into eastern Europe. They were pagans, although there are also signs of the very early Christian church, from about the time of Emperor Constantine.

By the time we got to the site, it was hot. Maybe 105 degrees hot. It was bright. Blinding. And it was still a couple of hours before lunch. Basil talked us through the city, explaining about the tombs and the carvings. He's very smart, and has personally participated on some of the archeological work. Better, maybe, than an average guide, and very kind.

And clever, too. At one point he had us turn around and was trying to point out some interesting feature of the rock above us. We couldn't see what he meant, so he had us walk backwards a bit (still looking up). Then he made some noise about giving up on us, and we turned forward...

...and WOW! there was the Treasury of Petra, the great edifice most of us would know from the climactic scenes of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. It's magnificent with colonnades and carved idols, and just appears practically out of nowhere as you wind through the narrow canyon. It's carved into the red sandstone mountain itself. It's nearly 2,000 years old, and still 1/3 buried in the dust and rock: only the top two levels are visible.

After lunch were were set loose to explore on our own. Mark and I hired a donkey wagon to take us back up the trail. Too bad the beast was exhausted already from earlier climbs; we were being passed by people walking on foot with small children. It would have been pretty rude, though, to just get out and start walking, and the guy driving the wagon was kind of hot, even if he did smell like horses. So we sat back and slowly finished our bottle of water. (By the way, he wants to marry an American girl, so if anyone is interested, we'll hook you up!)

It was unreal to walk through such an ancient place. By itself, this experience has made it worth the effort (and self-inflicted emotional torture) of getting here.

But maybe next time, if there is one, we'll come in October instead of August.

Somehow, and I'm not sure why, I felt relieved to be in Jordan. It was nice to cross into a country that Israel is at peace with. And they were very hospitable.

Getting back into Israel was a little tough, at least for some of us. (Ask for details, but Mark and I were fine.) As we arrived back at the hotel, dusk was falling and it was the beginning of Tisha B'av, an Israeli holiday commemorating pretty much every tragedy you've ever heard of that happened to the Jews. And it's a fasting holiday, so every restaurant is closed and it's forbidden to serve alcohol. We managed to get some salads and sandwiches out of the hotel restaurant, but tomorrow will be the same until sundown. How we'll find food I have no idea. We'll figure it out.

Tomorrow morning we'll do some quick snorkeling at the coral preserve, which happens to be across from our hotel. Then off to the Dead Sea.