Tuesday, April 05, 2005
Jordan
Bill has realized a long-held dream and visited Petra in Jordan, center of the Nabateans for hundreds of years, until the Romans took over in the 1st century AD. We landed in Amman to be met by our guide who spoke excellent English and was much appreciated for dropping us off at the various sites to explore at leisure and then answering any questions we had on what we had seen and about life and culture in Jordan while we drove to the next spot.
We stopped at Mt. Nebo, site of Moses' death and had lunch next to the Crusader Castle at Kerak, a visit to which was an unexpected bonus. Lunch was buffet-style but one of the dishes was Mansef, which is lamb cooked with yoghurt and very special as it is served at weddings and other high occasions.
Siq
Our hotel in Petra overlooked the rocks out of which Petra was carved so the view was unbelievable. Next morning we met a local guide who had spent a year in San Antonio and whose English was perfect. After a horse ride to the Siq (passage), we walked 1200 meters through the towering rocks while our guide pointed out the most minute details of the rock carvings and engineering marvels along the way. We then came out of the Siq and were met with the sight of the Treasury - the most famous of all the tombs in Petra. Bill stood at the exact spot we think David Roberts must have sat in the 19th Century when he painted the scene of the Eastern End of the Valley, which Bill has on the wall of his study in Nashville. Our guide was most entertainig and had a dry sense of humor that kept us on our toes. According to the guide, the idols and statues of gods who are missing their heads were damaged by the Byzantine "Taliban". The tombs at the top of the ampitheatre are really "sky boxes" and the tombs below the Nobles' Tombs are "two-camel garages".
Treasury
Tombs
About eight Bedouin families still live in the Valley and their main source of income appears to be providing transport for the tourists who cannot manage the full 12 kilometer hike around. We had a choice of donkey, camel or horse-drawn surrey, with or without the fringe on top but turned it down in favor of absorbing the incredible colors in the rocks and the finest details of the carved structures on foot.
Bedouin Tent
Next morning, we had a two-hour jeep ride into Wadi Rum, a favorite spot of Lawrence of Arabia. The Bedouin still live in goat-hair tents in the desert there. The movie with Peter O'Toole was shot in the Wadi as well as Val Kilmer's Red Planet. The jeep was an experience as it was very old and sounded as if it would die in the sand at any moment. I sat in the back as a good wife should and as the windows were painted black, it was impossible to see without them being open and it was unexpectedly cold in Jordan this week. There was no danger of dying of heatstroke in the desert. The rocky scenery was impressive and we saw T.E. Lawrence's spring where he was alleged to have bathed on occasion.
LS
We stopped at Mt. Nebo, site of Moses' death and had lunch next to the Crusader Castle at Kerak, a visit to which was an unexpected bonus. Lunch was buffet-style but one of the dishes was Mansef, which is lamb cooked with yoghurt and very special as it is served at weddings and other high occasions.
Siq
Our hotel in Petra overlooked the rocks out of which Petra was carved so the view was unbelievable. Next morning we met a local guide who had spent a year in San Antonio and whose English was perfect. After a horse ride to the Siq (passage), we walked 1200 meters through the towering rocks while our guide pointed out the most minute details of the rock carvings and engineering marvels along the way. We then came out of the Siq and were met with the sight of the Treasury - the most famous of all the tombs in Petra. Bill stood at the exact spot we think David Roberts must have sat in the 19th Century when he painted the scene of the Eastern End of the Valley, which Bill has on the wall of his study in Nashville. Our guide was most entertainig and had a dry sense of humor that kept us on our toes. According to the guide, the idols and statues of gods who are missing their heads were damaged by the Byzantine "Taliban". The tombs at the top of the ampitheatre are really "sky boxes" and the tombs below the Nobles' Tombs are "two-camel garages".
Treasury
Tombs
About eight Bedouin families still live in the Valley and their main source of income appears to be providing transport for the tourists who cannot manage the full 12 kilometer hike around. We had a choice of donkey, camel or horse-drawn surrey, with or without the fringe on top but turned it down in favor of absorbing the incredible colors in the rocks and the finest details of the carved structures on foot.
Bedouin Tent
Next morning, we had a two-hour jeep ride into Wadi Rum, a favorite spot of Lawrence of Arabia. The Bedouin still live in goat-hair tents in the desert there. The movie with Peter O'Toole was shot in the Wadi as well as Val Kilmer's Red Planet. The jeep was an experience as it was very old and sounded as if it would die in the sand at any moment. I sat in the back as a good wife should and as the windows were painted black, it was impossible to see without them being open and it was unexpectedly cold in Jordan this week. There was no danger of dying of heatstroke in the desert. The rocky scenery was impressive and we saw T.E. Lawrence's spring where he was alleged to have bathed on occasion.
LS
# posted by Bill and Lynne @ 4:18 AM 
Egypt
Our first day in Egypt started at 4:30 am. Our hotel overlooked the mosque in the Luxor Temple. The loudspeakers on the minaret were set so everyone in Luxor could hear them. They were deafening in our room at 50 paces. We were half a block from the Nile and spent that day wandering up and down to orient ourselves. We were due to embark on the Nile Admiral the next day. There are 360 boats on the Nile between Luxor and Aswan so it was a challenge to find ours. Often we had to walk through the lobbies of three other boats to reach it.
Luxor Temple
The temples and sights of Egypt are sensational and we were fascinated in spite of our guide whose own agenda was to take us to as many tourist shops as possible in the hope of receiving a commission from our purchases. She "subtly" called them Papyrus Museums or Perfume Factories or Marble Sculptors but the group eventually mutinied after the bus swept by the Colossi of Memnon without even a photo op to be able to visit a papyrus factory half a kilometer on. There was a Swede in our group who was very knowledgable about ancient Egypt and he could usually translate what Shareen, the guide was trying or ommitted to say. It took us a few days to work out that the "shines" on the temples were scenes. We were lucky enough to see a Discovery program on the Eight Wonders of Ancient Egypt at the end of our trip and it filled in most of the information we needed about the Temples at Karnak, Luxor, Edfu, Kom Ombo, Philae, Queen Hatshepshut's Temple, Valley of the Kings with the details of the main gods, whose temples we visited.
Horus at Edfu
After the boat docked in Aswan, 14 of us from the boat got up at 3:30 am to be driven three hours by minibus to Abu Simbel to see the great temple of Rameses II. Security is still very tight after the massacre of a large group of tourists in the 90's so we had to rendezvous with 100 other buses and drive down in convoy. This meant there were at least 3,000 people trying to go through the temple at once. It was a few days after the equinox so the sun's rays were still reaching into the sanctuary, which made it very special. The temple was moved 400 meters up the cliff when Lake Nassar was formed after the building of the Aswan Dam - a truly amazing feat of engineering. It was an experience driving through the real Sahara Desert to get there.
Abu Simbel
Our hotel in Aswan was on Isis Island. We had to take a ferry or a felucca each time we wanted to visit the town. That alone was fun, along with a ride in the horse carriages that appear to be the favorite form of transport along the banks of the river.
Feluccas
We had a 10 hour layover in Cairo so took the opportunity to go to Giza and see the Sphinx and the Great Pyramids. We were a little taken aback when our driver parked outside a mosque for an hour at Noon while he went to midday prayers. But, as it was on the edge of a market, we had a good time real-people watching instead of being surrounded by tourists and hawkers.
LS
Luxor Temple
The temples and sights of Egypt are sensational and we were fascinated in spite of our guide whose own agenda was to take us to as many tourist shops as possible in the hope of receiving a commission from our purchases. She "subtly" called them Papyrus Museums or Perfume Factories or Marble Sculptors but the group eventually mutinied after the bus swept by the Colossi of Memnon without even a photo op to be able to visit a papyrus factory half a kilometer on. There was a Swede in our group who was very knowledgable about ancient Egypt and he could usually translate what Shareen, the guide was trying or ommitted to say. It took us a few days to work out that the "shines" on the temples were scenes. We were lucky enough to see a Discovery program on the Eight Wonders of Ancient Egypt at the end of our trip and it filled in most of the information we needed about the Temples at Karnak, Luxor, Edfu, Kom Ombo, Philae, Queen Hatshepshut's Temple, Valley of the Kings with the details of the main gods, whose temples we visited.
Horus at Edfu
After the boat docked in Aswan, 14 of us from the boat got up at 3:30 am to be driven three hours by minibus to Abu Simbel to see the great temple of Rameses II. Security is still very tight after the massacre of a large group of tourists in the 90's so we had to rendezvous with 100 other buses and drive down in convoy. This meant there were at least 3,000 people trying to go through the temple at once. It was a few days after the equinox so the sun's rays were still reaching into the sanctuary, which made it very special. The temple was moved 400 meters up the cliff when Lake Nassar was formed after the building of the Aswan Dam - a truly amazing feat of engineering. It was an experience driving through the real Sahara Desert to get there.
Abu Simbel
Our hotel in Aswan was on Isis Island. We had to take a ferry or a felucca each time we wanted to visit the town. That alone was fun, along with a ride in the horse carriages that appear to be the favorite form of transport along the banks of the river.
Feluccas
We had a 10 hour layover in Cairo so took the opportunity to go to Giza and see the Sphinx and the Great Pyramids. We were a little taken aback when our driver parked outside a mosque for an hour at Noon while he went to midday prayers. But, as it was on the edge of a market, we had a good time real-people watching instead of being surrounded by tourists and hawkers.
LS
# posted by Bill and Lynne @ 3:42 AM
