Shalom,

  Randal has spent the afternoon cooking up a storm.  He’s making falafel, Randal version and salmon egg baskets that he learned in a cooking class in Thailand 12 years ago.  I’m staying out of the galley!  This morning I went for a walk on the beach and by 9 am it was jammed packed with lots of families and people of all ages.  I’d worn my flip flops over from the marina so I could walk in the water.  I only need to do that once as lots of it has lots of little pebbles and shells.  I got used to it so by the way back hardly noticed.  But next time, shoes. 

  This is my final Petra email.  It really is just a small bit of what there is to see, but hopefully you get the idea.  Bruce Feiler made the comparison between the Jews of the time who survived leaving no structures behind and the Nabataens who have "disappeared" leaving structures behind.  The Nabataens were good at mixing with other cultures and the Jews tried very hard not to do that.  Maybe that’s what happened, the Nabataens just mixed themselves in and became part of something else which is, I guess,  one way to disappear. 

"It is not known when exactly Petra was built, but the city began to prosper as the capital of the Nabataean Empire from the first century BC, which grew rich through trade in frankincense and myrrh, along with spices from Yemen. Petra was later annexed to the Roman Empire and continued to thrive until a large earthquake in 363 AD destroyed much of the city in the fourth century AD. Many buildings were never rebuilt after this, although not long after that event Petra was designated the seat of a Byzantine bishopric. However, the earthquake combined with changes in trade routes, eventually led to the downfall of the city which was ultimately abandoned; by the middle of the seventh century Petra appears to have been largely deserted and it was then lost to all except local Bedouin from the area."http://www.petrapark.com/setting-and-history

Ru

DoraMac

ps  I know it is Indiana Jones and not Indian Jones which Randal told me I did twice!

   Petra # 5

Water system in the Siq along the walls used to conserve water and prevent flooding.

I wasn’t so fascinated by them for some reason but my “brother” Ken asked about them so here is a photo. He has visited Petra and was fascinated by them.

Excavations at Petra Church

“Superbly detailed 6^th century AD mosaics adorn the aisles of this once large Byzantine basilica. A cache of 152 scrolls found here revealed details of daily life in Byzantine Petra.” Eyewitness Jerusalem

Sifting for ancient relics in the church.

Restoring the mosaics.

Randal has become fascinated by mosaics and wants to learn to make his own! Maybe his will have cars and bicycles as symbols of what is important to him.

For the Byzantine people, other things were important.

Roman Petra entering the Cardo

The Romans annexed Petra in AD 106.

Photos of some of the people who earn their living within Petra Park.

I could hear the music even at a distance…..

It was quite lovely so I paid my money and took my photo and helped him earn a living.

Modern Bedouin cowboys or donkey taxi drivers as they call the donkeys air conditioned taxis.

And then there were the camels….

A camel pretzel.

We ate two really good meals in Petra. The first night we plopped ourselves down in the hotel lobby and the manager sent out for chicken doner take out for us! The second night we had falafel and grilled vegetables and chicken and tabouli and way too much food. But that didn’t stop an after dinner visit to the bakery to check out what we might want the next morning.

Flying pita waiting for customer pick-up, the actual bakery must have been upstairs.

The bakery also giant, wonderfully smelling pancake flying saucers coming down from above.

We left our Petra hotel about 9:30 am and were driven to the border. It was a pretty simple process to leave Jordan (pay and exit fee) and enter Israel. We have heard people complain about the strict, scary Israeli border security, but we’ve not encountered any of it. We did pass the remains of a beach complex in Tel Aviv that had been destroyed by a suicide bomber in 2001. It is now a memorial. There is a reason for the security.

Lunch on a Yotava Kibbutz famed for its dairy.

We ate shakshuka ( eggs, tomatoes, onions wonderful!) and a cauliflower dish that tasted like it had been simmered with onions and spices and was wonderful. Their ice cream choices looked spectacular but we, with some yet untapped will power) all took a pass. They had lots of jars of things in their shop but none had English subtitles so we took a pass. Not speaking Hebrew in Israel is much like not speaking Chinese in China; you can get along but you definitely miss a lot and have to constantly rely on the kindness of strangers.

Half way home we encountered a sand storm.

We went from blue sky to no sky and low visibility. Like driving through a snow storm but not as dangerous as the roads don’t get slick.

So, that’s it!

 

Randal and I continued down form the High Place of Sacrifice…

Garden Temple Complex and time for food!

More tombs and at one time, amazingly, some gardens..

Now an impromptu picnic area with every rock taken, shaded from the hot noontime sun.

Roman Soldier’s Tomb, I think.

Triclinium with its amazing colors

Looking out from the Triclinium towards the Roman Soldier’s Tomb

Not sure what this is; maybe the Columbarium according to the Petra brochure

Fragrant bushes in the desert.

From there Randal and I went directly for some hot tea (me) cold beer Randal, and a rest.  This was the end of our second day at Petra.   We said our final farewell and walked our way back to and through the Siq and treated ourselves to a taxi back to the hotel.

……………………………………………………

Hike to “The Monastery” with Charmaine and Linda the afternoon of our first day in Petra.

This hike crosses part of Wadi Musa..Valley of Moses and includes 800 stone cut steps along the way.

It was a hot, tiring walk that we started late afternoon our first day while Randal waited for us down below relaxing with some ice cold beer.

Some of the 800 stone steps encountered along the way. Many people opt for the donkey taxis but we walked up and then we walked down.

The Monastery facade with Linda and Charmaine (matching hats) in the foreground and a photo of me taken by a friendly stranger earlier.

"The Monastery is Petra’s most colossal temple, dedicated to the deified king Obodas 1 who died in 86 BC. Its simple, powerful architecture, thought to date from the 1^st century AD, is seen by many to be the quintessential Nabataean Classical design….It came to be known as The Monastery because of the many Christian crosses carved on its walls. Eyewitness Jerusalem and the Holy Land.

As we watched this guy climbed up and jumped around the roof tops and then climbed to the very top!

Fiddler on the Roof or Crazy Nut?

And then we walked down, back through the complex, back through the Siq and all the way up hill back to our hotel for a very full first day.

Shalom

  Let me know when you’re tired of Petra photos because I have lots more to send!  It is taking me forever because I spent most of the morning trying to research whether that is Aaron’s Tomb visible from the High Place. Islam believes it is.  The Bible has two locations; Mt. Hor in Numbers and Moserah in Deuteronomy.  And apparently they are too far apart to be really confused.  I really do miss being able to go to the library though you would think here in Israel I could find some info somewhere.  I haven’t found a library yet and I’m not sure how much I would find in English.  There is much less English than we all thought and many people actually don’t speak any.  I really REALLY do wish I’d paid attention in Hebrew School!   (Har, could you ask Ellen to ask Gabriel if that really could be Aaron’s Tomb that we saw from Petra?)  I have probably enough photos for 2 or 3 more emails, one our hike to "The Monastery", one of mosaics that Randal loves, and one just some of the people who make their living through the tourists trade." 

  Tomorrow we’re off early in the morning for Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Jericho so no emails for a bit and I’ll be taking more photos and getting further behind!  Oiy!

Ru

Petra # 3

Sunset over the mountains from our hotel room window.

You couldn’t count on getting hot water; but you could count on the 4 am calls to prayer and a beautiful sunset over the mountains.

Also our hotel window view.

We were pretty tired from our long first day at Petra but since we had “two day” tickets, we had to go back for the second day. Linda and Charmaine went off birding but Randal and I went off to hike to the High Place of Sacrifice so I could see what “might be” Aaron’s Tomb. I say “might be” because apparently the Bible mentions two different locations where Aaron is buried.

Starting the climb and it was already quite hot early in the morning.

We hadn’t met Khoa Nguyen yet when I took this photo. But we all walked up at about the same time so talked along the way and took each other’s photos and traded email addresses. Khoa lives in Washington State but had lived outside Boston for 6 months so commented on my B hat. He is a structural engineer which must have made everything even more amazing.

Both Khoa and Randal spent time in Vietnam. Khoa left in 1992 at the age of 21 with his parents. Because his father had worked with the American military, Khoa was eligible for education scholarships from the American Government. Randal was there in 1969 as a marine and in 2000 on his world bicycle trip.

The view as we climbed.

You could take a mule up and it was amazing how they climbed the stairs.

Local Bedouin women had shops along the way.

3,000 feet about sea level on Jebel Attuf Mountain stand two 20 ft. stone obelisks.

Khoa took this photo of me with the obelisks in the background.

The place of sacrifice with lots of tourists.

Aaron’s Tomb (maybe) is the white dot on the center peak.

Randal and me with the “invisible maybe Aaron’s Tomb” off in the distance.

Lots of stone piles left as ….not sure what. In Tibet it was where spirits would come back after death.

I see an elephant and its trunk facing the camera though it’s really just a trick of the imagination and geology.

The remains of a bas relief lion fountain that is really there for all to see…for now until it is worn away like the head.

The descent was less tiring but technically more difficult.

We had more walking to do, but we were most of the way down to the central part of the park.