We were in bed early on Monday night as we had to be up at 04:30 to get ready for our 05:20 pick up for our Petra excursion. It turned out to be Stephen’s turn for the Sharm el Sh!ts which had him running for the loo at about 3am. He swallowed enough Imodium to bung up an elephant over the next few hours and decided that he’d be fine to go to Petra.
From these auspicious beginnings the trip got better and better. The bus was 25 minutes late picking us up (I was ready to head back to bed assuming that they weren’t coming). I was smarmed over by the guard checking passports at the airport “What is your name lovely lady? Kerry? You are beautiful, lovely Kerry”. I smiled with my mouth, gave him a look with my eyes that probably said F-off and die, said thank you, took my passport and walked off as quickly as I could. It was only about 6:15 in the morning and I’d had barely 5 hours sleep thanks to Stephens nocturnal dashing about. I was not in the mood to be charmed by some bloke who’d learned to speak English at a dodgy charm school. Can you tell that I was beginning to lose patience with the whole “you are beautiful lady” thing??
As we all gathered at the gate I took stock of our fellow passengers. There were a little group of Aussies and a whole load of Russians and us. I was pretty horrified when my eyes alighted on two Russian teenagers who were there with their father. Most people were dressed pretty conservatively except for these two girls. Both were wearing little strappy tops that showed plenty of midriff and a pair of “Daisy Duke” shorts. Now, not only was this bad because we were going to a strongly Muslim country where we would be expected to dress conservatively in order not to cause offence, but this was also bad as one girl was slim and long legged and had a butt like two peaches in a hanky and the other was not. She had a butt more like two pumpkins in a pillowcase! We saw them again as they were walking out of Petra and she had a bad case of camel hoof at the front and an atomic-wedgie at the back. SUCH an attractive sight – offensive to all who saw it!!
The plane was the next object of horror. We were all bused out to the back of beyond (making jokes about driving to Jordan as we went) to get on the flight. The plane was the oldest looking thing I’ve seen to take to the air. It was a Dash 7 which looked to be held together with string and duct tape and I’m not kidding here – it had a flat tyre!!!!!! I think there were 30-odd prayers being offered as we took off, but the flying heap of junk made it safely to Aqaba where we met our bus for the long drive to Petra.
Our tour was lacking an English-speaking guide, so we had to listen to the tour in Russian. Occasional words don’t have a Russian equivalent and we’d pick out “granite” and “Sodom and Gomorrah”. I’ll need to look up some background on Jordan to see what he was on about! We stopped at a Wadi for a wee break and to buy some souvenirs and after a wait of an hour we were told to transfer to another coach which had an English-speaking guide, so we all dutifully moved and waited a further 15 minutes for all the Russians on our new coach to get back on. The Russian-speaking tour guide on our new coach was reluctant to hand over the mic to the English-speaking guide so we were basically none the wiser as to what was going on landscape-wise around about us!
We got to Petra and poured off the coach. Our guide had told us to be back at the coach by 3pm and that he would take us down and explain things on the way, but first we had a toilet break. And boy, was that an experience that I’d rather not have had! There were about 20 coaches arrived at the same time and the line for the ladies loos was pretty long by the time the Aussies and me joined it. If it hadn’t been for the fact I needed to go I would have run away screaming when I got to a cubicle. The floors were awash and the toilets didn’t flush. In fact, they didn’t appear to have water so couldn’t flush. YUK! I was excessively happy to have my antibacterial handwash with me when I was done. I really wanted to bathe in it rather than just wash my hands though. My skin was crawling. I don’t “do” rustic!!
We met back up with the guide and he set off at a fast trot on the track down to the rose-red city of Petra. I was trying to make sure that we didn’t lose sight of him, or lose sight of Stephen who was struggling somewhat. The guide wasn’t good at making sure that he had everyone together, so consequently when I rocked up (usually a few seconds after everyone else) he had started his piece and was saying “and here is beautiful carving by Nabateans peoples” – I’m not sure that I gathered much more than that from him – apart from the fact that the canyon was opened up by an earthquake and that the city had a water system. Quite what the Nabatean peoples were doing there 2000-odd years ago wasn’t fully explained (but perhaps that what the Russians were being told on the bus).
The view as you walk down the canyon and get your first glimpse of the magnificent carved façade takes your breath away. It’s huge (45m high) and beautifully ornate and glows a beautiful rosy pink in the sunshine. I had always imagined that you would walk down to it and have the place to yourself. The reality was different – just us and several hundred of our closest friends…plus camels, donkeys and a stall selling souvenirs. I’m not sure that Stephen got much from the sight. He was feeling so ill that he couldn’t lift his head up without feeling queasy. He sought shade whilst I ran around and took a few photos, then he tried to find out how we got a horse drawn buggy out to the top as he wasn’t sure that his legs would carry him the mile uphill walk back to the bus. The moral of the story is that you shouldn’t ask a donkey driver how to get a buggy…he told us the buggies only did round trips (which turned out to be a lie) and that he could get us both donkeys out to the top for $30. I declined. There was no way that I was getting on the back of a donkey and bouncing around whilst it trotted up the hill. I said I’d walk out if Stephen wanted to get a donkey but he decided to stay and walk out with me. I decided that we’d better leave plenty time in case I had to carry him out. As it was he managed on his own two feet, but we did have to swap cameras over. I ended up carrying his camera rucksack which weighs a ton…it’s a heavy camera, plus he had his flashgun and additional grip with him! I should be thankful that he didn’t feel the need to bring his tripod too… As it was I almost fell over backwards when I put it on!
We made it back to the bus with the rest of the English speakers not long behind us. One of the Aussies said she’d bumped into our guide from the original bus and we were going to meet up at lunch and go back on the coach with them which made sense. The spanner in the works came when one of the Brits turned up and told our guide that the Russian speaking guide had told his group to get back to the bus for 4pm… This was not good news. If we were to get some lunch, and meet up with our original bus we needed to leave Petra at 3pm. This showed a lack of communication between the two guides that went deeper than the microphone wars that they were conducting earlier. This could really spoil our day! If we couldn’t meet our original coach then the current coach would have to take us back to the airport…and we wouldn’t make it if they were any later getting back than 4pm. A lot of phoning went on and it was agreed that our coach would come back from lunch and pick us up. We even managed a leisurely 5 minute lunch at the hotel where we managed to slurp down a bowl of soup before we had to get back on the bus and listen to the guide droning on non-stop in Russian for 2 hours. I really wished he would shut the hell up so that we could at least snooze!
We made the flight in time and had to endure 45 minutes in the clockwork plane with no air conditioning which had been sitting on the tarmac all day in the blazing sun. We were happy to get back to the hotel! It had been worth it to see Petra (for me anyway!), but it was a really long day. We’ve decided that excursions that begin before dawn are not for us in future!
No comments:
Post a Comment