Wadi Rum

Our third day in Jordan we met up with our driver and headed for Wadi Rum, TE Lawrence's old stomping ground. Even before heading on this trip I'd tried to hunt down Lawrence's "memoir" about his time in the desert - good thing he didn't go on Oprah to promote the book, from what I've heard. I found this free copy of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, but I decided I wanted to make my first Kindle purchase, so I forked over the $1.48 for the ebook. Now that I've actually seen the place, I'm looking forward to reading the book when I get back to Egypt.

Initially we'd intended to spend the night in the desert in a Bedouin tent. One of our companions had an eleventh-hour change of heart, though, so we ended up extending our Petra visit and taking the time out of our Wadi Rum trip. I was disappointed because I adore the desert - and what a desert this is! - but we had such a great time in Petra, I don't have much to complain about.

Our guide begged to differ. Well, to be precise, our guide's boss was the problem. He was very irritated that we were changing our plans (even though we'd called in advance to tell him), and let me tell you, the back of a dusty jeep holding all your water is not the place to be dickering with a Bedouin over price. At one point, Mr. Attayak cast a baleful glare into the jeep, eyed our companions, and said, "Israeli? Jews always argue over the price." I was mortified at this breach of hospitality, but a little bit later we came to an agreement on the price and the Bedouin apologized for any hostility - he blamed the heat. I was glad to get going.



We basically spent the day tooling around the easy part of the canyon system. We visited Lawrence's spring (I should've known the hike would be unpleasant when our guide pointed up the rock face, lit a cigarette, and settled back into the jeep cab) which had a great view but was a balls-hot climb (first pic up above). Wadi Rum's stones are inscribed with petroglyphs, early arabic writing, hunters, camels, the lot.


KC and I raced up bona-fide sand dunes (still haven't gotten to the Sahara proper! How is it taking so long?), squeezed through carved canyons, scrambled up slickrock to graceful arches (KC had a few tense moments but he pulled through), and got absolutely, through-and-through filthy. We even made our way past roaming herds of camels, complete with nasty-looking camel babies. What do you call a baby camel? Veal?


For lunch we threw the bedding from the back of the Jeep below an overhanging rock to take advantage of the only six inches of shade we could see for miles. Our guide produced two types of hummus, some baladi, and a couple of cans of fish for our lunch. I took heart when he put his battered tin kettle on the flames and started preparing the strong, sweet tea the Bedouins are known for.


Wadi Rum was cool, but it was sort of a throw-away trip. We didn't have enough time to get ourselves into serious trouble, although we did make the effort by pissing off our desert guide. I was very irritated at first by having to push my way through hordes of elderly Spanish and English tourists to see the first rock carvings. But when I grumbled to our guide, he promised that we wouldn't see any more people for the rest of the day - and he was basically right. That's why I like the desert.

Cairo street food

This afternoon I wandered onto the Al Jazeera website, looking for info about the Ahmedabad bombings. Instead, I stumbled onto this great video about street food, politics, and Cairo.

Pay special attention to the guy who dropped out of college so he could make as much as 8 dollars a day.




And here's the second part. Fuul tacos? You be the judge.

The Vegetable Nazi

1.01 lb zucchini @ $1.69 per pound ... $1.71.

.51 lb red bell pepper @ $3.99 per pound ... $2.03.

5 tomatoes, 1.23 lb @ $2.49 per pound ... $3.06.

Apoplexy brought on by righteous indignation in the McCaffrey's ... priceless.

Or something. Appalling! The last time I went veggie shopping in Cairo, I bought about 1.5 kilos of tomatoes, zucchini, shallots, eggplant, bell peppers, and carrots, and I paid 9 pounds Egyptian.

Actually, I'm lying. I gave the 8-year-old behind the counter 10 pounds Egyptian so he could have a tip. So I paid $1.87 for a huge sack of delta-grown vegetables, and I overpaid. I made so much ratatouille, it's still waiting in my freezer for me to get back. For $1.87.

And remember, the food prices are destroying ordinary Egyptians and possibly the fabric of the Egyptian government itself. The world sure is a funny place.

Sexual harrassment study

More powerhouse investigative journalism! Check out this teeny blurb about sexual harrassment in Egypt! Sound familiar, O loyal blog readers?

I need to learn how to say "You kiss your mother with that mouth??" in Arabic.

Petra rocks

We topped off our Israel trip with the long-anticipated journey to Petra.

In a word, Petra is fabulous. For some stupid reason the picture I had in my head was of one monument, the Treasury, from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. That was my favorite IJ movie; KC took me to see the new one in Cairo. As far as I'm concerned, Karen Allen was the most convincing alien in the film. As KC would say - Watch Out!



Right, so Petra is marvelous. The site is huge and positively jammed full of tombs and monuments. The Treasury is only one of many, many carved tombs scattered over a very large area. It's probably one of the best-preserved and delicately-carved, and it's the first one you see when you exit the sinuous curves of the Siq. We arrived in Petra in the late afternoon and decided there was enough daylight left to warrant a fast expedition into the site. And boy, was it worth it - Petra at sunset is gorgeous and largely emptied of the vast hordes of tourists that clog its arteries during the day. It was basically the four of us, a small group of young Arab men, and the rocks. As we came through the Siq, a long entry canyon, it felt like every twist would disclose something spectacular. I craned my neck, eager for my first glimpse of the Treasury. And when it finally did come, it caught me by surprise despite my vigiliance: a peek of carved turret, high up on the wall of the canyon.

That first day we didn't make it past the Theater; there was too much to see right there in front of the Treasury. And no, there's nothing inside the Treasury that resembles the set from the movie. Behind the facade are large rectangular chambers, remarkable for the precision of their demarcation. But the stone itself was the biggest surprise: beautiful scaled whorls of sunset colors, purple, rose, pink, orange, white, undulate over the surfaces at Petra.


We stayed in the Petra Palace Hotel, which would have been adequate if the toilets had kept on flushing - and the management hadn't been so dismissive of our need for functioning sewage disposal. At least it had a pool. I was disappointed that we didn't go to eat Nabatean food and drink beers in a converted tomb, but one of our buddies wasn't too keen on the idea. Next time, I guess.

Two horrifying things about Jordan: First, some idiot has decided that the dinar is equal to the euro. I can't imagine what sound financial principle this crap is based on. And the second horror: the restaurant owner tried to charge me seven dinars for a shisha! Can you imagine??

The second day was hotter and more strenuous. KC and I got up as early as possible to try to beat as many tourists as possible into the park. We hiked to the Siq entrance, where the day before we'd found this sign and turned left, into the Siq itself. This morning, we turned right - and hiked right past the sign. You can see me down the trail a piece. We followed the trail through a series of narrow twisting canyons. Frequently we had to team up to pass our bags over large drops before we could both pass the obstructions. If there had been a flash flood, we would've been toast - we could see the high water marks far over our head, and they didn't seem to be too old. Eventually, though, we came out at the far end of the Theater, near the Palace, and met up with our other friends - by texting, ironically.


At the worst possible part of the day we tackled the hike up to the Monastery. We opted out of the many abused-donkey-ride offers and scaled what seemed like a million stairs up to the top of the cliff. The view was worth it: the Monastery, Aaron's tomb, the river Jordan, and clear out to Israel.


Go to Petra. Spend at least two days there, and be prepared to get up very early in the morning. It's worth it - Petra rocks.

Mixed messages

If I believed everything I read, I'd never set foot in Egypt. Here are the two messages of imminent disaster I read just in the last hour:

1 - Food and water about to run out! Here's a New York Times article that, in a stunning feat of journalistic ex-po-say, reveals that desert nations have trouble with water. Crack out the champagne! Pulitzer Prizes for everyone!

Of course there's a water shortage! That's why it's called the desert. It's an actual scientific term that's directly tied to the amount of precipitation received by an area in a year. Ta-dah!

And yet, there's a glimmer of hope on the horizon. Pour enough money and idealism into a project, catalyze the process with a unilateral dictatorship, and you can make forests grow in the desert. I've seen one, at AUC's Desert Development Center. I visited the DDC back in March but apparently I forgot to blog about it. Here's a fellow AUCan's remarks about it.

2 - Terrorists lurk behind every ... whatever they've got in the desert! This morning I got an email from the Cairo consulate directing me to the new State Department Worldwide Caution update. I'm not even sure how to respond to this except to say that Egypt, as far as I can tell, is not full of terrorists. The government did a great job of ruthlessly supressing opposition voices in the wake of the massacre at Hatshepsut's tomb back in 1997.


Was it creepy standing in the chapel where the shooting happened? Yes, of course, especially when our guide pointed out the residual bullet holes. Did it prevent me from visiting? Hell, no!

Other fun stuff in Israel

Of course, Israel isn't all wacky pilgrims and gun-toting car services. A friend and colleague of ours had graciously invited us to give talks at Ben Gurion University, ostensibly the reason for the whole trip.

Ahem.

I've been searching around online for a map to put here to give you a sense of how Israel's laid out. But try this exercise for a minute: go to Google maps and scroll east to Israel. Notice anything funny? Israel does actually have things in it. Like roads and towns. I guess Google's decided to pull the maps - take a few guesses as to blogosphere hypotheses on this. Hint: You can really tell the blogger's political leanings by their hypotheses.

Boy, the more I search, the crazier it gets. Here's a reasonable one, although a bit kindergarten-y:


One fantastic day we hit some little-known and practically-deserted ruins just outside Beer Sheba called Midras. It was a cave system used as a hideout by Jewish rebels. In some places the caves were only about 14 inches high ... we wiggled through and got ourselves good and filthy.


Also at Midras, we had a minor scuffle with a herd of goats (I discovered KC's a coward when it comes to large numbers of horned animals) and discovered Israel's only pyramid. A bit, erm, underwhelming, perhaps?


We had a pleasant run-in with a family of gazelles at Ben Gurion's tomb, also a national park. This one winked at KC while he took pictures. Weird.


One night we went to Tel Aviv for dinner. It looks like a very cool city, but we only saw the beach. City with a sand beach? Two thumbs up!


And then ... and then there was Petra. Which deserves its own blog post.