Day 10: Petra

The reason we are packing our bags and leaving at 6am is because Raj, James and I are going on a three-day tour of Jordan. Not all of Jordan, just some hotspots that visitors tend to find appealing. We are going to be tourists.

For the low low price of 230 dinars apiece we will see Petra, Wadi Rum and Aqaba. Petra is the fabulous ancient city that everyone knows from "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," Wadi Rum is the desert featured in "Lawrence of Arabia," and the Port of Aqaba is on the Red Sea. As in Moses, parting, slaves from Egypt, etc.

Also included in the 230 dinars fare is one night at a Marriott with breakfast the next morning; one night at a Radisson SAS with breakfast the next morning, and our own personal driving whore. Mr. Abu Fadi is our driving whore because not only is he hired to drive us to said locations, but at all times will remain a text message away for any and all of our automotive needs. Nice option. The one drawback is that the whole shebang starts early, so at six sharp Abu Fadi arrives to collect us in his town car. We are half-asleep, we are grumpy, we don't even know if we've properly packed, but off we go anyway.

With two pit stops and one souvenir shop, it takes us three hours to get to Petra. Like Jerash, Petra is two parts: modern and ancient. Modern Petra is a town atop a mountain, buildings and shops spiralling down to the canyon at the bottom. In the middle of this canyon is Ancient Petra, sprawled across several kilometres and carved right from the rose-coloured rock.

But before we see any of this, we have an hour at the Marriot Petra to unpack a bit and freshen up. The hotel is gorgeous. Stunning. Not "treat me like Robert DeNiro" five-star stunning, but a jewel in the desert all the same. It was a modernized casbah with bellboys. Gorgeous comes at a price though, and I haven't been fortunate enough to snag a room of my own. Budgetary issues, so I'm sharing with James and Raj. Yay. I love my boys, but I love them better in their own room. It's especially bad this time running, too - remember All Bran? Two days ago, James and I had dug into a box of All Bran cereal because neither one of us could take a proper crap. Well, now we can't stop crapping. Not wanting to experience the essence of James, I make my way down two floors to use the hotel guest bathroom.

Raj summons Abu Fadi, we have an early lunch of shawarma and then right over to the entrance gates for the tour to begin. The Petra experience is three parts: first, you get on a horse and ride about 20 minutes until you reach the edge of the canyon, which was also the beginning of the ancient city. I love horses but don't have much riding under my belt, so I was a little nervous. Not much to be nervous about since a Bedouin leads you the whole way; lots to be disgusted about if the Bedouin who owns your horse doesn't treat it properly. Needless to say, I nearly kicked mine in the head. The Bedouin, not the horse.

The second leg of the journey is right in the canyon itself. A tour guide meets you and takes you down the long, narrow road that leads to the heart of the city. As a rule, James and I don't like tour guides. They usually don't like their jobs and rarely say anything interesting, so we quickly become annoyed and insolent. For instance: "Here is a natural rock formation in the ancient city of Petra." We're walking, we're walking... "Here is another natural rock formation in the ancient city of Petra." We're walking, we're walking... "Here is a man-made rock formation in the ancient city of Petra." James snickers, I laugh, we crack jokes about natural and man-made outhouses in the ancient city of Petra. As a rule, tour guides don't like us much, either.

Besides, why would we listen to a boring tour guide when we can soak in the city for ourselves? Petra is spectacular. Imagine yourself on a road not more than ten metres across, red rock walls a hundred feet high on either side of you, rock with soft waves and curves made from the elements and carvings of days long ago. You go down, down, you turn a corner and then out of nowhere is your first glimpse of the magnificent treasury building.

In the last Indiana Jones movie, the Petra Treasury is where Indy rescues his father, finds the knight, the grail, yadda yadda. It is the most popular site of the whole city, where the hubbub of people collect. This is also the third part of the journey. After turning the corner around the treasury, the entire city of Petra is spread out before you in all its glory.

This is where I met Zuzu.