The previous post in this series is here..
Our last stop was the Ad Deir Monastery. We had been told by folks who went before us, not to miss this place. It was not easy to get to as it was a strenous hike. It was good the kids decided to go for a mule ride as did their parents. The other four made it slow and steady. There are vendors every 500 meters or so trying to sell the same stuff to weary travelers. It definitely made the experience difficult.
When the mule guys started bargaining with us at the Cafe saying it will take you 1 hour to go up but we can go in 20 minutes on the mule, it was not believable as they had to walk along the mule anyways! so "if the mule handler could walk up in 20 minutes, so could we" was our logic. For the most part it is true. San beat the mules. I was 5 minutes behind the mules. However, it is an exhausting hike. So it was wonderful to get to take in the views and do some photos and videos! The ladies had been praticing the same move at every place to do a collective "Reel" and we did that here as well. I am to edit that masterpiece but haven't gotten to it yet!
The slideshow of all the cats and mules we saw in Petra
The Nabatean people knew how to cut solid rock from the mountain face into large pillars and halls. They had a whole city within the canyons with excellent control of their most important resource .. water!
They had a script that was the starting point for the Arabic script. Somehow like everything we saw in Egypt, this too disappeared over time!
This is a popular world heritage site. It is usually crowded like crazy around Christmas time. However, given the conflicts in the area and flight restrictions, the place was empty. Hotels and shops were deserted. There were hardly 100 tourists that morning. No wonder every vendor was trying to get us to buy something there.
there is a vantage point a little higher up where we get better views of this amazing carving..
After the monastry we all came down walking to the Nabatean cafe. There was a lion key entrance which was on the map but we could not see it on our way up. San, myself and our niece were walking ahead by a few hundred meters. She was alert and said "Athimber, that lion thing is somewhere here to the right!". Her sense of distance was amazing. Sure enough inside a small gap we found this sign for Lion Triclinium. There was no path and you had to climb up rocks to get to it. Ran there solo to get these pics.
It was a pleasant walk down in the canyon shade..
At the cafe folks in the group ordered some fruit juice and gave it rave reviews. So far this day was going great and on plan!
Wanted to just walk back to the entrance. My estimate was it would take us an hour to get to the entrance if we walked fast on flat terrain. The group was tired as a whole. So we decided to walk to this shuttle and take it to the entrance.
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There was a 20 minute hike from here to a shuttle stop. This whole Free shuttle is a borderline scam. Originally was going to forget about this experience. But as a warning to others have to put it here. The shuttle is supposed to take 20 minutes to get back to the entrance with a stop at a Bedouin village. First of all no one mentioned the strenous hike up a hill go to go a shuttle stop. There are no directions to this stop and no signs of where it it! We even crossed more structures outside the site while walking..
The shuttle stop is a clearing under a tree. Once we got there, luckily for us the van got full right away. so the driver and the guy in charge said "we will go stop at this bedouin village and keep going". Once we sat in the van, he tells us "we have to wait at the village for 15 minutes and then take off. that is our rule". Everyone in the van was tired. No one planned to get down. So we told him, "we are exhausted. we will sit in the van for 15 mintues". He said "okay. that is up to you".
We go the place and there is a walkway with a string of shops. A guy at the shops tried to force us to get down. He said the "rule" was you had to get down and shop before the van took off. The rules kept changing every 10 minutes!
Every group within the van had people who were injured or too tired to get out. This guy was just off like a psycho. Maybe he was already having a bad day! He turned off the AC in the van, closed the windows and tried to force us down after he made the driver get out. A french family (where the mom was clearly suffering a foot injury.. she could hardly get into the van) told him "no. we are not getting down" and this guy got all jumpy and treatened to take folks out and "shoot" them if we don't follow his rules and started using abusive language in front of everyone. He was shouting "I will f^%k you all up!" in front of all the women and kids.
Then he called the driver out and sat in a bench to have tea. We had already sat there in the hot van for 20 minutes. One of the families managed to call their guide and driver to that point to pick them up. They had really small kids. There was an altercation there on how they were not allowed to get in.
After this he was showig us a cheers sign with tea in hand smiling while we had tired and hungry people sweating in the van. So I took his photo as he tried to go all out to show us he is boss. Finally a bedouin woman came up to me and said "you took a photo or video. I am a bedouin woman. You cannot take my photo". I told her that I was taking his picture and she happened to be in it as she was supporting his bad actins. But I respect women and children unlike them and deleted the video in front of her. Then asked her "are you a good person? He clearly is not. Tell him we have tired women and children in this van and he needs to let us go, now!". She talked to the jackass and finally the driver started the van after we had wasted 30 minutes there.
If you are planning to take this "free shuttle", know that they expect you to get outside the van, walk around, buy things and only then you get back in. Given these guys control the van, they can hold you hostage in this place. The regular cars cannot come in there. You are better off walking back to the entrance from the Nabatean cafe on a flat trail back through the canyon. it would have taken us maybe another 20 minutes.
This 30 mintue experience thanks to one mans rudeness, turned the 6 hours of amazment that the Petra site had given us. All it takes is one person to spoil a trourist experience. The folks in Petra should make sure that their rules are advertised clearly. They should definitely take this guy and that driver away from any customer interfacing job or at least train him properly.
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We all told each other to forget this and move on. When we were finally picked up by Zaid and Ala at the entrance, told them that they should have come with us inside Petra, even if they didn't come to the monastry. That might have saved us time and pain. Having paid guides who don't come with us is pointless.
We stopped at our hotel, loaded the bags into the two vans and were off to the next stop a good 45 mintues later than planned. We were all hungry. Zaid said we could go to the City of Petra and grab some Falafel sandwiches to go.
Again, we made a mistake. The guys at the store didn't understand English. We needed vegetarian stuff. We lost 20 minutes trying to order. A student customer who spoke English, managed to translate for us. We gave feedback to our drivers/guides that at least one of them should have come with us instead of staying at the parking lot with the folks who didn't want to walk. All I wanted was some Pita bread and fries and that translation took longer!
We realized that in Jordan our guides were going out of their way to make sure we weren't seen with them during walks. It was weird. Maybe it had something to do with the issues going on locally! If your guide is not willing to walk with you anywhere, think twice before going on your own!
Finally we were back in the van and off to our next stop.. both drivers promised a race with the sun to make up for the bad experience.
