The Med, The Dead and The Red: Petra and the Plague

At Wadi Musa we stayed in a somewhat hastenly assembled pile of randomly painted, tiled and plumbed concrete blocks which could be loosely described as a hotel. To be fair on Oasis, there wasn't much else in town that was any better. The highlight of the accommodation was the pool, which despite the searing heat, was absolutely freezing; so much so that we cooled our beers in it. We had an early night. Petra beckoned.

It seems no work of Man's creative hand,
by labour wrought as wavering fancy planned;
    But from the rock as if by magic grown,
eternal, silent, beautiful, alone!
    Not virgin-white like that old Doric shrine,
where erst Athena held her rites divine;
    Not saintly-grey, like many a minster fane,
that crowns the hill and consecrates the plain;
    But rose-red as if the blush of dawn,
that first beheld them were not yet withdrawn;
    The hues of youth upon a brow of woe,
which Man deemed old two thousand years ago,
    match me such marvel save in Eastern clime,
a rose-red city half as old as time.

-- John William Burgon - 1845

Early the next morning, we set off for Petra in order to arrive prior to the hordes of tourists. We didn't really know what to expect of Petra. My knowledge of it was fairly limited to the imagery of the final scenes of Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade, as well as some anecdotal stories about the activities and demise of the Nabatean Arabs who built it. At EUR30, all I could think was it had better be worth it. And it was.

We entered via the famous rock ravine and after several miles encountered the spectacular tomb, known as the Treasury and made famous by the aforementioned film. The thing that struck us was how much we'd underestimated its size. It was huge. The same could be said for Petra as a whole. My imagination guesstimated an archaeological site a couple of acres in area. How wrong was I?! The site was massive. There were at least 30 tombs of similar size or bigger plus hundreds of smaller tombs scattered across the rose rock faces of the surrounding hills. The distance from the entrance of the ravine to the Treasury was about 2 miles, the distance from the Treasury to the biggest of the tombs, known as The Monastery, about 4 miles up hill. All in, we walked about 15 miles around the site. Great stuff.

The canyon leading to Petra

Maarten and Andy sight The Treasury

Hallelujah!

Zoe and Andy at The Treasury, Petra

Hiking to The Monastery, Petra

Yep. It did feel like that.

Hiking up past The Monastary

Typical of Jordanian tourism operators, the dude had a fairly high opinion of himself

So did this dude

Following lunch with Mike and Brad, where the astonished waiter was asked to bring the same order twice, we headed back to the hotel for a swim and a kip by the pool. And that's where it went wrong. After an evening of food and beers and more beers and drinking games and more beers for Mike's birthday I went upstairs to bed. When I took my shirt off I couldn't help but notice that my torso, arms and hands were covered in small red lumps. Bed bugs. Dirty, filthy bed bugs had bitten me whilst I was asleep on an (unbeknownst to me) infested lounge by the pool. Bastards!! Thankfully I only had one small bite on my head. And did it itch? Damn straight it did.