We took the evening walk at Petra. You are allowed to walk from the entrance, through the Siq to the clearing that holds “The Treasury”.
They lined the walk with hundres of luminaries.
At The Treasury they had hundreds more luminaries, some beduoin musicians and they served tea.
It was quite striking.
I took some photos. Most of these are at ISO800 with 4-to-6 second exposures at f4.0 (the largest aperature for this lens).
Big thanks to our traveling companion C.D. for loaning me his tripod.
Putting up some shots I took at Petra over 2 days.
I will have another post with a couple of Petra by candlelight photos.
Text to follow. Insh’allah.
The ultra short version:
Jordan really made me miss my motorcycle. LOTS of nice mountain roads.
Everyone in Jordan complains about how crowded the country is. Coming from Egypt, it looks pretty spacious to me…
Everyone in Jordan complains about the crazy traffic in Amman. We just laughed.
Petra is truly fabulous. The work that went into it is amazing. We did the candle-lit walk to “the treasury” one night. Gorgeous.
Wadi Rum (one of the desert areas where “Lawrence of Arabia” hung out) was fun to see.
Aqaba: seaside town. Umm. It _is_ near the sea…
Jarash. Greek/Roman ruins north of Amman. Fairly large and well preserved ruins.
Jordan is more expensive than Egypt. [but then again, most places are]
Jordan is more green than Egypt. [but then again..]
Stores in Jordan have a much wider array of imported items than Egyptian stores [groceries, electronics etc] Though they ain’t cheap.
Jordinian wines are much better than Egyptian wines [but then again, that isn’t saying much]
With a few exceptions, I didn’t feel like the folks involved in the tourist trade in Jordan were trying to squeeze every last dime out of me, unlike many places in Egypt.
It is a beautiful country. Lush[1] green hills in the north. Rocky and sandy desert in the east and south.
I could see living in Jordan for a spell.
[1] Lush in a hilly-semi-rocky-soil-Mediterranean-compared-to-egypt sorta way. Not lush in a Pacific Northwet sorta way.
We are going to spend a few days in Jordan.
We are flying to Amman, then busing/taxi-ing to Petra for 3 nights.
Then off to a jeep/camel/hike trip in Wadi Rum for a couple of nights.
Then the Dead Sea for a day or so.
Then back to Amman for a day or so.
So, at least we have an excuse for a week or so for not updating the blogs 🙂
They get rain there. And they have money. So buildings and cars are new and kept clean. No trash on the streets.
Very few taxis, compared to Egypt. Much more money, most people own cars. We asked our hotel to call us a taxi and they said it would be a 30 minute wait. They suggested walking out to the traffic circle to try to flag one down. We had to wait 10 minutes for taxi to even go by! And that one was occupied. This is quite a bit of culture shock after spending time in Cairo, where you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a taxi.
The labor force is imported. Vietnamese, Indian, Thai, Phillipino etc. L
Lots of English spoken. I could see it being difficult to learn Arabic living in Doha.
Lot’s of money. Bentleys, Mercedes Benz, high end SUVs.
I didn’t even realize this until the 2nd or 3rd day when I saw someone trying to cross the street. It then occured to me that he was the first pedestrian I had seen. Everybody drives.
Well, that was interesting.
It is a nice track for the racers. The traction is good, the track is wide with good passing areas. A rather long straightaway. No elevation changes to speak of. Wind can be a problem at times.
It is not a great track for spectators though. There are only 3 places to watch the track from
1. The main grandstands. This is the only place you can go if you have a regular ticket.
2. VIP Suites. Air-conditioned, glassed in suites above the pit garages. You have a view of pit lane and the start/finish/grid area. TVs in the suites for everything else.
3. VIP Grandstand. There is a grandstand in turn 10 with a shuttle bus for VIP occupents to get out there.
You can’t walk the track. There is a service road inside and one outside the track, but that is not open to spectators.
All in all, not a great spectator track.
The best reason to go to this race is that there is almost no one there. The paddock security is laughable. Pit security is tighter, but you can just walk right into the paddocks and look in the back of the garages.
Because of the lack of spectators, the riders and teams are really laid back. No one is rushing from the garage to the trailer to get away from the hordes. Very laid back. You will often see riders just stopping to chat to each other “out in the open”.
They stop for autographs and photos. They are very relaxed.
All in all a good trip. I am glad I went, but I probably wouldn’t go there again. There are other tracks I would rather visit.
(many of the pit photos were taken through the glass of the VIP suites, so there are some odd reflections and refractions)
Where are we headed?
Longitude and Lattitude
25deg 29’15.60″N 51deg27’05.65″E
Or
We’ll send photos. And we promise no spoilers.
As you can see from this post, we went to Luxor.
This is the general area where Luxor Temple, Karnak Temple, Valley of the Kings(including Tut’s tomb), Valley of the Queens, Nefertiti’s Tomb etc are located.
We managed to do Luxor, Karnak, Valley of the Kings, and Hetshepsuts temple.
All pretty spectacular items. We did not get to do Valley of the Queens, or Nefertiti’s tomb. We hope to get back there soon to cover some of what we missed.
We did a felucca ride for part of an afternoon and visited a banana farm.
The weather was gorgeous.
But Kaddee has covered that all well enough in her blog posts.
One thing that I wanted to talk about was serendipity.
Steve (Kaddee’s brother) and I got up at ZERODARK:THIRTY to have breakfast and take the ferry across the river to buy tickets. We had heard that it was important to get there early, cause they sell a limited number. [Turns out there were not a lot of tourists around, and we could have slept another 2 hours easily.]
Our plan was to get there, buy the tickets, and then sit and chill until Kaddee, Sara (Kaddee’s mom) and Kenzie(Kaddee’s niece) arrived.
On the ferry boat over we met Mr. Saleh. He is a guide. He is President of the Guides Guild. He is on the city council of Luxor.
In one of the photos you can see him showing us a photocopy of an article. He was also an extra in the “Death on the Nile” movie.
His picture is on page 151 of the Lonely Planet, Egypt guidebook.
He is the man.
Sitting and talking with him was like sitting with the Godfather. EVERYBODY stopped by to say hello and shake his hand and pay their respects. Mr Saleh never stood up and never went to see anyone. They ALL came to see him.
He chatted with us and gave us pointers on what to do and see. He gave us a ride up to the Valley of the Kings with his driver. He was booked for the day however, so he wasn’t trying to sell his services. Which was a very pleasant change from the usual M.O. in this part of the world.
We got his card and enjoyed chatting with us. We made arrangements so that IF the girls arrived at about the time he was finishing his tour, he would join us as a guide. He normally only does 1 tour a day, 3 or 4 days a week. He was not fishing for more work, but it really felt as though he was offering it as a favor.
We parted with Mr Saleh.
We bought our tickets and hired a driver for the rest of the day. We had him bring us back down to the ferry landing to wait for the girls.
Steve and I had some tea and just kind of zoned out.
The driver wandered off somewhere to socialize with his friends.
When we got the call that the girls were on the ferry, Steve and I chatted for a bit and then got out of the van to go meet the girls.
The ferry had already landed (it is a very quick trip) and our driver had met the girls at the boat and had fended off all the hucksters that meet each ferry. [They are ferocious]. The funny part was that we did not ask him to do this or even describe the 3 girls to him. He picked em out of the crowd and ushered them right to the car! I think we made the right choice of driver.
We then drove back up to the Valley of the Kings.
We hung around for about 10 minutes waiting to see if Mr. Saleh would come back down. They run a tram from the visitors center to the valley entrance, so we waited for 4 or 5 trams to come down.
We decided, “ok, we missed him. Time to get moving”. We get on the tram and head up. Half-way up, we pass the tram coming down. With Mr. Saleh on it. He waved and said he would come back up. I think if he had tapped the tram driver on the shoulder and said “stop here” he would have.
We watied for about 2 minutes and Mr. Saleh came up.
We then had a wonderful tour with him. His knowledge seemed encyclopedic. He has been a guide in the valley for 39 years.
All the tombs have signs in front of them listing facts about the tomb and show a map of the tomb. At each tomb, we would gather in front of the map and Mr. Saleh would talk about the tomb, its discovery and treasures, if any. On the map he would indicate certain spots where we would want to pay attention to some detail or another. We would then go down into the tomb and check things out.
At one of these maps, Mr. Saleh was giving his talk and another group walked up and started to talk over him. He looked at them, and said something in Arabic. The other guide started to argue with him. Mr. Saleh gave him “a look”. The other guide went pale and excused himself. They waited patiently for Mr. Saleh to finish.
Heh.
Walking throught the valley, he was constantly greeted by other guides. Walking the gauntlet of hawkers at the entrance/exit to the Valley and Hetshepsut’s tomb with Mr. Saleh was like crossing the Red Sea behind Moses: the hawkers parted and we followed in his wake.
Towards the end of the day, we went to the Colesium of Memnon. There were tour buses there. One of the guides got off the tour bus and recognized Mr Saleh. She came over to talk to him and she acted like she was meeting a rock star.
She was giddy and her eyes were actually a little watery. She kept asking us “this is your guide?”, “do you know who he is?”, “he is the ‘father’ of all the guides in the valley” [figuratively speaking, we assume].
She was incredulous that we just “stumbled” on him and hired him for the day.
I thought she was going to throw her panties and room key at him.
We then had lunch with him at a local restaurant. I have his card and have emailed him my photos of him and have corresponded somewhat.
When we return to the Luxor area, I will be sure to call up Mr. Saleh. If he is available to be our guide, we would be extremely pleased. I would also be happy to sit and have an ‘ahwa with him.
All because we were mistakenly informed that we had to get to the ticket office at the crack of dawn.
We took the night train from Cairo to Luxor. I don’t really recommend the night train. It is more comfortable than the night train we once took from Barcelona to Madrid, but it is noisy and a little bit of a rough ride. We did not get a great nights sleep.
But the one big bonus of taking that train, at that time of year, with the unexpected one hour delay, is that we arrived in Luxor just after sunrise.
Which allowed me to get this photo:
That alone made the train trip worthwhile.
A small collection of photos from Luxor Temple is available here.
I have a bunch of photos from our Thanksgiving trip to the White Desert. Some of them are up here.
I will have a post or two eventually.