The Jordan Trail and the King’s Highway

We travel the length of Jordan checking out some of the most historic sites and dive the Red Sea..

Well we made the 16km hike to Feyen Eco Lodge in ok time. It was hot, dry and there was no beer at the end! Bloomin' Muslims. The trek is part of the Jordan trail, which is a 40 day transit of the country. We however, are just cherry picking the best bits.

The lodge is totally green -- candles for lighting, vegetarian food, recycled waste etc. They employ the local Bedouin when they are in the vicinity, and we were able visit their actual camp. That day a wolf had attacked one family's goat/sheep herd. Six animals were either injured or killed which was very upsetting for them. The Bedouin treat their animals well as they are so reliant upon them. Puppies are fed goat/sheep milk from a very young age, so that as they grow, they develop a strong relationship with the herd and therefore protect them fiercely.

These Bedouin must have been the inspiration for Johnny Depp's pirate - they wear the headscarf the same way, have dark neatly trimmed beards, and smudge kohl under their eyes (good for eye health apparently). It is a tad disconcerting to see great numbers of pirates in a desert. It was also quite disconcerting to be asked by one said Bedouin pirate if we actually had a bra fence in NZ!

For those who don't know, it is in Cardrona.

From Feynen we crossed to Little Petra - one of several camel stops used during old times. The camels were 'parked' at satellite serai (a truck stop for camel trains) to keep them out of Petra proper. At times, there would have been tens of thousands of camels between the various serai servicing Petra. Camels are still a big deal here. We learned that 12 had been recently disqualified from a camel beauty contest in Saudi - for using botox!

Here we wandered amongst 8000 year old Neolithic ruins, scattered with the hair-filled droppings of hyena. Little Petra is set amongst a rocky gorge, and after a picnic lunch of fresh dates, dried figs, labne filled flatbread and water (soooo Enid Blyton) we scrabbled up some rocks to a high point at the Southern end. We were greeted with a home-made sign outside a tent advertising a Bedouin Air B & B. Classic!

Then it was onto Petra itself. We walked more of the Jordan trail, and finally entered through the back door -- which if any of you are thinking of coming to Jordan, is totally the way to go. You hike in for a few km and arrive at the Monastery, at the top end of the city. The vast majority of tourists come from the opposite end - about 8km away. Petra is so much larger than either of us had imagined - 26km2 to be exact, much of which still needs to be excavated. It was a thriving, bustling metropolis in its heyday. Columned roads, mosaic-floored churches, sacrificial alters, market places, water fountains, huge tombs and the ruins of a large number of houses are scattered over an enormous area. It truly is a wonder. The city was actually inhabited until 1988, when UNESCO made it a world heritage site. Some of the cave houses still have glass windows and doors from that time.

The modern township of Petra, built to service the antiquities, is filled with hotels and restaurants and scarf merchants. Everyone - local men and women and tourists alike - wears a headscarf. Local women walk about with the traditional modest black covering and shapeless black tunic accessorised delightfully with stripper heels and bright red lipstick. We finally found a beer in one of the restaurants, but had to drink it out of a coffee cup with the wait staff winking and saying "enjoy your cappuccino".

Jordanians are exceptional hosts. The two most common words we hear are 'welcome' and 'habibi', which is Arabic for loved one. Everywhere we are offered tea or coffee, both of which come strong, sweet, dark and flavoured with either cardamom, cinnamon, sage or mint. It is quite something to sit sipping such heady flavours watching small flocks of pigeons enjoy their nightly freedom before returning to their cages on the flat roofs of the white stone houses. From where we are, we can see both Egypt and Israel. It is only a few km to the Saudi border. This is all part of an ancient trading route which linked into the Silk Route. A road that has fed exotica between Europe and China for thousands of years.