PETRA and the RED SEA

PETRA and Red Sea Diving

Mike Garvin and I in Eilat

I was getting a bit stir crazy in Beer Sheva and was ready for a field trip to Eilat by the Sea.  I have a Fulbright friend who lives there (Allison) and I was dying to get in the water.  Mike Garvin, who some of you may know, is up in Haifa doing a post-doc and I called him to see if he wanted to be my dive buddy.  So he took a plane from Haifa (45 minutes) and I took the 3.5 hour bus trip through the desert.  It was actually quite an easy trip.  

Eilat is a resort and I forgot to take pictures of the resorty part of town.  Suffice to say it looks like any other resort on the sea that you might find in Miami, Santa Monica, etc.  A bit Vegas-like with loads of lights, restaurants, boardwalk, and hotels that look like palaces.  When I go back next time I will try to capture that...I just forgot. These beaches are near our dive sites and I appreciated that not all of the beaches were developed.  I also like that the sign says not to pitch tents in Hebrew and in English. But as my friend in Beer Sheva says..."Israelis are outlaws"

So I took some pretty lame pictures underwater, but here are some of the ones that actually were in focus.  I need to play with my camera BEFORE I get underwater.  We made 4 dives with a dive shop called Manta Dive.  Excellent operation.  While the water is super clear, the fish are plentiful, and the corals are beautiful, the dive sites are all overused by novice divers and there is just a lot of damage to the corals.  Most dive sites are accesible by the beach.  I may try to go on a boat dive that takes you out to what is called the Japanese Gardens or I may try going to Aqaba in Jordon too.  Saw some great stuff on these dives...Giant clams, nudibranchs, a large octopus (will look up the species)

Giant Clam (maybe 30+cm)

I did not capture the amazing colors

You can see the octopus on the rock (Pale)

Here the octopus looks more like the rock

ON TO PETRA

We decided to part with some money and go for a day trip to Petra.  Thanks Google for helping us find "Fun Time Tours". We got picked up at our AirBnB apartment and the driver immediately gave us a "Fun Times" sticker to wear so our guides could keep up with who is part of the tour.  Well lucky for us there were only 4 of us on this particular tour.  We get driven to the Jordonian border where we are given explicit instructions including "you will give your passports to the people who pick you up on the other side (in Jordon)...It will be fine". I don't even like going through the Canadian border and going from Israel to Jordon requires many many many people looking at your passport.  Once you exit Israel you have a 700 meter walk to Jordon.  I thought it best not to run.  Then there was more viewing of passports and adding visa stamps.  I have some cool arabic writing in my passport now that will probably prohibit my entry into the US.  We got picked up by a driver and a guide and headed through the desert to Petra

The drive to Petra takes about 2 hours and we stopped for coffee at a gift/souvenier spot in the middle of nowhere.  Currently, tourism is DOWN because of ISIS and the bad reputation they are bringing to all parts of the Middle East. I bought a very nice Syrian vase and some sweets for the lab.  I had one shop keeper track me the entire time trying to entice me to buy some super expensive relics.  There was some amazing art/geology/pottery/knives/ and also goo-ga there.



OK...let me say something about our Guide (Jimmy the Dude).  His real name is Neezar (rhymes with bizzare) and he is a bedouin who spent 7 years in the US going to school and working.  His english therefore was perfect.  He had a ton of stories and I think some of them were true. He told our tour that camels have a tank of water right under their hump and if you cut the hump, you could dip a cup right into the tank.  I really enjoyed his humor.

All of the bedouin guides inside Petra look like Johnny Depp.  They want you to rent a camel from them or rent a donkey from them or rent a horse drawn carriage from them. They want to help you get through the ancient city because there is so much to see and you really need a full day to walk around.  Here Jimmy the Dude is negotiating a donkey ride for the couple on our tour from the Ukraine.  I for one was not going to ride a donkey up 2 miles of cobble roads and stairs.

Since tourism is down, many of the Johnny Depp look-alikes are sitting in the canyon watching You tube videos and biding their time.






We walked through this canyon carved by flash flood that is the entrance to Petra. The colors are not captured by my camera.  It was awe inspiring.  I found it hard to keep up with the group. Through this canyon, you can see the eroded remains of carved camels and people and tombs.

Here is Jimmy the dude showing us the carvings in the wall of the canyon..  You can see the carved person on the right who was leading a camel.

Here is an eroded carving and I think this is marking a tomb but it could just be old street art.  I would be such an awful guide!

 

 Whenwe came to the end of the "siq" we started getting a view of the amazing "treasury building" carved into the cliffs.  They say (our guide said) that over 20,000 Nabatean people lived here back in the day.  Did I mention that this city was built about 5-800 BCE.  It has an amazing water collection system which is a necessity in this arid climate.

It is had to believe that after the Roman Empire, Petra was pretty much abandoned except for bedouin visitors.  The bedouins occupied the city even after the first Europeans came (1812) and starting bossing people around.

You can rent a camel to take you through the city and next time I will!

Tourism was definitly down here in Petra.  Normally, they would see 3-5,000 people in a day and I bet there was no more than 3-500 people there. You'll notice that in my photos there are rarely people in the views.  That's why next time I will ride a camel.  A bit of revenue to buy food for that animals.

Throughout the city, children sell postcard or rocks

Mike and I walked up close to a mile of stairs leading up to the Monestary.There are many bedouin stalls selling I would say mostly junk from China but they will tell you they made it. Every stall has about the same thing. I bought a skinny bronze camel from a very good business woman.

I like this view of the Monestary because, well one it has a cat in it, and two it is difficult to see just how large this place is.  We have hiked quite a bit up the mountain and are looking down (Note the lack of people)

The monestary looks like an old San Franciscan Victorian carved right into the canyon wall,  Just amazing!

I am adding a few pictures here just to show you the colors that you see while you hike through Petra. We did not have that much time to explore and I would definitely love to see Petra under less harsh lighting, perhaps at sunset. All I can say is that you need to come to Petra if you have not been here before!

If you want to see more pictures of Petra CLICK HERE

If you want to see some lame pictures of the Red Sea Dives CLICK HERE

  A Hike through the Northern Negev

Last weekend Amir invited me to join his wife Adi and 4 of their friend on a hike through the desert to view wildflowers and the rare and endemic desert iris (its the dark brown/purple one)

I love this picture of Amir and the picture below of his wife Adi! It was a balmy day for me (being from Alaska) but a bit cold for my Jewish friends.

I am not sure I could find this trailhead again if you paid me, but we took a southern road from the city or Arad and wound through a dirt road for 5 miles or so passing camels and bedouin villiages and regional schools.  We parked and one of Amirs friends paid a visit to the nearby resident to keep an eye on the cars.  I do not know if he gave him sheckels.  But I was told that while the Bedouins are extremely hospitable, it would not be unusual for cars to be rifiled if you were gone for a long while.  We were planning to be gone for 6 hours or so.  I was a bit surprised to learn that because Amir had also told me I would not need to pack a lunch so I was expecting a 3 hour hike.

This is a picture of a Bedouin graveyard.  The stones mark the grave and the upright stone marks the head of the deceased.  I was told that when the last living person that knew the deceased personally died that the stones would then be removed and scattered in the desert.

The tree in the distance is the only tree that we saw in the entire region. Actually, when I was starting to get hungry and regretting my decision not to pack a lunch, Amir said we would be eating a little something once we got to a shady tree.  As soon as I saw this tree in the distance and noticed tha my friends too were picking up the pace, I knew I would be getting lunch.

Even Tara the doggie got to have a little something to eat. The lunch that Amir and Adi packed was not your basic American picnic.  We had roasted eggplant and sweet potatoes with hummus (YUM) and there was rice.  Crackers served as plates on which to portion spicey fennel and tahini.  I cannot remember if chocolate followed, but I think I remember a
truffle.

Here is a picture from pretty far away of a Bedoin tending his camel (who has a baby...hard to see I know)

There are a ridiculous amount of pictures on this link (CLICK HERE)  but that is becasue Amir's friends wanted to see all of the pictures from the hike so I uploaded all of the pictures.  Usually I cull the pictures to about 20-30.  The hike was most excellent and the views were truly stunning.

Me and Erez (Master of the Single Track)

I threathened to add Part two of my Beer'i Bike Ride and here it it! Very Brief...Just some pictures

 A bit of artwork on a early 1900's wall

An old well from the Byzantine times

Through a narrow strip of forrest

Some of the 26 km single track ride...very fun

These are the famous anemone flowers that people come to view in Be'eri.  It was the last chance for wild flower viewing here for the season

CLICK HERE for more biking picture and a turtle sighting