You Can Ride My Donkey...But It Will Cost You

Tehva is the dirtiest child in the developed world.

If the theories on asthma and allergies are correct, and if they do in fact develop in some children as a result of an overly-sanitary environment, then Tehva will never develop these types of health issues. And neither will her children. In fact, I am currently questioning our decision to have had her immunized at all as I am pretty sure that she has been exposed to and developed immunity to all varieties of the pox and all major parasites. She is, in short, a mess, and nothing has brought that out more strongly than Petra.

We arrived in the cowboy town of Wadi Musa in the evening as everything was just coming alive. Poorly spelled, hand-painted signs were at every turn—“Highly Recommendeb Coffee” and “Enjoy You Tim Here” and “Wel Come to Petra!”—optimistic to the end, it felt like we had truly arrived at Jordan’s premier backpacker grotto. We parked the car, called our hosts, Vale and Ali, and then settled in to wait for one of them to turn up.

Tehva wandered over to a tree and summarily began stripping it of pine cones, alternating between shoving them in her pockets and tossing them cheekily at a group of Chinese tourists trying to flash photos of her endeavors. When she came back to us, she had a scalp full of pine cone bits, bulging pockets, and a scowl on her face. She growled at Silas but deigned to allow Tony to help her into the back of Ali’s pickup truck for the trip through town to their place.

The next morning we dressed all three kids as tidily as we could manage after a week on the road with less than a week’s worth of clothing and headed to Petra. After selling a kidney to pay for the entrance fee (“Well, at least it’s cheaper than a day at Disney Land!”—I really tried to put a positive spin on the price of admission) we entered into day one of, well, Petra. Really, I wasn’t sure what to expect, other than to pay a fortune for admission, to become dehydrated, and to be harassed endlessly by little boys with donkeys.

The donkeys minus the little boys

We wandered down through the Siq, which is a long, narrow rock corridor that stretches about 800 shaded meters 

and terminates here:

The Treasury, minus Indiana Jones

It is the answer to why the ancient Nabataens put their city where it did--nobody can get in or out of Petra without being seen and heard coming through the Siq. 

Within minutes of entering the Siq, fifteen people had asked Tehva if she wanted to ride their horses. One boy offered with a wink to have Tian ride his monkey. Tehva’s clothing went from clean to dingy by virtue of the fact that she was stroking each pack animal as we passed by, but by the time we arrived at the The Treasury, we had lost Tehva.

Not to worry, though, we found her here:

With her BFF, the Treasury-side seller

  

Now that we were in front of the Treasury, we had to contend with offers of camel rides, postcards, carriage rides, jewelry, Bedouin tea with sage, and tiny carved animals with even tinier carved animals inside. At the same time our attention was drawn to Russian touristas wearing high heeled shoes (how is it they haven’t fallen over yet?), Chinese tourists snapping thousands of photos with rapid fire, high-tech cameras,  Korean tourists demanding that their travel companions take another photo over here, and hundreds of Arab League nationals filling in the blanks. We never noticed Tehva bathing herself in the fine dust that drifts down from the stone walls.

The distraction of watching the world watch Petra

Even the locals enjoy the show

We walked further into the ruins and into an area with a coliseum carved from the rock itself. In the confusion of the open marketplace that has evolved in this area, we lost Tehva completely, found her again, discovered her jacket was gone, found her jacket, and then lost her again. She was in her element—in a half-cobblestoned, half-dust strewn confusion of color and motion. Within an hour she was completely camouflaged by the reddish-brown dust. Having smeared herself with handful after handful of the soft, cold stuff, she looked like any one of the Bedouin children who were prowling the area with pockets stuffed full of trinkets to pawn.

Here's a taste of Petra Day One--Find Tehva

What, you can't find her? Neither could we.

She disappeared completely for an hour and Tian found her trying to sell rocks for a dinar a pop (about a dollar apiece), standing next to the Roman ruin of a nymphaeum. She ran off again and then turned up at the very back of the ruins, near the Crusaders’ castle. She was on the back of a donkey, accompanying two boys named Omar and Abdullah. She had struck a bargain with the boys, promising them that she would help them attract tourists to ride their donkeys through the ruins. She had proposed a 30-70 split of the profits, with them receiving the larger share since they were the ones supplying the transportation.

Guiding the people in Petra

I gave up on Tehva for the rest of the day, abandoning her to the siren call of a life spent selling overpriced rides on pack mules. By the end of that first day, she had befriended the majority of the Bedouin children working within Petra, or at least manipulated them enough to allow them to think that they had been befriended. 

Tehva and her new BFFs, Rami and Monika the Mule

By the end of the second day she had her own puppy and was inexplicably riding a donkey named Layla through Petra freely, without a guide. When asked whose donkey it was, she just shrugged and said, “It’s my friend’s. If you want a ride, I will give you one but you will have to pay me 7 dinar.”

Her new best friend, Rami, had invited her to come live with him in the Bedouin village, and we considered sending her. After all, a trip there might allow her to find a new home for her puppy, and the possibility of a dowry loomed large in our minds. It just might help offset the cost of admission to Petra! But in the end, Tehva chose to come back with us. She even submitted to a shower, and sleeps at this very moment, clean and smelling sweet, across the room from me.

So I guess I should have started out by saying that Tehva was the dirtiest child in the developed world. However, she is also one of the cleverest. She managed to spend two days in Petra doing exactly what we all wanted to do—she spent 80% of her time on horseback/muleback/donkeyback and never paid a penny for the privilege. She ran with the Bedouin children, spent the entire day drinking sweet sage tea, and was indulged at every turn.

There is something to be said for being dirty. And for being Tehva.
 

On the Road to the Valley of the Crescent Moon

We arrived in Wadi Musa (that translates roughly as Moses’s Valley River) after two days in the warm but pricey embrace of the Dead Sea. Staying in a five-star resort was the big splurge of our trip and we had to half-starve the kids to afford two nights there. I thought, therefore, that they would be relieved to go, but the hunger must have gone to their heads because there was much gnashing of teeth as we left the Dead Sea resort strip.

The Dead Sea cost such a fortune that we were left to scavenge for salt crystals

We had just stopped at an over-priced shop for a bagful of dry goods to keep us in eats for the trip away from the Dead Sea and back into the mountains, and were pulling away from the store when Tian sighed and said, “Silas, what was your favorite part of the trip so far?”

He sighed in response and looked out the window. “I loved the Dead Sea resort.”

Tian’s tummy rumbled (because she hadn’t eaten much in the previous 48 hours—no outside food allowed past the X-ray machines and the resort charged five-star prices) and then she sighed. “I also loved it. It was my favorite part, too.”

Ah, the medicinal mud

They sighed and reminisced for most of the first hour of our drive, while we followed the wide, two-laned King’s Road. “Do you remember when we floated in the Dead Sea? That was amazing.”

And the medicinal waters

 “Yes, and the mud scrubs we did? Those were great. My skin still feels soft.”

Lovin' the mud

Along the road up toward Petra

Looking back at the valley we had climbed. Sheep ahead...

They continued like this until we finally saw a small brown sign directing us off of the main road and up into the mountains. The road took us past a collection of canvas tents stamped in faded blue ink with UNHCR. “Refugee camp?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” These tents were another reminder of what we kept running into here—Syria and her plight. Tourism was down, the Jordanians said, because of Syria. Fewer jobs were to be had in the country in general because of the Syria. Food prices were up because of Syria. In the Dead Sea resort we had been insulated from this reality, although only barely. Just before we were waved through the final security checkpoint that guards the Dead Sea from the rest of Jordan, we had passed a ramshackle sprawl of UNHCR tents. 

Syria and the collection of refugees we were passing at that moment quieted everyone for a bit, but just a bit. Tian fell asleep. Silas gazed out the window at the mountains, and the rows of tomato plants that were ripe for harvest. Tehva listened to a book. We snaked further into the mountains and into a tiny village. And then another tiny village. None of these villages had names. Were we going the right way? I was once again reminded that we were without a map in an Arabic-speaking country where none of us spoke enough Arabic to get past, “Where is the toilet?” and “Give me the red ball.”

And then Tony brought the car to a screeching halt.

Oh crap

A sea of goats and sheep surrounded us on a crumbling road hanging off of the side of cliff. We sat like the Americans we are, unsure of how to react to a flock of livestock in the middle of road. Should we honk the horn? Turn around? Sit patiently and wait? Step out of the vehicle and flag the nearest shepherd?

“Silas, will you get out of the car, please, and get the sheep out of the road?” It came out of my mouth almost before I could conceive of the brilliance of my solution.

Instant shepherd

Silas jumped out, did a few “Yah”s, and the way forward opened, like the parting of the Red Sea. And how appropriate that this parting landed us very quickly in the town of Wadi Musa, Moses’s River Valley, and in the town that abuts Petra. You know? Petra.

Yes, you know. Petra.