Hitch Hiking in the West Bank and headed to Petra, Jordan.

SO! The part I didnt get to in my last epic Palestine blog is that getting OUT of Israel was a fucking nightmare! Id COMPLETELY had enough by the time I left, Id spent the day in Bethlehem and was back in Israel and just couldnt help but feel pissed off at all these people who werent realising how lucky they were to be free to roam around their country, to scowl at the money in the Jewish areas and started to get really wild about being ripped off by already rich Jewish men. Headed to the bus station to get the next ticket out and back over the border to Jordan to see Petra. As we were heading through the metal dectectors and loading up our luggage on the xray machine (as you do when ur in a bus station in Israel), there was hundreds of military around, they all carry machine guns here, and because ALL 18 year olds have to do 2 years forced military service (girls included), there are a heap of babies walking around in karkies with machine guns slung over their shoulders .. also at the bus station, aside from the stock standard sight of machine guns, was a young Muslim girl, about 18 years old or so trying to lift her huge siutcase onto the xray machine ... aaaalso at the bus station was a 40something year old Jewish woman who also happened to be a fucking bitch... so the story goes like this of when I lost my cool in Israel ... I put my backpack onto the xray machine and the Muslim girl is standing right behind me waiting patiently, she tries to sling her suitcase on the xray machine but cant lift it, I tell her 'hang on just one sec love, ill give you a hand let me just put my friends bag on' .. I lift Nadia's bag onto the xray machine and then turn to help the young girl with hers. Meanwhile, cue the fucking bitch, she shoves her bag between my hands and the young girls luggage and gives me a little shove .. I look at her and say "excuse me, but I'm helping this girl with her bag, youll just have to wait a second" and I block her from putting on her bag. She looks at me as Im trying to put the huge suitcase on the machine and says "Ill go first actually" and puts her bag in FRONT of the muslim girls bag on the conveyor belt. I take her bag straight off the conveyor belt and put it BEHIND the muslim girls bag, which was actually where it should have been in the que. She grabs my wrist and says "I SAID ILL GO FIRST" .. I reply "youd wanna let go of my wrist quick smart lady, I assure you, you are most definitly NOT going first" and load the remainder of the girls things onto the conveyor belt ... she woman glares at me and I tell her that manners will get you a long way, she mutters something, I mutter back some profanity which could surely get me deported, and decide its time to put myself into time-out before I dont have to pay the departure tax at all and am deported via a military escort!!! It gets better ... after having yet another argument with a total asshole selling bus tickets, we board a bus for the King Hussein bridge border crossing (there are 3 land crossing in Israel that get you back into Jordan, one in the north, one in the south and one where we wanted to go, right in the middle) so, this asshole tells me that the bus goes all the way and finishes at King Hussein Bridge, should be about an hours ride or so. Off we go ... driving, and driving and driving .. I dont recongnise anything from the way in but who knows. The bus goes well past an hour and theres no sign of military, which would signal the border crossing. We make a fuel stop and we ask someone how much longer to King Hussein Bridge, a fellow traveller says that stop was half an hour ago and we are nearlly at the northern border crossing, which was the EXACT opposite direction of where we wanted to go in Jordan.... so we get off and are told that we can just grab a bus going back the other way in about half hour. So, there we are, standing on the side of the road in 50 degree heat waiting for a bus at 3pm, the hottest part of the day in the Palestinian desert. Also standing on the side of the road is a young Jewish boy, about 10 years old trying to hitch a ride... in the West Bank (dont really like his chances since most of the number plates were Palestinian). We decide to try and hitch also since it was boiling and there was no sign of this said bus, after nearlly an hour of us trying to get a ride (yes, hitch hiking in the west bank is safer than it sounds!), and this Jewish boy also trying to get a ride, we realise that he probably wasnt getting a ride from the Jewish cars because he was standing near us, and we probably werent getting a ride from anyone because we were standing near him . We split up and he is picked up by a Jewish family 3 mins later, we however are not, and end up waiting nearlly 2 hours for a fucking bus. So .. finally we're at the border. We go through the first Israeli military check point, have our passports stamped out, pay the bull shit fee to leave the country (which is twice the price for locals because they want to discourage people from leaving), grin and bear the rediculous questioning and smart ass tough guy comments from the military and get on the security bus which runs between the Israeli and the Jordanian border. After so much fucking around, and it now being 7pm and we left to cross the border at 8.30am (the whole thing SHOULD have taken about 3 hours but instead we ended up hitch hiking in the west bank desert!). We watch as many Palestinians (who have special permission to leave the area) are turned away, fucked over, over charged and turned away for no particular reason. On one of these occasions, we were on the shuttle bus between the Israeli border and the Jordan border and a young Palestinian mother of 3 (all VERY young kids, all under about 4 years of age) is sitting near us. She is processed through the Israeli side and is nearlly at the first Jordanian check point when 3 machine gun armed men get on to check that everyone 1- has a Jordanian visa, and 2- that everyone was stamped-out at the previous Israeli check point .. she is pulled up for not having the required Israeli stamp. She says that the Israeli officer would not stamp her passport as it wasnt necessary, which was an absolute lie. Regardless, she and her 3 babies were taken off the bus in front of EVERYONE and all her luggage put on the side of the road to wait for an authorised vehicle to take her back into Israel. As the woman is standing on the side of the road in 45 degree heat with her 3 children and piles of luggage, she bursts into tears and is sooo embarrassed. Her little girl, who I'd given a handful of lollies, waves up at me from the side of the road and her mother cant even look at me, she looks sooo ashamed and embarassed. As our bus pulls away and we leave behind a deeply ashamed Muslim woman and her 3 children who did everything by the book, but were totally set up to be fucked around and sent back .. seemingly as a punishment for being one of VERY few Palestinian woman allowed to leave the confines of Palestine and to discourage her from utilising her right and 'priviledge' to travel. An american/palestinian sitting near us explains that this happens all the time, and another woman sitting behind us pipes up that it happened to her just yesterday, that they didnt stamp her passport correctly knowing that she would be sent back from the first Jordanian check point and that perhaps the humiliation, shame and embarrassment of being pulled off a bus and sent back in front of everyone would deter them from tring to use their right to some element of freedom. ANYWAY .. we finally got out of Israel and headed straight for Wadi Musa, to see one of the 7 wonders of the world, Petra. Got into a shared taxi to face another 4 hour journey .. it was a very very long day to say the least. Arrived in Wadi Musa where we stayed for a few nights ... I was completely exhausted, my iron is pretty low and I'm really over the heat and the constant harrassment from men (which I wont go in to, but for the record, I have been very popular with middle eastern men and they find it appropriate to say things mostly of a sexual or provacative nature whenever and wherever they feel like, they graze past your breasts at leisure and almost cause themselves injuries to try and look down ur top or something, Im completely OVER IT and ready to punch on over it). So .. the only thing we really did in Wadi Musa was see the ancient city of Petra and chill out and read. Petra (where Indian Jones, the Last Crusader was filmed) is now a world heritage site and one of the 7 wonders of the world, it was truly beautiful .. amazing actually. Although much has been written about Petra, nothing really prepares you for this amazing place. It has to be seen to be believed. It is a vast, unique city, carved into the sheer rock face by the Nabataeans, an industrious Arab people who settled here more than 2000 years ago, turning it into an important junction for the silk, spice and other trade routes that linked China, India and southern Arabia with Egypt, Syria, Greece and Rome. To get in to the ancient city, you walk the 2 kilometres through an extremely impressive dark, narrow gorge called the Siq (in places its only 3–4 m wide, with cliffs as high as 80 metres flanking the walk way), its a natural geological feature formed from a deep split in the sandstone rocks and serving as a waterway flowing into Wadi Musa. Even walking through this is absolutely amazing. At the end of the narrow gorge stands Petra's most elaborate ruin, Al Khazneh (known as "the Treasury"), cut into the pink coloured sandstone cliff face. The Treasury, has a massive façade, 30m wide and 43m high, carved out of the sheer, dusky pink, rock-face and it totally dwarfs everything around it! It is HUGE! It was carved in the early 1st century as the tomb of an important Nabataean king and represents the engineering genius of these ancient people. Truly genius. The whole site of Petra takes like 8 hours or more to walk around, (the protected area is like 264,000 square metres in size) it is HUGE and there are lots of long walks up to the top of monestrys and sacred spots which can take hours. We spent like 10 hours there all up, its a looong day but really just so beautiful. There are lots of Bedouin that still live there (the nomadic tribes) in the many caves. There is a Roman-style theatre, which could seat 3,000 people, obelisks, temples, sacrificial altars and colonnaded streets, and high above, overlooking the valley, is the impressive Ad-Deir Monastery – a flight of 800 rock cut steps leads up there, which we actualy did on the back of a donkey!!! Lazy I know, but totally cute and saved about an hour of time. There is a brilliant 13th century shrine, built by the Mameluk Sultan Al Nasir Mohammad to commemorate the death of Aaron, the brother of Moses.

Anyways, the pictures speak for themselves - it was magnificent. The top two are of Siq, the path into Petra through the cliffs, which were so amazing, you could imagine a mountain actually cracking in half and it making a pathway, the two sides of the cliffs fitted inside each other perfectly. The 3rd pic down from top is the first sight of the Treasury as you come out of the Siq. The next 3 are of the Treasury. A couple of gorgeous donkeys, and then just a few of the site itself, note closely the people standing on the rocks in the photo 9 down from the top, just to give an idea of the size of this place. Check out the shot straight after the one where Im looking up at the Donkey, its taken looking up at the Monestry and a couple of retard American tough guys had climbed to the top of it and you can actually see their feet hanging over the edge at the top .. look carefully! Again, gives u an idea of the size of the place. Note the state of my dusty feet at the end of the day at Petra, of course I was wearing my Australian Hiking Boots (Havianas!). The last 2 pics are of the sunset over Wadi Musa, the town which is nearest to Petra (about 1 km away from the Petra entrance).