PETRA

Made it to Petra. Brain worn out. Three hours of trying to talk to and understand the cab driver from amman has been fatiguing.
Waiting to check-in.
Can't get the Internet to work on my phone. Have come to take it for granted.

I figured out how to stay In touch using the phone system. It costs money but I will be prudent.

Decided to take a preliminary walk down into Petra this evening and then go through it more extensively tomorrow. Heading up and out, many people ride out in all carts pulled by bedraggled horses. The owners switch them going down and switch them heading back to the beginning.
This is somewhat like hiking into the Grand Canyon, easy to go down, difficult to climb after a hot day in the desert sun.

Petra, in all it's spectacular, barren brutality, compares so oddly with Jerusalem. On the one hand , the divisive elements have long since disappeared. No one is going to die to claim this piece of ground, but it feels so much like the Damascus Gate entrance to the Old City. The overarching, claustrophobic path downwards into the earth. And the hordes of people, the vendors of "antique", "museum quality !" doodahs. But missing are the smells.
It would be hard to look forward to anything after this; glad I saved it til last.
I'm glad that it is this impressive because I am getting tired of traveling.
I am eating outside, in the roof garden restaurant of the hotel. One thing that I have avoided doing is being very adventurous in finding little, out of the way, Arabic spots.
I like eating outside, if I'm eating alone, because the sky and the breezes are like eating with old friends, and, as the sky darkens, the stars.

Well, the music just changed from soft Arabian to soft easy-listening.
"I can't help falling in love with you" and then on to "My way". Shameless.
Just in time, back to soft Arabic.
I scheduled with Mahmod, the cab driver who drove me down here, to call him and tell him if I needed him to come and take me back to Amman. I asked one of the waiters if he would help me call. He wanted to what it was all about. When I explained, he said his father would do it. Same price.
Cutthroat world, this.


My brother calls me in the middle of the night and tells me that my mother is very sick and that he needs a power of attorney. I sent him an email saying that I will go along with their decisions.
I'm glad that I am in the going-home process.
More tomorrow.


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