Our recent family trip to Petra and
Wadi Rum was enjoyable and also interesting because we can see some
things which are changing and others which have stayed the same, as
Morpheus would say.
Mother of the bullets
We visited an old Roman town called Um
Al Rassas (Mother of the bullets), which has the biggest and most
spectacular church mosaic we have ever seen. Kate felt like a real
archaeologist when she and the kids cleared away lots of sand to
reveal an amazing mosaic of two lions, which was hidden from view.
Mosaic of two lions discovered by Kate
Too much health and safety
Petra is still a place of amazing
archaeological beauty, but not as fun as it used to be since the most
interesting or exciting carved caves are now roped off in the
interest of conservation or health and safety. It is good that they
are considering these important things, since the numbers of tourists
make it necessary if Petra is to remain in good condition and for the
tourism industry to comply with international standards. But this
also makes us feel that we need to look elsewhere for a real
adventure, which has not been so sanitised.
At least they have not introduced
Western style price labelling on all the craft stalls. Whilst all the
gullible tourists were getting ripped off, Kate was using her Arabic
and her expert negotiation skills to bring the local Bedouins down to
a third of their asking price for a necklace which Kira wanted.
Petra treasury - you can't go inside anymore
Lawrence of Arabia would drive a
Jeep today
We then went to Wadi Rum to find that
it is still a great place for adventures. We hired a Bedouin to drive
us around the desert in his Jeep so that the kids (and parents) could
climb on rocks, jump around in sand dunes and explore a big canyon.
Conservationists are also voicing concerns about the impact of all
these jeeps, saying that tourists should only use camels like
Lawrence did almost one hundred years ago in this very place. We like
camel rides, but in small doses rather than the whole day, which is
what it would take to get around the sites we saw in 2 hours in the
Jeep.
Bedouin climbing the 'chicken rock'
We were impressed with the desert
campsite, which showed a good level of understanding of Western
tourist expectations, but remained authentically Bedouin.
Bob Marley and Michael Jackson
Modernisation of some things is good to
see, but not Westernisation, which could slowly erode the heritage of
authentic Bedouin culture. There is more danger of this in Petra,
where the income from tourism has increased dramatically in recent
years. The contrast can be seen in the choice of names of the animals
which Kira and Isaiah rode. In Wadi Rum the camels they rode were
called Hashish (Grass) and Irian (Naked). In Petra, the donkeys were
called Monica and Whiskey, and the horses were called Bob Marley and
Michael Jackson.
