Petra & Wadi Rum

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.