Towse: views from the hill

 

Seen parked near the Pyramids in Giza.

I knew Petra would be stunning. I’d seen pictures.

And probably hot.

I didn’t know much else about it.

I do now. (Oh, for the day when I’ll travel with my handy-dandy Web and find answers to my questions as they pop up instead of waiting until I get home to research.)

When I write up my notes with my pictures (all 130+ of them), I’ll weave the research into what I saw and what I was told.

What surprised me most about Petra and what was totally unexpected was how stunning Petra would’ve been in its own right, without the caves and carvings. The setting is amazing. The sandstone is swirls of color. As a natural wonder, Petra would’ve been on the map.

 

Alight at the parking lot and walk a ways to the crack in the wall and enter al Siq. … or ride a horse or grab a two-wheeled cart …

As the way in is down, we were encouraged to ride the horse on the way back, if ride a horse was on the agenda, and it seemed it was, by golly. We were told we’d already paid for a horse ride and might as well take it. (Tip the horse handler $2 or 3 Jordanian dinars, but tip him at the end of your ride, if you don’t want to be dropped off prematurely, we were also advised.)

How did someone ever find that crack in the wall in the days before Petra was “built”? No aerial reconnaissance to give you a heads-up that there might be something interesting if you walked down this narrow path. … A curious, wandering someone must have headed down the path to see what there was to see.

Find the crack in the sandstone cliffs and walk down the path, through the narrow gorge with steep walls, through al Siq. These days the path is worn and crazy Bedouin drivers in horse-drawn carriages careen down the track, in a hurry to drop off their passengers and turn around and pick up more.

 

Forty-five years ago a flash flood trapped and drowned folk in this narrow gorge. Since then work has been done — a dam blocks a side gorge and diverts the water — to avoid a repeat. Not a cloud in the sky, though, so no worries.

Look up and see the cracks through the walls caused by earthquakes. Take pictures of the small carvings in the walls and then round a bend and there it is: the Khazneh, the Treasury, the first seen and most photographed/pictured building of Petra, carved into the sandstone walls many many moons ago. Worn after all these years, damaged by man and by earthquake. Still spectacular. Beautiful

 

Walk further and you enter the Wadi Musa, the wide open area of Petra with more carved buildings and spaces, the marketplace, the amphitheatre, tombs, places to climb and, of course, opportunities to buy trinkets and postcards and water. Tea, sodas, even a buffet lunch are available to keep your strength up.

More pictures to follow. Yes, 130-plus.

Beautiful. What an amazing site to see.

 

So I asked him, why the Brazilian flag? (I have a little heart pull when I see the Brazilian flag for no reason except a five-to-seven-year-old’s love of where she happened to be. … It is a lovely flag, though, isn’t it?)

Ordem e Progresso. The Auriverde. sigh

He answered (through a translator), “Why no questions about why there’s no American flag flying?” and he had his young guy (the one who worried about unfurling sails and such) unfurl an American flag.

I explained the heart pull for the Brazilian flag and he said, “Someone who rode in my felucca gave it to me. I like to fly it.”

 

More pics of him and his barefoot style of sailing later.

 

Feluccas are lovely under sail. These days it’s not financial feasible to use feluccas for anything but tourist transport from the Aswan (or wherever) side of the Nile to whatever sight-seeing the tourist(s) want to see.

The feluccas are beautiful under sail. Really really divine.

Dier Al Anba Bishoy at Wadi el-Natrun of Egypt on our way back from Alexandria to Cairo (for our flight home).

 

Charming guy. Well-spoken.

And! knew of which he spoke.

He’d been living at the monastery for twenty-seven years. He had the best voice, cadenced, mellow.

Does he believe that St. Bishoy’s body (on view in the church) has really been preserved through the graces of Our Lord for the past seventeen hundred years because Our Lord promised St. Bishoy?

Tradition has it that …

Hands Across The Divide statue (by Maurice Harron) located in the middle of a roundabout west of Craigavon Bridge in Derry.

I shot the photograph through the window of a vehicle wheeling through the roundabout. There are much better ones to be found on the Web. The statue is supposed to portray a Catholic and a Protestant tentatively reaching out to each other in peace.

We had a few hours touring around Derry after our transport set us down close to the walls. John McNulty, the guy walking us about, covered Derry history far past (Siege of Derry, 1688) and new past (the Troubles and Bloody Sunday, 1972).

McNulty had been in Derry in 1972 — although not in Bogside on that Sunday — and had a lot to say about Bloody Sunday and the Troubles. He also told us that after much work and testimony, the results from the Saville Bloody Sunday Inquiry are due out some time soon-ish. Maybe early next year.

At great cost, I might add. According to Shaun Woodward, Secretary of State, Northern Ireland Office, “The cash spend on the Bloody Sunday inquiry was £178.264 million at the end of April 2007.” with more costs sure to be added as the report gets written. Yikes.

We took a walk along the walls of Derry, spent time inside the Apprentice Boys of Derry museum,

toured the murals by the Bogside artists

and the Bloody Sunday memorial

and visited the Guildhall before coming back to our hotel for a slightly drizzly picnic lunch on the grounds.

Later on in the afternoon, John Hume joined us and gave a free-wheeling talk about life, the peace process and the universe. He wrapped up his talk by telling us what a fantastic president Hillary would be and asking us to always call Derry “Derry” not “Londonderry.”

Then Hume sang the song he claims should be the American Irish anthem, Danny Boy. He claims the song is a lament of an Irish mother to her emigrant son. Oh, but his is a lovely voice and he sang the song with heart. No dry eyes here as the song ended.

After the talk, he retreated to the Beech Hill sitting room/bar and his nibs and I order up some Smithwicks and spent an hour or so with him and other fellow travelers, chatting in too comfy chairs, helping him kill time before he and his wife, Pat, joined the gang for dinner at the hotel. Man, has that guy seen a lot of history.

Derry was an interesting place. We spent three nights at Beech Hill, but only a day in Derry. (The other full day we had was filled with an absolutely glorious walk along the Giants’ Causeway and the headlands.)

I’m glad we saw the bits of Derry we did. Glad to have heard Hume talk on the subject. Derry isn’t a place I’d return to again and again but I’m glad we stopped there for the time we did. What we experienced brought the history of the place a bit closer to heart.

The history of that region is a sad one. Here’s to the future envisioned in Hands Across The Divide. Here’s to reconciliation.