Treating Yourself While Traveling // Petra

Sometimes when traveling, I need to get away from the brutality of travel. Sure, travel is exciting and glamorous and fun, but it can also be exhausting, trying, and anything and everything can just go completely wrong! Every traveler is bound to reach the point where they just need a break, need to take a few minutes and get back in touch with who they are and what they're doing, because it's all too easy to get caught up in the romance and the whirlwind of discovering new places and ways of life.

For me, indulgences are location and circumstance-based: For instance, in Cairo, Egypt I indulged my sore, cracked, dry feet with a pedicure in an upscale resort. (Best ~$10 pedicure of my life!) In Paris, my friends and I bought ourselves the most beautiful long-stemmed roses I'd ever seen. In Greece I indulged by spending an entire day sitting in a cafe by the marina of a tiny island, eating pastries and greek salad and surfing the internet. (After having dislocated my thumb and being stung by a Jellyfish in the span of a couple of days.) San Juan, Puerto Rico always means a trip to a certain clothing shop is in order, and Rome is a constant indulgence: Italians. Gelatto. Pasta. Ancient Ruins. Italians. Repeat.

You get the picture. Travel is OH-SO-FUN, but it can be overwhelming, disconcerting and exhausting, too. I'm not complaining, but it's important to retain a sense of balance within one's self, even when doing fun things like travel.

My latest trip to the Middle East (Israel and Jordan) called for an indulgence of it's own. Enter the Moevenpick hotel, Wadi Musa (Petra), Jordan.

The back story: After a brutal day in the hot desert sun, miles of walking and a positively disgusting dinner the night before, (at a restaurant suggested by a local, the first time such a suggestion has NOT been a winner... It happens!) my travel girls and I were ready for a bit of refinement and the guarantee of an excellent meal.

(Tip: Food in the Middle East can be tricky, especially spoilables like dairy and meats. If you're visiting during "high" season, fresh foods shouldn't be an issue. But if you're traveling during the off season pick places that look clean, have a good number of patrons inside, and try looking them up on tripadvisor.com)

The Moevenpick hotel is perhaps the poshest hotel in the valley. In stark contrast to most places in Wadi Musa, the Moevenpick is beautifully appointed, immaculately clean and well-kept, and boasts excellent, wonderfully-trained staff; a wander around the lobby had my group breathing a sigh of contented appreciation. The best decision we made (aside from visiting Petra) was to enjoy a meal at the Moevenpick's 5-star restaurant.

Trust me, if staying in this little bit of luxury isn't doable with your budget, at least treat yourself to dinner at the Moevenpick after a long day wandering Petra Park.

Beautifully presented, delicate takes on the region's most loved dishes. 

Your palate will be delighted!

NB: On the horrible photo quality: Someone famous once said "The best camera is the one you have with you." The iPhone was all I had with me for these pics.

Do you treat yourself when you travel? If so, what do you like to do?

Revisiting Petra by Night

During my first trip to Jordan, in 2010, I vividly remember sitting on a hand-woven red-striped camel-hair mat on the dusty, pink desert sand at the base of Petra's magical Treasury, listening to amazing, perfectly ambient Bedouin Rababa music echoing through the cavernous passages and thinking: Dagnabit, I really, really, really wish I had a travel tripod.

Seriously.

Yes, I really enjoyed the evening. It was, in fact, one of the most amazing experiences I'd ever had, but oh! the photos I was taking in my head! The photos I mourned the loss of never having because I wasn't properly equipped for night photography!!

So when I got home from that trip, I researched, and ordered a Joby gorillapod for future trips, but especially on the very slim, off-chance that I would ever return to Petra again. I mean, Petra is like one of the holy grails of travel! It's super remote and somewhat of an ordeal to get to. (The holy grail reference is especially funny if you've seen Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.)

Fast forward two years: I excitedly packed my gorillapod into a coveted few square inches of my suitcase and took off for the middle east, and my second visit to Petra, eager to snap those amazing night-shots of the world-heritage site! When my friends and I set out from Jerusalem, we brought simple, small overnight bags/backpacks with us, leaving our cumbersome suitcases in the suitcase locker at the convent in Jerusalem. It was the lightest I'd ever traveled, and I was very proud of my mad packing skills.

By the time we arrived in Wadi Musa, it had already been a LOOOONG day. I drove from Jerusalem to Eilat (~4 hours), and then crossed the border into Jordan with my friends (~1 hour), then took a cab from the border down into Petra, (~2.5 hours) arriving just as the sun was beginning to set over the pink hills.

So it wasn't until a few hours later that evening, about a half-mile into the mile-long trek down the Siq for the Petra by Night festivities, when I realized that I'd left my camera in the hotel room.

In a panic, I told my friends I was hiking back to the hotel and would meet them at the Treasury, ASAP. I knew I'd miss a few minutes of the musical performance, but I'd been before, and the camera was more important to me at that point.

So I high-tailed it in high gear up the hill, to my (fortuitously located) hotel room (In the Petra Guesthouse Hotel, a Crown Plaza property, no sponsorship received) and then hoofed it in a hurry back down to the performance.

I arrived, sweaty and breathing heavily from the exertion, only to realize once I'd found my friends, that I'd left my tripod in my suitcase, back in Jerusalem.

I'm sure it's a sub-conscious sabotage thing. You know, I didn't take the tripod so I'll have to go back, again...

 My travel peeps, Heidi and Rebecca

Crossing from Israel into Jordan: The Jordanian Taxi Mafia

It is not a difficult thing to cross into Jordan from Israel at the Eilat/Aqaba border and take a taxi from there to Wadi Rum or Petra, if you know what to expect. My friends and I rented a car and drove from Jerusalem to Eilat. Rental cars are not allowed to cross into Jordan (don't even try it, for locals it's a crazy process: registration, fees, switching license plates... all involved. Foreigners would never ever get away with it.) The upside is that you can expect to safely leave your rental car at the border crossing parking lot (for free). Once you cross the border into Jordan, be prepared to for a bit of a culture shift.

We had been warned in advance, luckily, about what we'd find on the far side of the Jordanian border crossing at Aqaba.

The night prior to our departure from Jerusalem to Jordan, group member Heidi did a little internet travel forum diving and discovered a blessed tip about the state of hiring taxis once across the Jordanian border. It went something like this:  "There is an evil little man who runs the taxi mafia at the border. He will try to take you for all you're worth. He reigns over the green taxis. The cab drivers are all terrified of him and he's an aggressive sunova***** The best way to avoid him is to hire a cab to take you just to the city center bus station and then hire a normal, white taxi for far less to get to your final destination."

Sold. So we were quite prepared to play it cool and mention nary a word about the fact that we were ultimately going to Petra.

Photo by: jacobzoethout, from here: http://www.virtualtourist.com/travel/Middle_East/Jordan/Muhafazat_al_Aqabah/Aqaba-1800290/Transportation-Aqaba-TG-C-1.html

"Youneedtaxi? Whereareyougoing?" The heavyset man with weasely eyes approached us immediately once we were through the border fence.

"The bus station, please." We replied firmly, with braced smiles.

I could go on all day about the ensuing conversation/negotiation/near argument, but suffice it to say that it took a solid ten minutes to convince the man that we were only going to: A) take one of his green cabs to the bus station, and B) pay the 10JOD rate listed on the sign by the taxi stand, instead of his demanded 20JOD.

The border was not very busy at all that day, so he finally acquiesced, probably figuring that ten bucks was better than nothing at all, and once we walked back to the border gate and asked the guard for walking directions to the city bus station, we'd proven we were willing to walk away. (Winning that negotiation was one of those empowering life moments, I must say.) As we got into a dusty, beaten-up cab, we handed the money to the Mafia king and he took his cut and handed the meager remainder to the driver. So sad.

Once we got to the bus station, our driver could tell we were only going directly to the other cabs, whose drivers were calling out to us in droves before we even got out of our car. So with his broken English, our border-acquired cabbie tried to negotiate a fare with us to get to Petra. We were only willing to pay an additional 35JOD (having done our research). We succeed, much to the driver's consternation.

We drove far, far out into the desert, the sand and dirt all around us changing in color from golden tan to dusty rose over time. We passed Wadi Rum desert preserve (Where Lawrence of Arabia was filmed, and where I spent a night in a Bedouin camp two years prior) and kept on going, our driver muttering curses at us in Arabic the whole time. At least I think they were curses, he kept glaring at us and muttering. Not the most pleasant experience.

Now that the drive is well over, I think it would have been much better to switch drivers.

So now you know. There is an evil Jordanian taxi mafioso at the Israeli/Jordanian border crossing at Aqaba. Be firm. Stay calm. Act like you know what you're doing. Don't anger him. Because the city center is probably a good five mile walk.

Here's a Lonely Planet forum link about the subject, discussed at length!

Capture the Color Photography Contest

www.travelsupermarket.com is hosting a clever photography contest. Bloggers can enter by publishing a blog post of photos that capture the colors blue, green, yellow, white and red.

Here's my entry:

YELLOW: 

 I shot this photo on my first trip to Rome, in 2009. Why it took me until 2009 to visit Rome, I have no clue. I fell completely in love with the old, romantic, dirty, historic, fabulous city immediately, but especially with the buttery yellow color I saw everywhere, from the buildings to the sky.

BLUE:

While in Utah for a friend's wedding, I took a drive out to remote Saltair to see the weird salt/sand flats and the Salt Lake. A storm moved through during my time there and this is one of the really cool images from that day. The sky was so gray and ominous one moment and the next moment it opened up and *Bam* hello, gorgeous blue!

RED: 

My first taste of Greece was sampled via Sailboat. I snapped this photo of my chipped, red-polished toes just before jumping into the 19ft of beckoning, brilliant blue-green waters in the cove of a tiny, near-deserted island in the Greek Dodecanese Islands. (Of course, I put the camera down first.)

GREEN:

Exploring the beautiful Wadi Rum Preserve in Jordan was, at times, kind of like being on a driving version of Disney's Jungle Cruise. I think good ol' Walt must have visited this place and tried to mimic it's utterly amazing, exploratory (Indiana Jones-ish) feel. Pink sands, crystal clear starry skies at night and an unforgettable time staying overnight with the Bedouins in Wadi Rum were topped only by my falling head over heels for this amazing, faded old army-green truck. I was offered it, as part of my dowry, if I agreed to marry the local Sheik. Sadly, I had to leave the truck, and the Sheik behind.

WHITE:

While walking across one of Stockholm's many, many bridges, (the city was built on 14 islands) I happened to look down and see this gorgeous, swirly black body of water, almost oily looking it was so black. As I pulled my camera out, several swans, native birds to that region of the world, but beautifully exotic in mine, paddled into the area. I quickly fired off several shots and was super excited about this one.

All images Copyright Christy Warnick, 2012 

For the contest, I'm nominating: @sweetbookshelf, @kellywestover_, @itravel81, @the_HoliDaze, @natthefatrat and @OopseyDaisy917

To check out this fab photo contest, click here: http://www.travelsupermarket.com/c/holidays/capture-the-colour/

2012 Calendar Project: August

The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

The hues of youth upon a brow of woe,

Which man deemed old two thousand years ago.

Match me such marvel save in Eastern clime,

A rose-red city, half as old as time.

-Dean Burgon

OH-SUM!

Place: Bedouin Camp
Time: After Dinner
Scene: A group of travelers sits around a campfire with their Bedouin host, Sheik Zahid.

Action!

Sheik Zahid to the group: "You know, I am looking for a wife. Who is free?"

Group: Uh... silence.

Pat (part of the group, one half of the "mature" couple on tour): These girls are! (Points to me, Freda and Bea)

Sheik: You know, I learn from you all (the travelers passing through his camp) over the years one thing. I say "OH-SUM!" He grinned a toothy grin and gave two-thumbs-up.
 
...

Somehow, I ended up being cornered as the Sheik's next wife.


?
Oh-sum! As a person who takes things very literally I was flabbergasted! Was this a joke? What should I do? I didn't want to be rude!

But then again, when push came to shove, there was NO WAY I was getting married.

Not that night. Not to the Sheik.


But, he did offer me a very handsome dowry:
"What do you want? I will give you three Jeeps, one racing Camel (which are super expensive, who would have guessed? ... as in about $100k!), horses, goats, sheep, a gray mule, chickens, a cook, a house in Wadi Rum, a house on the beach in Aquaba. Gold, silver... Oh and my parents and family would move out there and we would all become Muslims.

Riiiiight.

Decidedly, this was all fun and games. (But dagnab, why don't American men make offers of marriage like that???)

And then there was much laughter over sugar-coated roasting marshmallows. The Sheik complemented me on my roasting technique.

"This is a very good woman."

And when my fiance lit up a cigarette I firmly put my foot down: "No smoking!"

And he grinned and repeated "This is a very good woman. See how she cares about my health! Oh-Sum! (Two-thumbs-up)" And then he took a long drag on the cigarette.

And before we all turned in for the night I told him "Make sure you brush your teeth!"

And he said "Oh-Suum!"

Sahara Sunset

The details to exploring Wadi Rum by Jeep were many and fascinating. We made quite a few stops on our tour, which turned out to be quite comical as some of the stops were less than two minutes apart... as in: Stop, sit in a tent, sip some tea, get back in the Jeep and drive for two minutes before stopping, looking at some rocks or seeing something else and then getting back in the Jeep.

You see?

It all reminded me very much of the Jungle Ride at Disneyland. You know the one. I hope you do.

But eventually we made our last stop for the evening. Nestled in a cleft between rocky cliffs, perched on a large shelf lay several Camel-hair Bedouin tents. We were to spend the night at Bedouin camp.

 One of the "Jeeps" parked outside of camp. I'm pretty much in love with that old truck. And this photo.

Our host for the evening was a wealthy Sheik by the name of Sheik Zahid. A fifty-something Muslim Bedouin man with a Wicked sense of humor and a comic's sense of timing.
The man was Fuh-knee.
Plain and simple.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.
There will be an entire blog entry dedicated to the Sheik's comedy.

Meanwhile...

Our first order of business on arrival at Bedouin camp was to stash our stuff in a tent.

Travelers are worried about security. Did you know?

They are.

Constantly.

They are worried about their passports and cash and backpacks full of belongings. Because, well, wouldn't you be if those things were your lifeline in a foreign place?

So as we travelers all piled our backpacks into a tent, I spied nearly everyone staking out their own personal "corner" full of space and looking about themselves as if they were setting up an explosive-laden perimeter around their stuff.

When you have a good group of travel companions, a group you trust, it makes life much easier. We were a good group. And so even though we all initially eyeballed the situation in the tent as a possible breach of personal security, the consensus was quickly reached that heck, we were cool. And stuck in the middle of the Sahara desert together with no way out. So there. And then we left the tent.

Set up in the middle of a square of tents was a large, matted area. Geometrically patterned carpets covered the sand and floral foam mattress pads lined the perimeter of the carpeted area. We all took up residence on a mattress pad and staked out an area. And then we did nothing. Absolutely nothing. And we were quite thrilled with the change of pace and shell shocked at the same time.

You see we had been traveling hard and fast. And to be presented with the opportunity to do nothing felt both thrilling and extravagantly sinful all at the same time. But there really was nothing to do, no chores, no exploring, no task list. And so we lounged for a glorious hour.

Have you ever been in a place that feels calm? It feels wondrous and quiet and to talk would seem to breech a sort of ceremonious aura? This was what Bedouin Camp felt like. No one needed to chat or be loud and boisterous, as normally our group would have been. Perhaps it was the calming effect of the Sheik. A respectful silence.  I rather think so. Because when he talked, we listened. When he joked, it was done masterfully to a controlled, captive audience in nature's theater full of quiet sound and ambiance.

Around 6:30 the Sheik motioned for us to get up and told us it was time to walk a few yards over and watch the Sun set over the valley. We continued in a reverenced silence as we walked along and each found a perch along the rocky ledge.

 You have to love a travel itinerary that schedules this in: 

"Watch the sunset from a cliff-top in the Desert Camp at Wadi Rum."

It was an unforgettable sunset. Golden rays of sun bouncing off of rough, smooth, holey and solid walls of red. Copper-red sands blew gently on the valley floor, dancing in a light wind. The rays of light bent the colors minute by minute, constantly changing the scenery to deeper, richer hues and tones. And when the sun sank finally behind mountainous surrounding walls we were left with a blank sky, waiting for the moon to rise.

Buyer's Remorse

I did it.
I booked my tour, hotels and most of my flights (save one... because I really can't decide what to do after Cairo). And with the new year, my four and a half month countdown is so real it's practically screaming at me. I'm so excited I can barely keep my toe tapping to a minimum at work. Now I strap in, buckle up, bear down. Now I scrimp and save and cut out the frivolity in my budgeting so that I can actually go on this trip comfortably. Over-prepare now. Then go with the flow.

Now the weight of what I've done sets in. It shocks me: I've really just decided to go to specific places, I've pinned down the dream vacation (this year's)... No more lazy days of wondering where I'll go and what I'll do when I get there. No more TripAdvisor top 10 lists (and thereafter maniacal bouts of research on those places). There is something more specific in the air now. Rome, Jordan. Egypt... (And maybe Naples, Capri, Pompeii too?)

But what of Marrakesh, Casablanca, Tangier? Athens, Cyprus, Crete? Capetown, Tel Aviv, Sydney, Jerusalem, Bali, Istanbul? What happened to sailing around the Caribbean in a 40-foot sailboat? What about San Juan?

These un-traveled-to places taunt me. They whisper mean things to me, much like a Mother who wants a visit: "Why aren't you coming here this year? Why aren't you here now? How could you think to pass us over like that? And just how much longer do you think you can keep up these crazy, unbridled travels before you stop?" I just smile back at them and say "You don't know me at all do you?... Well, except you, San Juan, my love." And I wink at San Juan. He smiles back that dark and devastatingly addictive tropical smile. I waver and think to run back to him. But only for a second.

And then we all sit quietly together in my head. Hands folded neatly in laps, feet tapping the floor.

Because the elephant in the room for all of us is that they don't know me. And I don't know them. Not yet. Perhaps not this year. But in the years to come, who knows? And anyway, places don't know people. Places don't care about people, they only care about being the ever-changing yet always true to itself place that they are. But people can know places, and I will know those places, and that is my point.

Just for now, wait. Wait. I'll be there soon. And I'm not remorseful.