My second time to Petra was more interesting than the first. Me and Frederik covered the same amount of sights in half the time compared to my last visit, and we took some amazing climbs up the various hills around the hidden city. For example, we headed up the stairs to the High Place of Sacrifice. From this mountaintop and destroyed temple, we had a beautiful view of the whole city. Amazingly, as we were up there, a windy front rolled in and caused a sand storm in the valley below. Very weird sight. Poor tourists. We also climbed to the top of the theater, which was awesome. I didn’t do it last time because it was closed by fences, but this time I just followed the Berserker Viking on his quest for ever higher heights. And man, was it great. From up high, it gives you another great view of the city and you can imagine the roar of 8,000 Nabataeans.
This last Thursday, I also visited the Kerak and the Dead Sea for the first time. The first part of the day was spent at Kerak castle, a Crusader caste from the 1200s. It’s mostly rubble on a hill, but the walls still stand. The most amazing parts are hidden deep underground and constituted the stables and living quarters of the Crusaders; they are magnificant multi-level halls, going down as far as four different levels. Later on the day, as Frederik and I drove down from the mountains to the lake’s shoreline, we could see a weather front roll in from over the hills in Israel. Just our luck. We were in time for the sunset, but alas, the clouds rolled in and that was it. We went to the Dead Sea Marriot Hotel, mistakenly bought 2 dinner vouchers thinking they were entrance tickets for the spa (which is the only way to go into the Dead Sea and enjoy a needed shower afterwards), but got in anyway thanks to a nice security guard. The feeling of not being able to sink is very strange. I got the hang of floating after one panicky help-I’m-going-to-sink-like-a-rock arm splash, getting the salty water into my eye –- not a recommended experience. The trick is to just stretch to keep your balance. After having been in the water for a while, I dutifully rubbed the last bit of mud from one of the jars at the beach on my body. Then I just sat back and enjoyed the view over the lowest part (400 meters below sea level) of planet Earth.
