About two months ago, I moved to Vancouver, in beautiful British Columbia, Canada. Alas, I have not spent too much time here, and I'm already moving away. Over the last two months, I spoke at a conference in DC, attended another one in Vegas, and spent two weeks in Seattle. Leaving me with far too little time to actually enjoy the new town.

The view from the roof is great.



In the backdrop of the first roof picture above, you can clearly see a white building that looks somewhat like a large ship. This is in fact the Canada Place Cruise ship terminal. Quite a few ships dock here, sailing to as nearby as Alaska, or as far away as the Netherlands.


While passing through a few days earlier, Holland-America Lines' ms Statendam vessel was actually docked. Though not all travellers were from the Netherlands, you could sense a buzz of Dutchness in the air during those few days. Not too surprising, as the Statendam can take up to 1,200 passengers.



The somewhat strange looking piece of architecture below is the Vancouver Art Gallery. It's one of the two musea which I really wanted to visit. The other one, the Museum of Anthropology, with a sizeable exhibition regarding First Nation people, unfortunately closed down for several months due to renovations.



As I live in crosstown, I'm only one block away from Vancouver's Chinatown. The building to the left, owned by Jack Chow insurance, is the world's narrowest building.




In weekends, inhabitants of Vancouver spent an indecent amount of time in their little jewel, Stanley Park. It's one of the largest urban park areas in the world, and has plenty of attractions, including the Vancouver acquarium.


Ever since arriving, I've been wondering why I had such a good impression of the Vancouver Acquarium, despite never having visited it. In the meanwhile, I discovered why. As a kid, the public TV station in Belgium broadcast the Canadian television series "Danger Bay". As a seven year old, I eagerly watched it every week. Turns out that in every single episode, the Vancouver acquarium was featured.


Float planes are incredibly popular here. This makes sense, due to the large distances in Canada, and remote populations that are just plain difficult to visit by road. Looking below, you can see the houses end up on the hillside of West Van. Well, that's were they end. Really. The next city is hundreds of miles away and is most likely what we would dub a small village.



Finally, a picture of Vancouver's number one tourist attraction, the Capilano Suspension Bridge.



The Capilano suspension bridge is 136 metres long, and some 70 meters high. It was built in 1888 by George Grant McKay, the then City Park Commissioner of Vancouver. He built the bridge together with two First Nations inhabitants of the area.

Interestingly, in 1999 an 18 month old child was dropped by her mother while crossing the bridge. The child survived without serious injuries. She ended up suing the company that maintains the bridge, but the case was settled out of court.

I don't know for certain whether it has anything to do with it, but today, there's a "watcher" sitting next to the bridge at all times to make sure this silliness doesn't happen again. (Oh yeah- the bridge does move when you walk across)

In addition to the bridge, you can do a leisurely walk through the surrounding thriving coastal forest. There are several pools with trout, and the Capilano river itself is populated with salmon from June through September.

Tel Aviv. As seen from Old Jaffa.

The last two days of my travels were spent in Tel Aviv, the closest major city to Ben Gurion airport. Tel Aviv is really a beach city with great quality of life for its inhabitants. It's filled with little coffee shops, friendly and outgoing people and absolutely wonderful falafel and shoarma places.

Tel Aviv. Beach city.

Tel Aviv. Town hall. The duck was placed there as a sign of protest against Tel Aviv's architectural style.

Tel Aviv'ians are some of the most moderate Israelis around. Many of them are mostly interested in establishing good quality of life for their family and themselves. Unfortunately, in a conflict this deep in society, pain transcends everywhere.

An Israeli friend made me aware of this sign, which states in Hebrew "Never stop dancing". It's placed in front of what used to be the Dolphin disco, a beach-side place very popular with the Tel Aviv youth. June 1st, 2001, a suicide bomer walked into it, carrying on him a small explosive device filled with screws and nails to make it a highly lethal tool.

While it was never fully clear who was behind the bombing, Israel accused Jamal Mansour, a Hamas political leader who originated from Nablus. He was killed on July 31st of that same year when an IDF helicopter fired on the building of his research organization.

It's clear that the conflict brings much grief on both parts of the population. While there are ways to deal with territorial conflicts, the narrative on both ends in Israel has become so charged that it's almost impossible to navigate the requirements on both sides and get to a solution.

In Tel Aviv, I actually got shouted at for the first time in many years, by a couple of Americans on so-called "birtright" trips. Essentially these are trips in which foreign Jews are invited to visit their ancestrial homeland, and see whether they wish to take up their birthright to live in Israel.

While I'll greatly miss the many fantastic Israelis and Palestinians I've met during my stay in the country, I will not miss the opinion that precludes in some areas in which Genesis 13:15 is given more importance than a UN resolution or the human bond of an agreement.

Something truly sad happened while I was in Jerusalem. Around lunchtime, July 2nd, a Palestinian inhabitant of East Jerusalem who worked for a construction firm building a new railway system in the city, used his bulldozer to flip over a bus, and crush several vehicles. The entire rampage left three people dead, in one of Jerusalem's busiest streets, Jaffa Road.

One of the primary responses which was brought up by public opinion was to "fence off Eastern Jerusalem", which would essentially make its inhabitants West Bank palestinians. It would also violate Israel's own principle of keeping Jerusalem "undivided". While it would increase the potential for a Palestinian 2-state solution to work, it would also cut masses of people out of their job and decrease their living standards. As such, doing so in response to an event like this would be rash, and any such decision should need to be discussed at a much higher level.

Ehud Olmert, the Israel Prime Minister did decide against this solution, as East Jerusalem residents, under law, have similar rights to other Israelis and could as such not be detained or "moved away".

This just to illustrate that people here are very much living next to another instead of with eachother. If public opinion calls for part of the society to be abandoned, that society really hardly exists.

Jerusalem and inhabitant. Picture from the Mount of Olives.

Jerusalem, final destination of this overland trip, and one of the most contentious places in the whole world. Nowhere else do you find as many ancient relics important to the major religions, in many cases to two or three of them. The largest city in Israel, it is squished between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. I stayed there for about a week, much of it in East Jerusalem, which until the 1967 Six-Day War was a part of Jordan, not so much Israel.

People living in this part of the city have Israeli permanent residency, but mostly identify themselves with the Palestinians. East Jerusalem is also home to the majority of tourist sights, which makes for a lot of religious tourists visiting.

Most of the sights are located in the Old City, the walls of which you can see in the picture above. Much of the inside of the old city consists of small souqs, or shopping streets, which tend to get very busy during the day.

Jews consider Jerusalem a sacred site as it housed the original Solomon's Temple. Today still, the Temple Mount and the Western Wall play a large role in Jewish cultural society.

Jewish comparative study of biblical texts (so-called Midrash) claims the Temple Mount to be the initial spot from where the world expanded to  its present form. It was the spot where God gathered the dust to create the first man.

The Western Wall, or Kotel, has a dual role, both in Islam and Judaism. Jews consider it the sole remnant of the Holy Temple, destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. It is strongly believed the wall will never be destroyed by promise of god, and it is frequently visit to pray and mourn the destruction of the holy temple.

At the same time, it's the closest place Jews can go to the Even ha-shetiya or Foundation Stone, as Jews are not permitted to go onto temple mount.

In Islam, the Western Wall appears to have gained importance only relatively recently. As Christians did, they used to refer to the wall as a "wailing wall" due to the Jewish conduct regarding the site. However, it is now considered as the place where Muhammad tethered Buraq, a creature from the heavens that carried him from Mecca to Medina. In the recent past, a war of words has erupted denouncing the validity of either Jewish or Islamic claims to religious importance of the wall.


Jerusalem, Western Wall. The Western or "wailing" wall


Jerusalem, Old Town. Temple Mount.


Jerusalem, Old Town. Shopping streets.


West Jerusalem. City center.

While West Jerusalem is only a five minute walk away from the Eastern suburbs, it feels like a different country. The East feels like most of the Muslim countries I visited on the trip, while the East feels like back in Europe. There are some distinctions though, that show an uneasy combination of life: even entering a coffee shop is a bit more tense. You're requested to open up your bags and show their content before being allowed entry. In addition, it's quite obvious that most East Jerusalem inhabitants routinely get their passports checked while moving around.

Both parts of the city have historically been split, and only since 1967, when East Jerusalem was annexed, has the city been joined together. Palestinians have always viewed East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state, whilst a lot of different players have very different views on its future: the United Nations, in resolution 478 called the Israeli law which annexed Jerusalem as the "complete and united" capital of Israel to be void. However, in 1990, the US Senate adopted a resolution stating Jerusalem was Israel's capital and should remain an "undivided city".

Many of the parties with an interest to the conflict, or whom often portray themselves as mediators clearly do have some strong statements indeed.


Har'Homa. Neighborhood/settlement in East Jerusalem.

During the 2001 Taba summit in Sinai, Israel did show itself to be inclined to a solution in which Jerusalem would really be the capital of two states - Israel and Palestine, with sovereignty of each states over neighborhoods with dominance of its respective peoples. Unfortunately, as so many before, a peace agreement was never reached.

In the meanwhile, solving the territorial issue has become more complicated. In the picture above, you can see Har'Homa, by Israel considered to be an integral neighborhood of East Jerusalem, populated by Jews. However, the settlement is built upon a hill and is not directly connected to East Jerusalem with the exception of public transport. While people living their do not consider themselves to be settlers in the same way as the people in Hebron, Har'Homa is conveniently located between East Jerusalem and Betlehem on the West Bank. Future territorial resolutions in which East Jerusalem can be latched onto the West Bank as the Palestinian capital become significantly more difficult as time passes.

About two years ago, I spent an evening sitting in an alternative movie theater watching "Paradise Now". Despite the convincing title, the movie actually doesn't portray paradise, but the life of Palestinians trying to make their way there - it shows the background behind a suicide bombing. While it was a good story, and I'm controversially happy to see humanization of any conflict (public opinion tends to be too black and white), what really stuck with me was the sheer beauty of the city of Nablus, where the story is told.

Nablus, population 134,000 is one of the largest population centres in the West Bank, and is located approximately 60 kilometers from Jerusalem, strategically wedged in between rocky Mount Ebal, and Mount Gerizim, home of the Samarians. Abroad, it's most well known for the olive soap which is made locally but exported as well.


Most countries advise against travel to Nablus, as it has the reputation of being a hotbed of the Palestinian resistance. In many ways, it is. Dating back as far as 1936-1939, the city was a site of local resistance against the British Mandate. Today, it harbors many of these same sentiments against Israel's presence in the West Bank, and Israel. Regardless, Nablus is in many ways a very safe city with little violent crime.

Much of the protest history can still be seen today. Nablus' city centre is covered in protest signs, memorials for martyrs and generally people being very interested in what is happening outside their down.

This makes sense, as Nablus is one of the most isolated cities in the West Bank. The hills are effectively no-go zones for Palestinians, as they are either difficult to climb, or are the home of other population groups, such as the Samaritans, a religion based on the Torah. Their entire population group is only 712 large, of which the majority live on Mount Gerizim.

In order to enter or exit their city, inhabitants need to pass through the infamous Huwarra checkpoint in the South, or Beit Iba in the North. At both checkpoints, any luggage and identification is verified while Palestinians wait inside a mantrap. Foreigners are allowed to pass next through the mantrap after a brief check on the ID, and some questions on "why did you visit Nablus?". Because of the sheer beauty of the hills, madam.

Fact of the matter is that this checkpoint actually has proven its use: at a small number of occasions, someone was in fact caught with pipe bombs while exiting the city. Regardless, the way they are set up deprieves denizens of the city from their humanity, and thus increases the long term chance of violence. It's truly sad.

I'm pretty sure there is no real solution here. At college I had a decent look at resource mobilization theory, which essentially states that while frustration incites violence, resources make it happen. Removing the checkpoints removes frustration in the long run, but in the very short run makes for a massive influx in resources. Adding checkpoints and barriers, as is currently happening in Israel, starves the society from resources, but increases frustration. As such, the path currently taken is one of long term violence, and the path which could lead to a mid-term solution is socially unacceptable.



As mentioned, Nablus is littered with signs and monuments honouring martyrs for the Palestinian cause. At first these look very intimidating, especially due to the manner in which some of them are depicted. Many of them are wearing bulky shirts or weapons.

This is in sharp contrast to the local people themselves, who are also more than happy to tell you the story behind each and every one of them.

It's important to have some background as well: Nablus, as the centre from where resistance is often organized, is under curfew for quite a few days every year. In a period starting June 2002, granted, during the second Intifada at a period of intense violence, Amnesty International reported over 70 days of 24-hour curfews across the city.

As the IDF forces regularly enter the city, violence is common. Crackdowns generally happen on members of specific organizations, such as Hamas. During these crackdowns, deaths are not uncommon. As such, not all these "martyrs" are suicide bombers or people who took someone else's life. Many of them were innocent bystanders.

People in Nablus are generally very outgoing. They tend to ask foreigners where they are from, and love striking up a conversation (as far as their English and your Arabic takes you). I actually ended up in a local spicery factory, tasting some of their local tea and discussing the location of Belgium in Europe with a couple of students, one of them leaving to study medicine in Germany shortly.

Nablus. Water melon salesmen.

Ever since the annexation of East Jerusalem, the town of Ramallah has served as the unofficial capital of the Palestinian Authority. It's a city of some 118000 which contains some of the most thriving businesses of Palestine, as well as several government institutions, such as the "Palestine Standards Institution".



Getting to Ramallah from East Jerusalem is a breeze - a wide road runs there and you generally don't need to pass through any checkpoints. However, easy isn't exactly my middle name, so together with three friends we decided to make our way there from Hebron. This is an interesting adventure, as it shows the difficulties Palestinians encounter in getting to their capital.

Based out of East Jerusalem, it's easy to take a sherut, or service taxi from the city centre to Ramallah. These taxis wait until full, and then depart for Jerusalem. Prices are relatively low, not more than 10-15 sheckles each. Inhabitants of East Jerusalem are permitted to enter the West Bank, and thus can run these lucrative taxi routes.

When you're based in Hebron, on the other hand, you're based in the Palestinian Territories. Palestinians are not permitted to enter Jerusalem, and as such cannot take the main highway through Jerusalem towards Ramallah. They would end up at one of the many checkpoints along the security fence, and would be turned back (at best). Below is a picture of the Calandia checkpoint, which shields Ramallah from Jerusalem.



Instead, they have to take smaller Palestinian roads which circle all the way around Jerusalem. This UN map gives a good few of the intricacies involved. In all, getting to Hebron from Jerusalem takes about 35 minutes, getting to Ramallah from Jerusalem about 15, and getting from Ramallah to Hebron about 2h30. And even during that trip, an unexpected checkpoint was thrown up, where I was interrogated as to my business in Ramallah by an IDF soldier. Tourism didn't seem to be an effective answer. Antonio, a Venezuelan whom I was making the trip with, suggested "Buying the handicrafts". Have to try that next time.

Once we got there, the people were amazingly friendly. The guy in the picture at the top of this blog entry noticed I was photographing the view from Ramallah's main drag, and we ended up having a nice chat with them, all local students. Shortly afterwards, Sam, a local business owner told us about his local business, a Chicago-style fast food restaurant, and the three US branches he had recently started. They're all over in the US, and run by his brother, but once I make it there I'll certainly pay them a visit. Being a Palestinian, he couldn't deliver to Jerusalem. Too bad.

Ramallah initially gained importance in the Palestinian sense when it was chosen by Yasser Arafat to contain the Mukata'a, or the Palestinian West Bank headquarters. Arafat, depending on your source either the greatest figure in Palestinian life, or the one blockade to every near-Peace agreement, was locked into his Mukata'a by the IDF after attending a meeting there during which a twin suicide bombing took place in Haifa.

It currently still houses its grave, which is treated with significant respect by the local population. The Mukata'a still serves as the West Bank office of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas.

Compared to many other countries, Palestine is a very moderate Islamic society, and Ramallah actually has a female mayor, Janet Mikhail. The entire conflict also isn't much grounded in religion versus religion, but is neck deep into a territorial conflict. Religion however doesn't make it much easier by imposing requirements in the sidelines which are not compatible with actual peace.

"The LORD said to Abram after Lot had parted from him, "Lift up your eyes from where you are and look north and south, east and west. 15 All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring forever. 16 I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone could count the dust, then your offspring could be counted. 17 Go, walk through the length and breadth of the land, for I am giving it to you." (Genesis 13:15)

If the reader kindly permits me, I'll wander off the chosen path and hop back to a swell summer evening in August 2007. Location is the Chaos Communications Camp, a somewhat anarchist but always interesting gathering of hackers, freedom fighters and eccentrics alike which takes place every four years in a field near Berlin.

During one of the many evening festivities, a small number of fire breathers were invited. This skill, which originates from India dates back to the days when man and dragon lived together in peace and exchanged skills. It consists of using the power of breathe, combined with a mixture of alcohol and fire to propel gigantic flames into the sky.

At the Camp, a number of Germans decided it interesting to burn their national flag. While not considered an "acceptable" act, most Europeans are actually relatively unemotional when it comes to this image of national unity, and the net result was an even more crowdy and active crowd, bouncing around on electronically generated music.

Inspired by this turn of events, one of a small group of Americans ripped the American flag of his tent, ran onto center stage, dipped it in alcohol and set it afire. The result was quite different. Some of his American friends started yelling, others ran away, and I'm pretty sure that through the shadows I could discern at least one taking out a hanky and dipping his wetted eyes.

This just to illustrate that flags mean very different things to different people. Where countries are "constructed" by external powers, as is often the case in the Middle East, they together with a somewhat secular regime form one way of binding together a nation instead of just a state (the latter entailing a type of "peoples" as opposed to inhabitants of a defined geographic region).

Along the way, it was interesting to observe how many national flags are put to center stage, especially in the Middle East:

Turkey. Flags on the water.


Syria. the image of the ruler, combined with the nation's colours makes for a powerful signal as well


Jordan. The world's largest unsupported flag pole - at 126.8 metres - is right in the middle of Amman, hosting an impressive version of the Jordanian flag.


Israel. The Israeli flag on a house on a settler road, right in the middle of Palestinian Authority controlled area. The houses in the back are Palestinian-owned, the road is protected by Israeli Defence Forces. Just an illustration of the on-the-ground difficulties of the peace accords.


Palestine. Little flags draping the main drag of Ramallah, headquarters of the Palestinian Authority and most well-off city in the West Bank.

At first sight, Hebron appears to be a bustling city of some 166,000 Palestinians, located deep into the West Bank. In Belgium, when watching the news, we often have a view of Israel as being three separate entitities: Israel proper, the West Bank, and Gaza. We know the latter two are controlled by the Palestinian Authorities, and of the strife between Fatah and Hamas.

What we don't realize, however, is that this is in fact mostly fiction leading its own life, generating by often defunct peace agreements. It does not by much resemble the situation on the ground. Here's a map, courtesy of Google:

A much more in-depth picture is provided by the UN right here. Unfortunately I can't reproduce the map itself in this blog, so please open it.

What the UN map shows you is the presence of several so-called "settlements", places which are populated with Jewish Israeli citizens, and the way these affect the lives of both parties involved.

Hebron is a particularly contentious location, as its local mosque was built on a cave which houses the graves of several patriarchs such as Abraham and Isaac. It's a holy site to all Jews, Christians and Muslims because of this very reason.

As such, everyone wants to be close. Up until 1929, Jews and Muslims lived together in the city without much issues. This all changed in 1929, when Arabs killed 67 Jews, causing the British to move out all settlers to prevent further violence. In 1968, one year after Israel gained control over the West Bank, which up until that time was managed by Jordan, a group of Jewish settlers moved back into the city.

Today, some 700 Palestinian settlers live in the city, guarded by some 3000 soldiers of the Israeli Defence Forces. These soldiers have a brief to protect the local Jewish population. This makes it a generally unpleasant place to live for both parties. Hebron has been divided into two main areas: H1 and H2. H1 consists of the area under control by the Palestinian Authority, while H2, which entails the town's main souq and city centre is under security control by the Israel Defense Forces. Unfortunately, both Jewish settlements and Palestinian houses border eachother, and the settler community's windows give out directly on the souqs below.

While this should not pose a problem, it does. Palestinians and Jews are not living together, but are living next to eachother, with a complete disregard for eachother's sensitivities.

Reports from stone-throwing by settlers to Palestinians are very common, and the picture to the left shows how the souq itself is often used by a rubbish bin by many of the settlers.

Palestinians, on the other hand, are violently kept away from the settler community. While walking through the little streets next to the settlement, I and three others saw what looked like an inspection at gunpoint of shopping bags of several Palestinians. Nothing violent, profesionally conducted by the IDF soldiers, but the mere fact of walking around through your own city and being subject to gunpoint inspections is  in my opinion sufficient to cause significant strife amongst a population.

Israel's political establishment has generally made silent changes to the environment to make it easier for settlers to live - often at the detriment of the Palestinian population. In 2002, media reported on 70 Arab properties being requisitioned to "widen the road" and guarantee more secure passage.



Hebron H2. Blocked roads leading into the settlement.

Hebron H2. Checkpoint inside the city. To get home again from the city centre, this kid will need to pass through metal detectors.


Hebron H2. Street bordering a settlement. No shops or Palestinian vehicular traffic allowed.

Hebron H2. Settlers wishing for better days, or a Jewish future?

Culture Shock got a new name today. It's called Allenby Border Control, sometimes more affectionately referred to as Allenby Bridge. It's Israel's busiest land border, connecting the country of Jordan with the West Bank. Busy could actually be an understatement – as Palestinians are not allowed to use Israel's Ben-Gurion airport, the only way for any of them to leave the country is to travel to Jordan and use Amman as the regional hub.

Heading down from Amman into the Jordan Rift Valley, Jordan's border with Israel.

In addition, Jordan has the largest amount of Palestinian refugees. A grand total of one and a half million Palestinians were living inside Jordan refugee camps on UN travel documents. Half of Jordanians are in fact Palestinians, but many of them did receive Jordanian citizenship. This naturally entails a lot of cross-border traffic to visit family.

The Culture Shock I referred to is mainly related to the military display of prowess on both ends. Where on the Jordanian and Syrian borders, officers are generally somewhat older people from a military pedigree who are looking for a quiet place to settle down, Israel has a completely opposite approach. While passing through the various checkpoints (which include a metal detector, an explosives "sniffer" and a long, long immigration line), you generally only see 18 year old soldiers, all armed with M16 rifles. The vast majority of them are female, another sharp contrast to the surrounding Islamic countries.

One issue that this creates is a thorough lack of respect between both parties. Natural, ingrained respect for elders is replaced by fortified, nurtured respect for weapons. While the western world has a false perspective of the Middle East as a violent region, people there are generally unaccustomed to the unnecessary use of weapons and feel quite uncomfortable being confronted with them continuously.

Another issue that 18 year olds generally are not the most moderate soldiers around. This is by no means intended as criticism, but moderation is created by experience, something an 18 year old will just not possess when he starts border duty. While this doesn't appear to translate into violent conduct by the border officers, it does clearly result in a lack of cultural sensitivity, and lack of understanding of specific situations which are uncommon in Israel (to give you an idea, the average number of children in a Palestinian household is about 6, whereas Israeli Jews have only about 3).

The shock of moving from Jordan into the West Bank makes it impossible for Arab communities to like the way they are being treated. Due to the large families involved and the numerous checks, immigration tends to take a long, long time. An extended family of eight just in front of me had their documents taken from them and verified for about 40 minutes. During the checks, suddenly the border control officer stood up, and started taking pictures of the immigration hall with her cell phone. This in a location where photography was clearly prohibited by explicit signs. It was a tell-tale story: a busy day at the border, and one kid trying to impress another by the volume of traffic to deal with. Completely understandable, for an 18 year old, but less so for someone who is the first respectable sign of entry into a country.

While these observations proved interesting, I was in it for the long haul. Having arrived at the Jordanian end of the border, I would not be accepted into the country until 18h30 in the evening. This was quite unusual, as it was the shabbath – the border in fact closed at 14h30 in the afternoon.

I have to admit that I didn't make it particularly easy on immigration: I had come from Syria (a big no-no if you're trying to enter Israel, as both countries are still technically at war), did not have a hotel reservation, did not have any Israel money on me and did not have a print-out of my departure flight. Above all, I was staying in East Jerusalem, a predominantly Arab neighborhood where my tourist sheckles were unlikely to flow into Jewish owned shops.

After 10 hours of waiting, I was hushed into a small office where I met a senior border officer. After a brief chat, he had one real question of interest: which country proved most interesting and enjoyable along the path that had gotten me to this office. There was an easy answer and a difficult one. I'll leave it up to your imagination what the answer was and how the conversation worked out. Otherwise, buy me a beer one day and I'll give you the full story.

At six-fourty-five I was surprised to see that the small bunch of fellow "special cases" whom I had spent the afternoon with waiting for immigration to progress, had actually waited for me at a servees, or local service taxi, and all of us left together to East Jerusalem, destination Damascus Gate.

It's difficult to imagine a place of this beauty to remain undiscovered until 1812, when a Swiss explorer, Johann Ludwig Burckhardt discovered it. This type of chance findings always makes me hope that one day, we'll find Atlantis. Perhaps Plato did not just invent the mythical island, risen from and reduced to water, as an example of his political theories.

Anyway - no water here. Petra lies in the middle of the desert, close to the King's highway in Jordan. It's probably the most well known of the Middle East's tourist attractions, and garners quite a bit of visitors not only from Jordan, but also through neighboring Egypt and Israel.

Petra was most likely called Rekem by its inhabitants, a name which was found in the Essene's Dead Sea scrolls. It was the main city of the Nabatean people, up until about 360, when the city was struck by an earthquake which crippled the water management system so vital in these dry areas.

Incidentally, at the same time, water posed a significant risk to the city. Erosion was not initially involved in the creation of the narrow entrance, the Siq, which was shaped by tectonic forces.

While it's a rough and dry area, flash floods do occur, and further flattened the entry way, making it possible for humans to pass. The great water management system put in place by the Nabateans really had two goals: allowing water to flow into the city from near the entry, and to make sure the entry itself could never be flooded - this would set part of the city under water.

The picture to the left illustrates the Al-Khazneh, or treasury, which most of us will no doubt remember from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, where it was the entry place to the Holy Grale. Had a look inside, found no grail, turned back. Discovery has become such a pain these days.

Petra is classified into the low and high grounds. While the lower areas are easy to reach, the high grounds do require a bit of steep hiking, but are definitely worth the time. Entirely at the top of this entry you can see a picture of the Al-Dayr, or monastery, the largest facade in Petra. The bedouins here have truly perfected the art of Indiana Jones'ism:


In total, it took this local 3 minutes 45 seconds to climb up the Al-Dayr, jump across the ledges at the top, and then hike down again, not taking the trodden path. All he could say was "his dad trained him well".

The photograph below shows the views out onto the Wadi Arabia area from the Petra high grounds: