Jordan – an amazing place and country number four on our most recent trip overseas. Mr. LN and I had already found caches in Cyprus, Israel and Palestine. One of the highlights in Jordan was Petra – which literally means rock – and for good reason – as there is a LOT of rock in this magnificent place. We had the entire day here. In the morning we were treated to a guided tour and at lunch we were left on our own. Of course, I had already scoped out a geocache ahead of time, but we decided to hike to the high place – tackling an ascent of 900 steps and then search for the cache when we came back through. I knew the approximate location of the cache and as we made our way back mid-afternoon, I turned on the GPS as we neared the location. It is always fun to log a geocache in a previously unexplored country and yes, I was very excited that we would be adding our 22nd country. As I was intently watching the GPS, Mr. LN asked me, “how close?” The GPS had just went from .10 to 525 feet – and I shared this with him. He then asked, “do you really want this one?” I looked at him first and then followed his eyes to a mountain of rock. He asked to see the GPS, confirming what I feared – the geocache was close, but yet so far away – far away as in at the top of that sheer piece of rock. Mind you, that we had just hiked several miles which included 900 steps up and then back down. He then shared that he did not think he had the energy to hike up “there”. The look on my face must have said it all – for the next thing I know, he is waving over two young Arabic boys who have two cute donkeys. Somehow, we managed to communicate with them that we wanted to go up “there” and asked if they could take us on the donkeys. Of course they could – for the small sum of $20 Jordanian dollars (which is $30 each). Being the master negotiater in the family, I went to work and got the price down to $16 Jordanian dollars for both of us ($24 American dollars) – and the cache was back on the agenda.
Here is where I must confess that I have never ridden a donkey before and I had no idea! We mounted our donkeys and off we went, led by 10-year old Mohammed and 15-year Rashad. No worries –right! The first part was fairly easy – feet in the stirrups and hang on to the ring. I was laughing so hard and Mr. LN was perking up because we realized this was going to be quite the adventure. Up, up, up we go. Soon we come to steps – and not just steps, but steep steps. Our guides motioned to us to lean forward. By this point, I am really laughing – pretty certain that I am going to fall off this donkey at some point. Hugging the donkey with knees pressed in, leaning forward so far I could like the hair on the donkeys neck and hanging tightly on to the ring – all I could think was “how the heck did Mary ride a donkey like this when she was nine months pregnant?”
Up, up, up the steep steps we went…..finally arriving at a place where the steep steps stopped and now it was just rock. Mr. LN motioned that we could get off an walk the rest of the way and our guides shook their heads no – all would be okay. Mr. LN – being the wise man he is – pulled his feet out of the stirrups at this time – as he had a pretty good feeling the donkey could not get up that rock. Of course, I am still laughing and hanging on for dear life. Up, up, up the rock goes the donkey with my husband leaning forward….and then the donkey collapses and slides down the rock, Mr. LN on his back – and lands in the crevice of the large rock. Mr. LN jumps off the donkey – and I do the same – and we spend the next ten minutes watching the boys pull the donkey out of the rock crevice.
Time to walk the rest of the way. One of the boys leads the way and the other stays behind with the donkeys. Up, up, up we go…..and then we come to a place where there are no steps – just planks across a crevice – that goes way down. I felt a bit like Indiana Jones – and Rashad, who already crossed, motioned for me to come. I had come this far – obviously I was committed…..so gingerly I walked across the planks. We rounded the corner….we were so close….looked up and spotted the cave. We knew our cache was in that cave…..and sure enough – spotted the geobeacon – a pile of rocks in the corner! Mr. LN jumped in and made the retrieval and we dropped several TBs just because. We did not want to compromise the location of the cache, so I had our 15-year old guide take me up just a little further to the top, while Mr. LN tucked the cache back in.
Wow – what an amazing view – we literally had a 360 panoramic view and could see the Bedouin tents in the distance – and the mountain goats – incredible! We could also see that it was quite a distance to get back to where we needed to exit and made a plan to renegotiate a price for our guides to take us closer to the exit – which I was able to do for an additional $4 JD. Back down to the donkeys and we remounted and we were off. We both agreed that is was a fabulous adventure and well worth the $30 investment. As we made our way back down, I thought about a fellow geocacher who hired a snowmobile once to get an FTF on an island in the middle of a lake and thought donkeys rank right up there with snowmobiles – as a creative mode of transportation – when geocaching!
If you ever get to Petra – GC282A is the cache – and it’s been there since November of 2001 – well worth whatever it takes!