180 Sunny

180.

Sunny

I climb a big pink rock for a better view and meet a young American woman who has just climbed the other side of the same rock for the view. She is the only other tourist in the ruins.

We walk together the rest of the afternoon and share stories. She is so bright I call her “Sunny”.

She has traveled in Africa for the last six months and has come to Petra from the Red Sea, which is closer to the south than Damascus is to the north. Like me, she is heading for Israel and plans to spend the winter there working on a kibbutz. She has a master’s degree in economics but has been turned off by the Viet Nam war and by the scene in the States and, like me; she is hoping to learn more about life from traveling around. She is a quiet, good head.

Together we hike to find another touristic site, “The Monastery”, but can’t. It is probably not in this small group of canyon ruins. We do find an interesting black pillar, some crushed plates of sandstone and two Bedouin girls, perhaps thirteen years old, who have made a small campfire among the stones. They offer us “Bedouin smoke” and some tea. The smoke is pretty raw and makes me cough which makes the girls giggle, but the herb tea is tasty. These shepherd girls are dressed in black with red trim and sequins and tend a few sheep wandering through the ruins. There are old looking, worn petroglyphs covering the stone where we sit.

Sunny and I search our pockets for something to give our hostesses. Sunny finds an orange and a boiled egg and I give them some salted pumpkin seeds and a bar of soap. They seem delighted.

As the sun sets, we walk back to The Treasury and find the guide with the horses waiting for us as he said he would. Sunny was going to stay at the guest house but instead decides to come with us to Amman since she planned to go there tomorrow anyway if transport was available.

There is a room for Sunny at our hotel so we all eat yogurt and fruit and spend a pleasant evening talking. I have all the necessary documents and a bus ticket so I plan to leave for Jerusalem in the morning.

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