The Shire of York
vmblogadventures Did you know about the shire of york
The Adventure of a lifetime
One would not figure that such a joyous looking picture comes with a terrifying backstory. No need to cause alarm, no one was hurt during this adventure. But if certain circumstances played out a different way, then chances are I wouldn’t be here to tell you this story.
To provide some background, myself (in the tan pants), my buddy Steve (red flannel) and my other buddy Sailee (red shirt and blue jacket) went on a road trip from Germany to Lucerne Switzerland. It was just over a 4 hour drive to this beautiful but expensive city. But the best part about its beauty is you don’t have to usually pay anything to see it and enjoy it. That’s why we decide to find a beautiful hike that wouldn’t cost us much comparatively to some of the other things we could do in the area. It also wasn’t the only stop on our journey. We were heading for Milan after this stop so we only had about two days in this city. I am sure you are wondering where we stayed in such an expensive city and no we didn’t set up a tent and camp. We went with the more classy route.
The Blue Rose was our saving grace. Not only was she tough enough to stand up to the mountains and rolling hills of Germany and Switzerland, but she was fitted with a perfectly sized bed for 3-4 people. That’s right a sleeper van! The Blue Rose was an absolute tank of a vehicle for us, not only did she pur but also squealed. But that was because she probably needed some new breaks for this adventure due to all the downhill breaking either way we made it work!
After we arrived late into the night of Lucerne we parked in a parking lot and slept there for the night, it wasn’t until the morning we realized that the view. I awakened early due to pure adventure excitement and to hopefully see the sun rise. Which did not disappoint, it turns out we parked our van just shy of Lake Lucerne where a mere 100 feet to the waters edge. Showing the big and mighty Mount Pilatus across the lake with with the sun bathing it in light and the moon still out to say hello just next to the peak of it. With that the towns and the city of Lucerne stretching around the bottom of the lake of crystal blue ice cold water.
We spent that first half of the day fueling up on cappuccinos and dreams of venture as well as seeing what the city had to offer. But it didn’t take long to
A Place of Sheer Adventure
From being chased by a boy on a camel to challenging locals to a pull up match on a branch of a tree, the people of Petra was one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. Not only were these sights truly breath taking but they were filled with copious amounts of venture that I have only experience here, in Petra, Jordan.
It started when we decided to leave our base on a “controlled” trip to Petra while being station in Jordan. Not only was this an awesome opportunity but it was one I was able to share with a dear friend of mine, Jake. But for the sake of me never calling him that only when to ask if he was wearing kakis and is from state farm, we will call him JD.
JD and I decided to go on this couple hour long bus ride to get roughly 8 hours with this massive rose colored mountains which stand 80m high and 1.2Km long. That differs from the actual ancient city which was 45m high and had a width of 30m that is carved directly into this gorgeous mountain. This was one of our many challenges on this adventure because 8 hours was not long enough to explore everything we wanted to see. This was originally built by the ancient civilization of the Nabataean Arabs. Rightfully so Petra was announced to be one of the 7 wonders of the world in 2007. The pictures you see in this blog don’t even come close to showing its true beauty.
When we arrived with our group of people, JD and I immediately split off from them and took off down to the entrance. This is where we started our first encounter with the locals that worked there. If you didn’t already know, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was filmed here in 1989. So of course everyone working there was trying to sell us an Indiana Jones style hat and whip that they would happily put on your head for you without asking. Which we didn’t mind because one thing about JD and I loved doing was haggling. It didn’t matter if we were at the entrance or all the way to the top of final stop of Petra. People were there to sell you any and everything at almost no fixed price. Due to this little nuance of course we tried to push our luck to get everything as low as possible until we would give up or we told them the guy down the road was going to sell it to us for 10 Dinar less. Which if you didn’t know is worth more than the US dollar. Just to give you an idea 10 Jordanian Dinar as of me writing this is equivalent to 14.10 US. Which doesn’t seem too bad until you start spending more and more. Needless to say we made it through many suq’s (markets) at the entrance and only bought a beautiful red and white turban for JD which the man who sold it to him helped him put it on his head correctly.
It wasn’t long before we spent more Dinar though because right after the entrance there is plenty of people with horses, camels, and JD’s oh shoot I mean donkeys to ride for a price. Remember when I said we could get lower prices just by telling them the other guy offered us the same thing for less? Well this is where I think we peaked for being able to swindle horses for 10 Dinar each. When originally they said 20 Dinar, but this came with some very angry Jordan people. Being crowed by a bunch of men asking if you wanted to ride one of these majestic creatures brought on a haggling war of, “my friend give me 20 Dinar to ride the horse.” When we told him no, another man would give us another price which sparked a bidding war between them and us. When we agree on doing it for 15 Dinar another one would come up and say “hey if you ride my horse I will let you for 10 Dinar.” Which of course we obliged the man with 10 Dinar instead which didn’t make the other man happy and he began to yell at the other man in Arabic. Which we knew very very little. But it seemed to work itself out because we found ourselves riding a horse for 10 Dinar for the first leg of the hike to the top.
But it didn’t last long because JD was able to get on his horse first so he was ahead of me. This is when I thought it was a good idea to tell the man who was helping me with my horse that I wanted to go faster and catch up. Which everyone there spoke fairly good English, it was just a little hard to get use to the accent that came with it. How do I know that? Well that’s because after I told him that. He apparently said “you pay extra for the gallop?” but in my head it didn’t register until i heard JD laughing saying “extra for the gallop he said!” Then it dawned on me and I was like woahhhh okay lets slow down then. But it was too late. After we arrived at the destination I gave the guy an extra 5 Dinar, but these are the little tricks to look out for when and if you visit this place. Which did I mention is in my mind totally worth it!
As we walk through this astonishing piece of historical and natural beauty of these giant rose red walls we finally come to the an opening that spreads kind of like a court yard leading to the first.