I think if anyone wants to see some crazy archaeology or remains, they should check out Petra, Jordan.
Getting there is a little tricky, or at least how I went about it. I crossed over the Israeli border at Eilat, and had to apply for some tourist visa that lasted two weeks or something, plus pay all of these fees. The border zone between those two countries is very eerie, as you are in nowhere land, having to be escorted by soldiers or guards, and either side is fenced-off because their dirt is lined with mines.
Anyway, once you are past that, you must take a taxi all the way to Petra, as there is no public transportation. Some of the roads there are very modern, paved and pristine looking, others go through some weird, rocky country roads that wind around and feel a bit weird under the desert moonlight. After we got to the town, we stayed at some hostel that was full of tourists from all over, and every single night, the movie Indiana Jones was playing in the common room on VHS.
So we went to Petra early the next day, and initially had to walk in the middle of some rock valley canyon formation that wound around for a couple miles, being offered camel rides and horse rides and donkey rides by adults, or offered packs of postcards or trinkets by small boys. It was like a jungle of bare, red rock. There are also interesting nooks to get up and crawl into.
Tour groups pass, explaining the historical significance of certain markers, but the real excitement is later on, when you notice the first few structures.
After being impressed, it is then time to navigate the greater area and find what is out there. We walked up some stairs up a hill that was carved into the earth, up to a platform full of views of the sprawling arid lands, and of people selling Bedouin tea. The grandiose structures were superb and took your mind to a new place. The symmetry of them was out of this world, and you certainly felt whatever genius sensation that it took to create these palaces radiating off of their modern remains.
We also apparently found the top of the world!
After all of the impressive structures we can upon, it become not so much about the landmarks any more, but about stumbling into different, interesting things. We walked down an old river bed, up and over some chunks of red earth, through wall formations that just looked swirly or curvy. We came across many interesting animals, whether they were stray cats that meowed until we gave them yogurt, donkeys that looked sad and bored and dressed in Bedouin fabrics, or baby brown goats with floppy ears that were hiding under their mother goats.
Throughout my exploration, I crawled into a few of the smaller rock structures and took a look inside. It was always dusty and felt about 10 degrees cooler from the hot outside. A lot of them had not much in the middle, and just seemed like strange facades carved into rocks for the purpose of decoration.
Outside of this weird morph of past and present, the town of Petra is interesting, too. Virtually no women are on the street, just males of different ages. Sometimes some boy will be herding a large group of goats up a hill, and then need to pass them onto the street and walk down the street with a dozen goats following him. As it is a Muslim town, alcohol was forbidden to most people, and nightlife was virtually non-existent. The only place I think you could get it was at one designated bar, or at our hostel, and it seemed like a few locals were getting it from the hostel in the dark. There are also posters of the princes and royal family posted all around town.
We stayed there two nights, and got a taxi ride back to the border zone with a couple friendly Canadian men from Edmonton, Alberta. They told us they were both engineers who went out to the Yukon for half the year, and traveled the world for the other half. During our ride, we stopped off at some hill on the way and ran up the pile of crusty, brown earth for about half an hour and gazed off at the other desert hills. When we got back to the Israeli border, it felt sort of like coming home in a way, full of things we were used to, as it was a Western country in this greater area.
sounds GREAT!!!!!!!