Amman, Jordan

After our tour from contiki(visiting Egypt for 9 days) we have another arrangement to visit Amman, Jordan, our gateway to Petra.  I always thought of the middle east as a warm place to be but as we were landing at the airport, it was announced that it would be 5 degree celsius outside...and there I was saying to myself OH GREAT!!!! I only have a few winter clothes with me might as well buy my warm jacket over here.

As I went to a money changer at the airport, I found out that the US dollar is 60 cents versus the Jordanian Dinar, this trip was not getting any cheaper as I told myself... I got 10 more days ahead of me and I'll be ending up using my credit card soon. As much as possible I tried  to avoid using credit cards to avoid the 2% charge for foreign currency rate.

I met our travel agency representative inside the airport and he was very helpful in assisting us with our visa.

After we were done with all the paperworks at the airport, we headed straight to our hotel. It was about half hour drive heading to Hyatt Hotel Amman. As we enter the city, I noticed that the city is mostly filled with American food chain, they have Mcdonalds, Pizza Hut, KFC, etc... I found out from our guide that there is a lot of American here and that they have the biggest US embassy in the Middle East. 

As our driver dropped as by the hotel, we need to check  our luggages to a metal detector and xray machines, just like the ones that you see at the airport, which is pretty unusual for a hotel. But I guess with the current issues in the middle east, they have to do this for everybodys' safety.

The hotel was really, really nice. I noticed that the Hyatt hotel has an outstanding floor lobby, the granite floor, counter top at the desk are very awesome and the space is most likely  built for businessmen or rich men.

As we were directed to our room, we were welcomed with some free drinks and fruits. The bathroom was awesome, offering you the Dead Sea soap, with loofah, vanity stuff, glass shower room, better than The Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. Anyways,  we decided to just stay and enjoy our hotel and take a long, relaxing day in preparation for visiting our most awaited tourist destination, Petra.

It was a cold Monday morning, I woke up early and had my breakfast in the hotel and then  prepared all my things (cameras, shades, sunblock,etc) and get ready for the three hour ride to Petra. I really, really love the hotel setting. The breakfast area and the food was really awesome, serving both local Jordanian and American meal.. .

On our way to Petra, the road was pretty much desserted, there were no cars ahead of us. It was cold and breezy inspite of the three layer of clothes that i'm wearing and with my thick jacket. As we reached the entrance to Petra, the temperature has drop even more. There were thin layers of ice on the street, and it was getting more colder. Our guide then suggested to us to buy some gloves and scarf just to keep us warmer.

The price for tourists were pretty much outrageous, so you need to have a good deal or cut the price atleast by half..

Our guide already made an appointment with an archaelogist to be our chaperon to this place. We started with a 5 kilometer horse ride, passing by the tomb area...boy i would tell you that after our horse ride, the tip is really mandatory here...the horse ride was about six dollars and the kid was asking me for a  3 dollar tip...if i only knew about this then  i could have just walked at my own pace in the area.

Our guide then started telling the history of Petra.  Petra was pretty much amazing, how it got lost from the western world for 2 thousand years and how it was discovered was like reading a fairy tale(like the arabian nights).

.... fantasy filled story with  a lot of adventures...

Petra is the Greek word for "rock". But the Arabic term, al-madina al-wardah (rose-colored city), far better evokes the beauty of this enigmatic site..

Located in western Jordan, Petra was built in the first century B.C. by an Arab tribe, the Nabateans, wo made it the capital of a prosperous mercantile empire. High walls and surrounding mountains served as intimidating defencses against raiders tempted to plunder the city's wealth. The main entrance, the Siq, is a twisting gorge so narrow in some places that only two camels can pass at a time.

Today, as then, visitors approaching through the Siq suddenly behold a stunning metropolis carved from sandstone. One of the first sights is Petra's most recognizable building, Al Khazneh, commonly called "the Treasury" (although it is, in fact, believed to be a large tomb).

It was discovered by Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardtt and  was famously described as "a rose-red city half as old as time." I already have the idea of how Petra looks like as it was shown in the  1989 movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade but i always thought of the place as a treasured filled area with a lot of things to explore once you walk  in  one of  the tombs but  to my dissapointment there were no golds found in here. It was more like the stone age area, where Flinstones lives in or the Jurassic Park where dinosaurs used to walk.

Though Petra is only 15-20% excavated, the Jordanian goverment should continue on preserving the area. The locals who used to live here are selling some of the roman coins and potteries for a reasonable price and they are not strict about this...