Petra: finding out what all the fuss is about.

Guidebooks, magazine articles, and other tourists wax on and on about Petra. “If you only go to one place in Jordan, it had better be Petra…” and so on and so forth. So today we finally got to see what all the fuss is about. We were not disappointed!

The ancient city of Petra was literally carved from stone in the 1st to 3rd centuries by the Nabataeans (I had never heard of them before, either). It is now an expansive (and impressive, and amazing, and astounding, etc) archeology site. We spent about five hours exploring it on foot today. I feel like we got a pretty good taste of it, although the common recommendation is that you spend two to three days there. It’s a pretty big place.  

We got there just before 7am, and already the tour groups were gathering. We slipped in just before a large Japanese group. It wasn’t the first time during the day I was happy we went early. The light was soft and beautiful as we made the long walk through the entrance, a narrow gorge about 1 km long, called the Siq. This walk in itself was worth the price of admission! It was really gorgeous.  

As we got to the end of this long passage, we caught a glimpse of the first “structure” -- the Treasury. It is an enormous (43m or 140 feet) façade, perfectly carved from the side of the dusty pink cliff.  The camels and horses (available for hire) only added to its picturesque quality. Pretty stunning.

From there we covered a lot of ground. We visited an eroded Roman-style theatre carved from the cliffs, the Street of facades, and a series of ancient tombs. We saw archeologists from Brown University working on one of the sites -- talk about detail work! I watched one man spend 20 minutes on some minute measurements, and another group was just dusting off rocks. They probably did that all day long. (“honey, how was your day?”  “pretty good. I dusted off some more rocks.”) Not the job for me, although I have no qualms about enjoying the fruits of their labors!

The grand finale for us was the long walk up to the intricately carved Monastery. It was starting to get pretty hot at this point, and the 900 steps that carried us there really felt like…well, 900 steps. It was hard work! Many people opted to take stair-climbing donkeys, but we decided to go under our own power. Finally getting to the top was exhilarating, and it was beautiful…well worth the hike. In my excitement, I even bought some jewelry from a vendor there.  

Then it was time to hike back out. It had really heated up, and the numbers of visitors coming in had increased dramatically. The Sig had been tranquil and shady in the morning, but was nearly spoiled by chattering groups on the way out, plus the sun was relentless. Again, I was SO happy we were just finishing up at 1pm, instead of being the ones just coming in!

We were so tired when we finished our tour, a nice nap certainly seemed to be in order. But, NO… unfortunately we had already checked out of our room and placed our bags into storage. On our agenda for the afternoon was a drive further south, to Aqaba and the Red Sea.