And then we saw Petra…

…and we both said ‘WOW!’.

Petra's Treasury. A sight to behold.

A fun drive today from Aqaba to Petra. We took a country road that winded its way along the high desert, passing interesting little towns, stopping here and there.

Petra. The modern city.

We eventually found our way to the Little Petra Bedouin Camp (yes, another tent, another camp). This one is actually called a luxury camp, and I must say that overall it does have a more ritzy feel than the one at Wadi Rum, but we preferred our room at the prior camp.

But enough of that. If you ever plan to visit Petra, be advised that it is an 18 kilometer walk from one end to the other, and a lot of it is uphill. That said, we did it, we are exhausted, and it was amazing.

It’s not just the monuments, it’s the canyons, the vistas, the whole ensemble. It’s a city, not just some mind-blowing temples sculpted into the rock. As you walk, you pass man-dug caves that were the homes of the Nabataeans that inhabited the place, three thousand years ago. Now they are used to house camels and donkeys, and the occasional Bedouin.

Little Petra

We climbed, and we climbed, and..

The Monastery

The old city

The Royal Tombs

The High Place of Sacrifice

The Silk Tomb

We met a lot of interesting people of all nationalities. I probably was the oldest of them all. Two monuments stand out among the rest. The Monastery, on the far end, and the Treasury (the one you picture when you think of Petra). To really get a view you have to do some additional climbing, which we did. They are immense, imposing and incredible.

The Treasury

Once we reached the Treasury (we started from the back end), on this particular day, there were police, army, ambulances, and firemen taking part of an all-out exercise simulating a flashflood. We were detained for about an hour, as canyons and walkways were being flooded, and the exercises taking place. Real live people posing as injured were being taken by stretcher, moved down a wire stretching from the top of the high rocks. An army man ran, holding onto a rope, some 1,000 feet down the vertical façade of the rock housing the treasury. All this while emergency vehicles of all sorts were entering and exiting, with sirens blaring. It was a surreal setting, but interestingly unique.