Petra

Petra was one of the reasons we chose to do this trip through the Middle East and we really looked forward to seeing it. Ever since I watched Indiana Jones as a kid the place had intrigued me. Now we would get to see it in person. When we showed up at Wadi Musa (the town that supports Petra) I was trying to get over my bad case of food poisoning and I was still hurting. Our hotel was OK but because of the elevation it was freezing cold in our room which didn't help me much.

Petra was built by the Nabateans (Arabs who dominated the region in pre-Roman times) who choose as their capital a place concealed from the outside world and made it into one of the Middle Easts most remarkable cities. At its peak (8BC to 40AD) the city had about 30,000 residents and a zone of influence from Syria to Egypt. Then the city declined and the local Bedouins who continued to live in the buildings hid its location from outsiders, fearful that they would interfere with their livelihood. Then in 1812 a young Swiss explorer named JL Buckhardt found Petra by learning Arabic, dressing as a Arab and tricking the locals into showing it to him. Even to this day only 5% of the park has been excavated.

From the entrance of Petra you walk down the Siq, a 1.2km passageway cut between the rocks. The layers of multicolored sandstone rise straight above your head. The tension rises as you round every corner, waiting to be finally rewarded with a glimpse of the famous Treasury between the rocks. Suddenly it is there before you. The condition of the treasury after so much time and its location in this picturesque narrow sandstone canyon was amazing. We had gotten up early to beat the throngs of packaged tourists and at 7am were able to enjoy the site in relative solitude. The amazing thing about Petra is that after you see the Treasury you still have the rest of the park to check out. You see many Nabataean tombs that are cut out of the multicolored rock face. There is a Nabataean theatre and a Roman colonaded street, a Byzantine church with well preserved mosaics and caves with frescos on the walls and hundreds of other ruins.

Any one of these things would have made Petra worthy of visiting on their own but the combination of all of them plus the amazing desert mountain scenery (think Canyonlands or Zion National Parks) makes Petra truley special. We spent the entire day exploring the park and that evening returned to see "Petra by Night." For this they lined the walkway through the Siq to the Treasury with hundreds of candles. You walk though the Siq by candlelight until you get to the Treasury, where they play Bedouin music and storytellers tell stories. It was a surreal experience. We had bought a multi-day pass and spent the second day seeing what we had missed and hiked up to one of the high places of sacrifice. From up there you could see views over the valley of Petra and the surrounding area.

Petra was for us a really amazing experience and a definate highlight of the trip. We would highly recommend to everyone to take the opportunity to see Petra at some point. It is well worth it.

After 3 days of walking in the area and our freezing cold hotel room I was still feeling terrible from my food poisoning. I told Gaby that I needed a couple of days off to rest up and recuperate. Our German friends suggested we get away from the cold and tourist trap prices of Wadi Musa and head to the resort city of Aqaba. Little did we know how good a suggestion it was.

Steve