Petra Jordan |
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Heading to Petra, Jordan
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We are going to enter Jordan from Israel, so must go through Passport Control
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Border between Israel and Jordan
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Passports please
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We are driving along the King's Highway. Petra is located between the Red Sea and the Dead Sea, and is about 3-5 hours drive south of Amman.
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That's not sand, it's snow. Who knew! This was a big surprise.
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We arrive in the town called Wadi Musa. Bedouins have stands everywhere with lots of handicrafts. The most popular seems to be the bottles of colored sand. I got one! Since no motorized vehicles are allowed to enter the site, you have to choose. Do I go in by go horse, donkey, carriage or do I want to walk!
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Hmmmmm...not real excited about getting on this guy.
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So my friend Kristin and I decided to walk. It turned out to be a long walk along a dusty trail, called The Sig. The trail twists and turns and sometimes it's only 12 feet wide. The sandstone walls rise so high, around 650 feet, that it all but shuts out the sun. This is pretty exciting.
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Stillllll walking, but we're getting closer. An interesting piece of trivia is that the City of Petra made it's Hollywood debut in 1989 in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade."
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Oh my gosh! There it is! Petra, the "lost city." It's also called the "Rose City" and is known to be "half as old as time." This is breathtakingly awesome. There we were, walking along the trail, when we went around a curve and boom, we saw this magnificient view. No photo or description can prepare you for the moment you see the Treasury.
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This is the Treasury of the Pharaohs, also called The Kazneh. It is one of the 800 tombs in Petra. This place was completely lost to the western world until it was rediscovered in 1812 by a Swiss traveler. He must have been surprised.
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The tomb facades were built from the top down. First the scaffolding was built, and then they cut grooves into the rock. Next they put pieces of wood into the grooves, which when made wet, expanded and cracked the rock. Wow! Pretty ingenious. And they didn't even have the book called, "TOMB BUILDING FOR DUMMIES!"
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This was our guide. The guides will walk along with you and explain the history and the legends. It was so fascinating to learn how the place started. It was carved by the Nabataeans around the 6th century BC. They turned it into an important junction for the silk and spice trade, and other trade routes that linked China, India, and southern Arabia with Egypt, Syria, Greece and Rome. Amazing.
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Here is a great example of the exquisite striations inside one of the tombs.
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I'm sitting on one of the hundreds of caves we saw.
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This little kid kept riding by me asking me to buy something. He had a soft drink I could buy. It didn't matter which flavor of soft drink they had, it was always called Pepsi. At that point, a cup of hot chocolate would have tasted really good because I was so cold. However, those of you who have travelled overseas know, you "don't drink the water" (or the soda) unless you want a real good case of "Montezuma's Revenge" better known as "the runs!"
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To really explore the Petra valley, you would need four or five days
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Until 1984, many of the caves were still homes for the Bedouins. But because of concern for the monuments, they were moved to housing in the town of Wadi Mousa in southern Jordan.
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I wanted a photo taken with this boy and his donkey. I got it, only after I gave him a dollar!
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Petra was chosen by the BBC as one of the 40 places you have to see before you die. In other words, this should be on your "bucket list."
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One of the many Bedouins that had crafts for sale.
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In 1985, UNESCO listed Petra as a World Heritage site. They describe it as "one of the most precious properties of man's cultural heritage."
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As I made my way back up the trail, I was overwhelmed with what I had seen this day. Awe-inspiring, incredible, amazing, unbelievable, are only a few of the words that could possibly describe this experience.
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Before leaving, Kristin and I took one last walk around the village. Do we look like Bedouins? :O)
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It's almost dark as we returned back into Israel.
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We didn't have to travel very far to this very nice hotel where we spent the night.
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What a beautiful view from my hotel balcony.
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This is where we had our breakfast the next morning. It was so pretty.
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If we weren't heading out on our next tour, this would have been a great place to relax.
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Beautiful view of the hotel's pool and in the background is the Dead Sea.
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