Jordan - Day Three

Day three in Petra started early, like most days on this trip. We has stayed overnight at the Petra Palace hotel and began early in the morning walking down the road to the site of one of the seven wonders of the world. We walked into the entrance of the park and made our way down the winding paths to what is called the treasury of Petra. Petra was a great and grand Nabatean city and was located on a major trade route in the Trans-Jordan. It was incredible to see the intricate design of buildings and statues that had been carbed out of these massive red sandstone cliffs. It must have taken years to do such amazing work and I am confident the artifacts remaining are just as appealing to the eye as they were back then. Just 10 years ago their were beduoin communities living in the caves of this ancient city until the Jordanian government moved them out to make this a preserved site. Even today there are some beduoin communities that refuse to move and are tucked away in the caves of this huge city. Here are some pictures to highlight the journey:

On the walk into the site, there are remains of a shepherd leading his donkeys still visibly carved into the rock. This is quite an extravagant decoration for any ancient city.

The treasury - It is massive...if you can see inside the door, you can see the people standing there and get an idea for the scale of the structure. It's completely empty inside and would have contained tombs.

Close up picture of the carvings on the treasury - these are just the remains so I'm sure the originals were quite intricate.

Janelle kissing the camel! The camel's little owner gave her good directions!

This captures the natural designs found in the red sandstones - amazing colors!

Another shot of sandstone - amazing that this came about naturally

Adria taking pictures from the high place - it was 600 steps up the side of a mountain - quite a hike!

After the 600 step hike up to the high place we opted on the donkey ride up the 900 steps to the Monastery due to time constraints....and if I'm honest, we were thrilled to have the donkeys once the journey scaled the steps. It was an extremely funny ride - I haven't laughed that hard in a long time and only cost us about $10 from the little bedouin men who owned the donkeys. Brian muttered under his breath about how dangerous riding a donkey next to cliffs, he had some good running commentary all the way up. Danielle thought the donkey might buck her, I assured her it wouldn't happen, and I would know because I've ridden horses so many times ;). Karin just couldn't stop laughing and I held up the back of the donkey train trying to keep my donkey from sprinting up the steps and loosing any bladder control I had left after the laughter. Oh, it was fun!

This is the monastery...it may not look that big but if you imagined me standing in the door way, I would be the side of a tiny dust mite.....this thing was huge!

At the monastery site, their was a lookout we hiked to. We could see out to the Rift Valley, Dead Sea, and on to the hills of Israel.