Aqaba

Since booking this trip we had always planned on going to Petra.  Most of you have probably never heard of Petra, but you may recognise it as the ancient city in the Indianan Jones movie: The last crusade.  

Many people had advised us to take a cart down to the treasury, but as it was fairly cool (only about 34c, when we set off), we decided to walk.  It is about a 500-metre walk to the entrance of the Siq, the Siq itself is just over two kilometres long and is a narrow gorge, which resulted from a natural splitting of the mountain.  At the end of the Siq it opens up onto Petra’s most magnificent facades, the treasury or Al Khazna, which rises to almost 40 metres high, it is really an

amazing sight as you enter from the Siq.  

Our group then set off to our restaurant where we were to have lunch. We knew it was within the area of Petra, but we did not know how far it was.  Our tour guide told us it was another 15 minutes walk, so we all set off again.  As it turned out it was about another 2.5k to the restaurant, and took most of us at least another 40 minutes as it was along a very uneven track, we passed many more wonderful carved sights along the way, and finally made it.  The only problem was that we had to walk the 5k back to the bus and it was now nudging about 40c.

As you will see from the photos we caught donkeys back to the treasury, and then a horse drawn cart, which was very bumpy, so bumpy it was hurting David’s back and I couldn’t stop laughing all the way back.   Anyway we made it back to the bus on time, Petra is defiantly worth a visit.  It was hard going and very very hot, but I am so glad that we did it.