Petra

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Man oh man, Petra is one impressive place!

I know I am repeating myself a lot in these blogs, but there are just so many amazing places in this part of the world.

I had always thought Petra was a reasonable size, but all kind of together in one area. It's actually so spread out, and while there is a lot in one rift, there are many more places to look at over a huge area. A few of us spent 9 hours wandering round, climbing up and up and scrambling over rocks, hills, through valleys and generally spending the whole day amazed at what we saw.

There are colours right through the rocks, not just pink, or red, or rust, but layers and layers of different rainbows of rock.

The hundreds and hundreds of steps up to the monastery and the steep precarious climb up to and down from the high place of sacrifice (and it was very high!) were absolutely worth it.


There are no really reliable maps of Petra so we had to mostly wing it, but that was the best way to get around, finding a path and following it and seeing all the stuff that most tourists just don't get to. This is definitely not a wheelchair accessible site for the most part!

All these facades, temples and tombs were simply carved out of the cliffs by the Nabateans thousands of years ago, and the entrance is through a rift in the cliff created by an earthquake. There was quite a bit of engineering in keeping the city going, in terms of dams and watercourses. Clever people!

Another must-see should you ever go to Jordan.

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