The Rose Rock City of Petra

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We started out the day by waking up, in my opinion, sinfully early. It was 6:45, and we didn’t have to meet the guide till 8:30. We enjoyed a quick breakfast, and headed out. The driver, a Chicago native, drove us to the Petra entrance gate, where we began our morning adventures.

We walked a good mile and a half through some stunningly gorgeous red, yellow, green, and orange sandstone canyons. Along the way we saw deity carvings in the rock, now worn by the wind and rain. Finally, we reached the Treasury, the most magnificent building in Petra. Words cannot do justice to the magnificence of its structure. We will put pictures of it on the blog, so you can see for yourself. We then proceeded farther down the canyons, seeing more buildings, houses, tombs, and stores, but all were quite worn. None of the other buildings were as well preserved as the Treasury. We continued walking down the town, and saw a Roman theater, and a Byzantine church. The sandstone its self can be red, orange, yellow, black, green, grey, or any combination of those. While we were on the cliffs, we bought a couple of ancient oil lamps, fueled by olive oil.

We continued to walk down through the canyons, and saw several beautiful Roman buildings, with columns and mosaics. We then decided to climb up to a lovely building called the Monastery. It was quite a long haul up a mountain, to the top where we got a great view of the Jordanian mountains and desert. We also encountered several Bedouins drinking tea heated by fire, with wonderful smelling wood smoke. We went all the way back down the mountain, and decided we wanted to let someone else do the walking for a while, so…

We hired camels! Dad and I rode camel back to the Treasury, the ride being one of my high points. Camels are so much fun to ride. Luna even had some fun, making friends with the guide and Dad’s camel, dubbed, “Partner”. The name was acquired when Dad strode confidently up to the camel, and said only one thing: “howdy, Partner.”

We retired to the hotel, extremely satisfied with the day. Tomorrow we will head to Amman. I love Petra and camels.

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