Petra

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Today was the "big day" for most people. We began the walking tour early in the morning before all the crowds arrived. We all decided to walk, ignoring the offers for horses. Our guide was a big square-jawed man with a deep voice, a rather rough accent and a leather jacket. However, he seemed to know his stuff and guided us along the Siq (basically a long narrow gorge) to the famous "treasury" (actually a tomb) where he stopped to give us an explanation of the various features of the facade. At some point someone asked him a question about the eroded features and he realised he needed to find a 19th century picture of the tomb to answer it properly. Amid much giggling he swaggered off to a nearby souvenir shack uttering the immortal words "I'll be back". We thought it was funny anyway.

The guided tour continued towards the Roman ruins, passing the amphitheatre and various tombs set up high on the hillside. We stopped at a bridge where the Roman ruins ended against a cliff. The guide and our company rep left us there, pointing out the path to the monastery and indicating it would take about 35 minutes to get there. What they didn't say was that it was 35 minutes up the side of a steep rocky hill. After a tiring climb I reached the top and was treated to some awesome views of the surrounding landscape from the "end of the world". We all had an early lunch before heading back down to explore the site at our own pace.

I found myself on the opposite side of the valley with two Canadians searching for the way up to a view point above the "treasury". This turned out to be quite an adventure, with lots of eroded sandstone stair cases taking us to dead end paths leading off the edge of cliffs. We left the man's daughter at the bottom and eventually found a path up a narrow gorge which, after another tiring climb, deposited us at the desired point. We took our photos and then headed back down, losing our way and finding ourselves perched above another tomb with tiny figures exploring the entrance 100ft below. The daughter had nearly finished a message made of little stones (telling us she had gone somewhere else) when we finally re-appeared. I was quite tired by this stage and started the lengthy trek out of the Siq.

The site was considerably more crowded now, and dodging the horse-drawn carriages and their vendors became quite irritating. Somehow I arrived at the exit before the rest of the group and stopped for a snack. Some members of the group thought it would have been nice to spend a few more days at that site. Personally I thought I had seen enough. There certainly was a lot to explore with hundreds of paths leading up to places similar to the areas I had visited, but there's only so many stone-carved tombs/temples one can see, especially when there is no indication of what purpose they served.

After the group had assembled we drove off towards Wadi Rum, which we reached after dusk having stopped to take some photos of the sun setting over the mountains around Wadi Musa (Petra). When we arrived the Bedouin had prepared some food for us, having been cooking it in a hole in the ground for 3 hours. Unfortunately it all tasted of lamb to me. Everyone else seemed to enjoy it, particularly our Korean chef who got very excited by this novel method of cooking and took lots of photos.

They treated (?!) us to a short musical performance before we turned in for the night, exhausted by all the walking/climbing. The beds in the tents looked quite inviting and warm, but closer inspection revealed the bedclothes had not been washed for a while. Fortunately I had a sleeping bag liner which also helped to keep me warm.

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Photos

The "end of the world"
Me standing on the edge of a cliff overlooking the mountains and desert near Petra. Guaranteed to make one parent very jealous and one parent very nervous :)

View of the Treasury
View point above the Siq and Treasury. I think the view was worth the climb, but my feet disagree.

Sunset
On the way to Wadi Rum