Petra = Rock (in Greek)

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Destination 2 in the country to the East was Petra. I never heard of this place before I came to Israel, people (meaning tourists) talk about this place and also travel to this place. I believe that not one person in my class had not seen Petra, it's fairly easy to reach from Eilat. I offcourse took the other way, I came from the North.

Petra is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and was discovered by a swiss explorer in 1812. It used to be the capital city of the Nabiteeans around 6th century BC. Petra means Rock in Greek and Petra is also known as the Rose-Red City because of the colours of the rocks, which are red😊 hehe.

Me and Catalina arrived in Petra (New) City in the afternoon and looked around for hostels. The new city Petra probably has more hostels and hotels than normal houses. So we had a lot too choose from. We chose a very nice one (about 15min walk from the entrance to Petra), I think the name was saba hostel, it was run by a british lady. Everything you could need was in the area, shops, restaurants and internet. Our hike started at 4am and we were the first ones to enter the park (!!) The start of the park is walking through a very narrow wadi which ends up in the front of "The treasury". The picture is breathtaking.
They say you need about two days in Petra to be able to see everything, me and Catalina luckily agreed that watcing a million different types of tombs was not gonna be very interesting to us. We stayed for 11 hour down there and it was more than enough.
First we climbed a 1000 something metres high mountain with a monastery on top of it. Afterwards we went down again where we met some bedouins that were offering donkey rides😊 I got a mule (half donkey, half horse) while Catalina got a cute little donkey. With the donekys we climbed half a mountain stopped and climbed the rest by foot. It was extremely hot (Petra is located in the desert) and tiring, but the viewpoints from those mountaintops was worth all the sweat. Also the air up there very refreshing after a few hours in the downtown of dirty Amman.

Petra was awesome. We met a guy from Scotland there that wanted to join us for our next destination - Wadi Rum. We thought the more the merrier (and cheaper). So the morning after we took a bus from Petra at 6:30 to Wadi Rum, a national park in the desert in the south, almost bordering Saudi Arabia.

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Photos

Petra
View from the rooftop of our hostel, from New Petra to Old Petra

Preparing to hike
Filling up our watersupplies

The narrow wadi
We were lucky to be the very first people there!

The narrow wadi
Catalina

The end of the wadi
What a view!

The Treasury
Me and a dog, I guess we weren't the first after all.

A cute donkey
on the way to the monastery