Day 7 – THUR - 20/9/12 – Petra, Jordan.
This morning we had a great traditional breakfast of pita, boiled egg, marmalade and creamed cheese. We were dropped off by free taxi at 9am and headed into the wonder that is Petra; literally like the Lost City from Indiana Jones!
Walking into the Siq which is like walking through a gorge in places and with very few tourists about there was a quiet majestic calm about it. The paving was still large slabbed limestone blocks and after being offered numerous horse and cart rides and walking for a while, towards the end of the Siq there is a clearing and you start to see 'The Treasury' peeking through and it is breathtakingly immense. It is sitting powerfully present carved into the rockface. The colour is also amazing, showing as a rich deep red with a magenta hue. After a short rest we press on down 'the street' and marvel at the many other parts of the city and contemplate just how they may have gone about building this city with it's sheer rock faces.
Between the Engineer and the Project Manager we deduced that they must have carved it from the top down or developed a sophisticated scaffolding system... Our wonder continued passing the Royal Tombs and the 'Theatre', with the theatre holding a capacity of 8,000 people.
Continuing on past these we headed for the 'High Place of Sacrifice' place where pagan rituals used to be performed. The views were breath taking here so we stopped for some simple pita bread lunch. Leaning up against the 'Ancient Obelisk' with panoramic views out over the whole of Petra and we could really see why they call it the Red Rose City.
After lunch we headed further off the main tourist track towards the back of Petra where little kittens would spring out of nowhere with a friendly meow! This is where there were many Indiana Jones moments with paths and stairs that seemed to drop away to nothing but then on closer inspection steps appear. We kept waiting for booby traps and trip stones to trap us in one of the tombs! It was eerily deserted of tourists which was fantastic to explore it all to ourselves.
Over the back side of Petra we discovered – The Garden Tomb with remnants of an aquaduct watering system still in place. It was then on to the Funeral Tomb which still had the stucco on the ceiling. This is where they prepared the bodies for the tombs. After a long walk in the afternoon we began to see the colours change on walls from vivid red to burnt orange and again to a deeper magenta red as the sun started it's decent over the ridge whilst we strolled down the pillared street with the restored 'Library' by Brown University and we started our ascent to 'The Monastery'. 850 steps of similar grade to our first ascent but past the donkeys and fake Bedouin’s cantering up on horseback pushing us to one side and also past the ladies selling us 'best price' jewellery from beside the track, indicating we were well and truly on the tourist trail once again.
We reached the summit in about 45 minutes to discover an even more majestic building than 'the Treasury' which was dominating carved into the rock face. Standing imposingly in the space, the late afternoon sun glares at the vast opening of the building which is flanked by gigantic pillars.
We sat and observed the sun shadows for a while then started our decent to leave the park, pausing again outside The Treasury to marvel at the once great civilisation which was taken down by the Romans.
Exiting the park watching the shadows hit the crevasses and seeing the attendant place out the candle bags filled with sand we wish we would have had the energy for the night tour! Instead we left knackered and walking past the line of waiting taxi's and hoping we weren't giving away just how tired we were,so we could still try to get a good bargain. We looked at each other when they called “taxi? taxi?”and our reply was “how much?”. They said “you name a good price”. We said £2, they said £5, we said no, so they said £4, we said £3 and the exhaustive taxi dance was over and we had got it for what we had wanted. We jumped in and were whisked up the hill to bed at the hotel.
