Today we are going to Petra! Hooray! We met the lady in the lobby and she took us to the Israel/Jordan border. There were 18 people in our group. Once our visas were processed we started the tour with a walk through “no man’s land” to officially cross into Jordan. There we met up with a tour guide and boarded a minibus for a two hour ride to Petra. The tour started off with a drive through the city of Aquba with careful mention of all the resorts and hotels that will be available in the next year or two. Hint, hint, "come back and stay at our resorts" was what I heard. tow hours later we finally arrived in Petra. We armed ourselves with our camera and water bottles and set off down the dusty path soon winding through the red rock canyons. Each turn in the path was simple amazing. Some designs carved into the rock could still be seen. Every spot was a great picture opportunity. It was amazing to think about the formation of the rocks, the vivid colors and amazing twists and turns in the canyon. Finally reaching the end of the path we found ourselves standing in front of an amazing palace façade cared in to the rock (know as the Treasury).The view was quite spectacular. How did they carve this beautiful building right into the rock? After 20 minutes or so, we followed our guide to the right taking us on another path towards the ancient Nabatean city. The next two hours were filled with more amazing carvings. Some of them were buildings you could actually walk through.
It was definitely worth the hike (although, I was getting extremely hungry and hot by now). Lunch was supposed to be at the bottom of the trail. It was about 2pm and we still weren’t there yet. We were told specifically not to bring any snacks with us into Jordan. Hindsight, I wished I had tested that rule out. Sara and I were both so hungry. I guess we got used to snacking on a regular basis over the last few days. We did finally make it to the restaurant and there was a huge spread of food… salads, rice, chicken, beans, pita, hummus, watermelon, and much more. After lunch our guide met with us and said we should meet him at the top of the trail in an hour and a half. Guess I haven’t said much about our tour guide yet… probably because his English was so poor no one could understand what little he did have to say about the site. I think he said it was his first month on the job. So we unfortunately didn’t learm much about Petra- other than what was in the brochure up at the visitor center.
Anyway, the walk down took us at least 3 hours down so when we heard we only had 1.5 hours to be up at the top we decided we should at least head that direction. With the heat we weren’t sure how long it would take us. We made it back just in time. I thought I might fall over from heat exhaustion on the last ¼ mile in the blazing sun. We rewarded ourselves with ice cream at the visitor center before getting on the bus. I had a good nap on the way back to the border. Processing us through the border took a long time but we eventually made it back to Israel and to our hostel in Eilat. We should sleep good tonight… regardless of the planes flying over head.
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