At Petra

We woke up this morning after a good nights sleep in a quiet room at the Marriott.  A little American luxury can really be nice after a tough day.  The shower had plenty of water and it was HOT.  Nice for a third world country.  The breakfast was great in the restaurant and the smoked salmon and cream cheese omelet from the omelet bar was one of the best I have ever had.  We had coffee, juice, lots and various fruits and oatmeal, eggs, bacon, sausage and thoroughly stuffed ourselves.  Since we had only had a little dinner on the airplane the night before, we were starving.  Back at the room we caught up on e-mails and blog posting; having fast internet was a real luxury as well.

About 10:00 a.m., we checked out and got directions that put us back on a road we had driven up and down the night before.  In the light of day, with a better map, we made it out to the main highway headed back toward the airport and south toward Aquaba and Petra.  We got cheap gas (one of the advantages of the middle east) and headed down the “Desert Highway” to drive the 200 km to Petra.  The highway had lots of trucks and buses.  It became apparent the Aquaba, on the northern tip of the Red Sea, is Jordan’s link to the sea as we saw lots of trucks with containers on them and trucks of new cars heading toward Amman.  We passed lots of new construction and saw that the Jordan Valley is a vast agricultural area that reminded me a little of the California Central Valley.  Further south, there was mining, an aluminum plant and a cement plant.  A lot of it looks new and well kept.  We also passed large chicken farms.

Finally, we got to the turnoff to Petra, left the highway south and climbed up into the hills, up a canyon with lots of cedar trees on the hills surrounding the canyon.  It was kind of a surprise to see the trees, but overall, parts of the area looked a lot like the Mojave desert (after the Jordan Valley), and then as we got toward Petra, it started looking a lot like Southern Utah.  The town just outside of Petra is in a canyon that reminded me of Moab (without the river).

We easily found our hotel, the “Movenpick,” which is at the end of the road, right across the street from the entrance to Petra.  We checked in, had some ice cream in the bar (being a Swiss chain of hotels, the feature Swiss ice cream) waiting a few minutes for our room to be ready.  We got settled in and about 2:30 p.m. walked across the street to the entrance and bought our two day passes for the Park.  At 55 Dinar each (a Dinar is worth about $1.60 USD) they were on the expensive side, but a one day pass is 50 Dinar, or two days for 55.

We walked down the canyon through narrowing gorges of red sandstone rock and after about a mile came to the “Treasury,” the most famous of the building facades carved into the sandstone.  It is very impressive. 

We walked around looking at various other carvings, tombs, and fending off the hustlers selling rides on donkeys back to the parking lot, coins “found in a tomb,” postcards, etc.  About 4:30 p.m. we started the walk back up the hill out of the canyon and while it is a long drag, it did not take us too long.

We can back to the hotel for a rest before dinner.  After dinner, we bought tickets to a “Petra at Night” show, where we go back down the canyon with it lit by candles.  It should be quite a show.