Plenty of Pictures from Petra

Petra is one of Jordan's most treasured and visited places. One of the world's most famous archeological sites, it is a prominent member of Unesco's World Heritage List.  Petra has also been on my 'bucket list' since I first heard about the place a long, long time ago.  

Wadi Musa (Valley of Moses) is the closest village to Petra, and is said to have been
the spot where Moses struck his stick against the rock and extracted water.
The stream seems to me to have dried out by now, and the village might need to be renamed Valley of Hotels.

Walking down towards the ancient city that more than 2000 years ago was home to 30.000 people. 

The Siq is a more than 1 km  long, narrow passageway or gorge that leads in to Petra.  This passageway must have been one of the reasons Petra was such an important and protected metropolis in its time.  The gorge could also be a death trap if you got stuck there during a flash flood that might occur on a rare, rainy day.

And finally, at the end of the tunnel...

Duh da da duuuhhh,  Duh da da! Indy Jones  in search of The Grail.

The Treasury

None shall pass!

Beautiful, hand stitched detail on a woman's dress.

The main thoroughfare of ancient Petra would have been lined with shops & merchants with a Temple at the far end.

Remnants of tombs carved into the rock face.

This local girl selling souvenirs rode her donkey up this steep rocky trail like it was a trot in the park

C climbing after to the High Place of Sacrifice.

Free at last! 

Sometimes difficult to know which rocks were carved by men and which by nature.

Hard to believe these four photos below are closeups of a cliffside - more like the surface of Jupiter.

The view across to the Soldier's Tomb 

Inside one of the Tombs 

Look closely, M is in the doorway. The threshold of the Monastery is taller than he is!

Johnny Depp's Bedouin cousin was our camel guide 

The Theater - closed to exploration due to erosion

Looks like the cake filling in this huge, layered cake spilled over and ran down the side.

You can hire a donkey to carry you up to the higher places,
but how can you ask someone that looks this sad and tired to do the job for you? 

....so we gave M the job to be our mule.

The shots with people give you a sense of the humbling scale in the Siq

Tiny shadow people

Next stop, the desert of Wadi Rum!

(Cue the Indiana Jones theme music!)