June 2, 2009 – Day 159 – Petra, Jordan

“The Pink City” of Petra holds true to its name and its allure. Feeling like Indiana Jones (ok, sans horse) we made our way through the 80 meter high walls of the amazing Siq and marveled at the random trees and bushes growing from cracks in the rock. How they can sustain themselves in such an environment is pretty incredible!

Burro in front of the Treasury

The Siq was heavy populated with speeding horse carts with frightened passengers and no brakes, plenty of young men on military leave, and tons of families of holiday. It was crowded and noisy but everyone was excited to be there even though we all got into each other’s photos without much consideration! Soon we rounded a turn a got our first glimpse at the Treasury through a small gap in the Siq walls.

Through the Siq

Around another turn revealed a similar view and finally, we came out in front of it gazing upon its full splendor. It really is just the lightest shade of pink and the engineering that went into carving the Treasury building just blows your mind to think of. The angles are absolutely perfectly level and straight and how the builders managed to create such a tall, perfect building is really amazing. What could they even have used as scaffolding out in the desert? Or would they have carved from the top down? How did the angles come out so perfectly when they were chiseled by hand? Plenty of questions about those long disappeared, mysterious rock-dwelling desert hearty people.

The Treasury in the afternoon

Passing through the other visitors, the camels, and horse carriages we climbed in and up and on and around all manner of rocks, homes, and other rock buildings before finally deciding to climb up to the famous Monastery.

Rock detail inside a home

It’s quite a hike and especially so in the awful heat so be sure to bring plenty of water with you! When we finally made it to the top, a man in a bright yellow vest came running towards us and whispered hurriedly, ”This way please! This way! We are filming over there!” So we hung around in the shade and watched the filming of a TV show which we heard was the well known Brazilian soap opera we couldn’t get away from in Brazil about Indians in Brazil. Apparently this episode is supposed to be about one of the women making her way back to India with a guy (boyfriend?) and they are sightseeing along the way. But it was in Portuguese and that was according to a Portuguese couple who knew what the crew was saying over the speakers. When the film crew took a break, we went to climb up into the Monastery and have a look around. It’s just one large open room and was not even an actual monastery. Again it’s a really neat building that was carved out with perfect angles and a massively high ceiling so it must have been carved from the top down. Pretty neat anyway.

The Monastery

After a long, dusty and ridiculously hot day in the desert we left Petra and retired to our nicely air conditioned hostel. We couldn’t even muster the will to leave for dinner and ended up eating one of the best meals we’ve had on the whole trip at the hostel! Chicken and rice, tons and tons of vegetables about 8 different ways, bread and soup on an all you can eat buffet for about $7.

Tasty buffet

A bit more than we normally spend on food but it was the only meal we had all day (bread and jam at breakfast is not a meal) and we made sure to er, ”get our money’s worth”…yeah we were kinda sick we when finally stopped eating…but it was so good…and when’s the next time we’ll get such good food, or vegetables for that matter?! Mmmm, just writing about it makes me want to go back to Petra just to eat at that hostel!