December 1st, Part One: Petra!

We got up early the next morning, grabbed a quick breakfast at the hotel before checking out, then walked down to meet our guide - all by 7am. It was time to go explore Petra!

We met our guide at the Visitor Center and started making our way down the path. Our guide told us a bit about the history of the area as we walked along, and pointed out a few things along the way.

After a short distance, the path started to narrow and snake its way between increasingly taller rocks. It was time to enter the Siq!

The Siq is the way in and out of Petra, and it was one of the coolest walks I've taken in a while. The walls stretched up way over your head, and it was fairly quiet, except when a donkey-drawn cart would clatter past.

We certainly weren't the only people walking through the Siq, but there were a few spots where nobody else was around.

In one section of the Siq, you could see the remains of statues. The lower part of the statues had been buried for years; it was crazy to imagine what this must have looked like before erosion took its toll.

A little more walking later...

...we got our first look at the Treasury.

Pictures can't even start to do justice to what it's like to see this come into view as you pop out of the Siq. So. Cool.   :)

While you couldn't go inside the Treasury, you could walk right up to it.

You could also see where a lower level of the structure had been found and was being excavated, too.

This is actually thought to be a mausoleum of a Nabatean king, but in the early 19th century, local Bedouins thought that an urn on the top of the structure (kind of hard to see here) contained actual treasure, hence the name. They actually shot at it at one point to try to get the 'treasure' out!

There were some tables and a couple small vendors nearby, so Mark grabbed us some tea, and we sat and ogled the view while our guide told us a bit more about the Treasury and a few other things we'd see on our tour. Petra is much more than just the Treasury!

After finishing our tea, we started walking deeper into the site. It seemed like everywhere you looked, there was another interesting thing carved into the rocks.

One of the first things we came to was a large theater. They actually cut into some tombs as they were building this; you can see the gaps in the rock near the top.

This was what the theater faced; you could see a number of fancy tombs carved into the nearby rocks.

We wandered through some more ruins...

...and ended our guided tour in front of the ruins of a big temple. It was pretty neat to see the walls still so intact! We still had a few hours before we had to meet Ahmad, so we decided to take the guide's suggestion and hike up to the Monastery.

It only took a few minutes to get going on the path and get away from some of the bustle of the heart of the ruins.

We weren't exactly sure what to expect as we started the hike...

...but we soon realized that it would be steep. Very scenic, but STEEP. And full of vendors on the sides of the trail, sitting around small smoky fires and selling all sorts of odds and ends. A LOT of steep walking later...

...we popped out of the winding trail in front of the Monastery.

You can just make out the steps at the end of the trail on the right side of the rock that the Monastery is carved out of.

Like the Treasury, you couldn't go inside the Monastery, but you could walk right up to it. We hung out for a little while, enjoying the view, then started to make our way back down the trail.

This definitely ranks up there as one of the coolest hikes I've ever done.

There were goats here and there along the sides of the trail; the guy in the black shirt went out of his way to take a picture of one of them.

There were more rooms carved out of the rock along the way back down from the Monastery. It only took a few more minutes of walking to get back into the main section of the ruins.

We followed a path along a small hill; it had a really cool view of the Great Temple.

We made our way over to the Temple of Winged Lions. There were sections of the columns just sitting on the ground; the temple is slowly being restored. Seeing stuff like this makes me wonder what people might think, thousands of years in the future, when they come upon the remains of our current-day society.

Further along the path, we came to a church with some restored mosaic floors.

The detail was pretty neat, but one of my absolute favorite parts of Petra wound up being just a short walk away.

This.

So. I know it doesn't look like much. We were following the path along the hill, slowly working our way toward some fancy carved tombs in the distance. I just happened to look down, and it stopped me in my tracks. Out in the open, just scattered around on the ground, were thousands of pottery shards. And not new ones - these are easily hundreds, if not thousands, of years old. Just sitting there. You could see grooves in some of them, where whoever made them had created a pattern in the sides. Something like this in the US would probably be roped off and behind glass, but here, it was just part of the scenery.

I honestly could have spent all day on that hill, looking at little chunks of ancient pots or plates or whatever they may have once been, but I did eventually peel myself away from looking at the ground and we moved on.

This was the view from the hill where the pottery shards were. There is so much city hidden in the rocks; it would have been really neat to see this when it was at its peak.

We walked a little bit more and came to the royal tombs. They were all carved into the same big facade of rock.

You could even walk through some of them.

This is what the inside of many of the buildings is like; the Indiana Jones movie where he goes into the Treasury and through a maze of rooms is nowhere near reality!

We spent a bit more time exploring some of the tombs, then started to make our way back out of the ruins.

We eventually made our way back to the Treasury. The sun had come up a bit more, and the light on the rock was gorgeous. This is one of my favorite pictures I've taken in a long time (and I actually took it with my cell phone).

After hanging out in front of the Treasury for a few more pictures, we started following the Siq back out of the ruins. I turned back for one last look as the Treasury faded away.

There didn't seem to be as many people in the Siq as we made our way back to town...

...which gave us a good chance to enjoy the view and soak in the silence. Petra had been an incredible place, and I'm so glad we got to visit.