Day 18 Petra

Today we woke up in our wonderful hotel

and had breakfast at the restaurant. Breakfast continues to be the same thing everywhere we are at. Our wonderful driver, Ala’a, met us at 8:00am to drive us to the site of Petra. He speaks English very well – better than anyone we have had so far. I believe the site opens at 7am and definitely closes at sunset – about 5:30pm.

Petra comes from the Latin word for rock. It is about 80 kilometers south of the Dead Sea. It’s importance as a city was established in the late first century BC through the success of the spice trade. Petra was the principal city of the ancient Nabateae people and was famous for its trade and its hydraulic engineering systems. These systems included water conservation systems and dams that were constructed to divert the flash floods caused by the winter rains. It rains in Jordan mostly in the winter months. I took some video of one of the dams (which has been refurbished). You should also be able to see part of the aquaduct that fed the water from the city (Wadi Musa – meaning Valley of Moses) above.


Petra was basically built in a valley. To enter the city you walk through what seems to be a large crack between two gigantic rocks. It looks like a mountain was cut right down the middle and left a small dirt road. I hope you can get the idea from some of the video. At the end of this “road” you turn the corner into an open area and see the “Treasury”.

It’s important to note that the Nabateans carved their city out of the sandstone. We don’t want to use the word built. The Treasury is a beautiful structure and was said to be used for royal tombs.




As you continue to walk through the mountains, there are tombs all over the sides of the cliffs. The smaller tombs were for the poorer people. Tombs with more decoration and more than one floor were either for the rich or for the royalty. There are a few pictures and videos of some of these tombs. Our guide told us that no bodies have been found in any of the tombs but they are sure they were at least used ceremonially for burials because of some of the writings they found on the walls.




There is a monastery that was later used as a Christian church at the top of one of the mountains. It took about 45 minutes to climb up but the views were fantastic. I did take a few photos and videos.

I don’t think they will do it justice but the monastery is a pretty spectacular site. It was just very weird to be hiking through rocks and then all of a sudden come up on a beautifully carved structure.


The city itself is said to be only about 30 percent excavated. Archeologists think there is still 70 percent of the city still underground. The flash flooding that has occurred throughout the centuries has eroded the wall carvings as well as filled up some of the city with sand and dirt. In fact, archeologists have found a whole other part of the city under the ground in front of the Treasury building. They covered it back up because they haven’t figured out a way to protect it from some of the floods that still occur.

About 106 AD, the Romans, under Emperor Trajan, took over the city and it became part of the Roman province known as Arabia Petraea with its capital being Petra.

Petra’s decline happened when the trade routes changed and when an even more devastating earthquake hit the city in 551 AD. These two things all but brought the city to ruin. With the rise of Islam, Petra became a backwater community. Petra was revealed to the western world in 1812 for the first time since the Crusades when it was re-discovered by the Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt.

Petra’s current fame comes from being a setting for the movie Indiana Jones. It’s an interesting place to visit and nothing like we’ve ever seen before. It took as all day to visit the site.

When our driver met us at 4pm, he took us back to the hotel. We did stop at one point to take a photo from high above Petra. It was an interesting perspective to look down on where we were.

When we got back to the hotel we decided to have a Turkish bath and massage. This is very popular in this area so we thought we’d try it out. We have never done anything like this and didn’t really know what to expect. We have been hiking all day so we thought a massage seemed appropriate. When we went in, a man led us into a changing room where we put on our bathing suits. We entered a steam room for about 10 minutes. It was really hot and steamy. A man came and got Scott and took him for his massage. He came back in about 10 minutes and tried to explain to me what was going to happen. The massage guy was right there ready to take me so basically all I heard from Scott was, “this is like nothing you’ve ever experienced before”. Needless to say, I was a bit nervous.

The man was dressed only in a sheet wrapped around his waist. He led me into a room where I had to step up onto a large stone washing area. He had a large metal bucket with soap suds in it. He told me to lie down on my back and he proceeded to rub soap on my arms and legs and neck. It appeared like I was getting a massage and a bath all at the same time. I turned over and he did the same thing to my back and legs. When it was over, I turned around and sat up and he splashed water all over me to get the soap off. He led me back to the steam room where Scott was. After he walked out, Scott and I laughed for about 5 minutes straight. It was just a very strange experience to have someone you don’t know give you a soapy bath.

They wanted us to sit and have tea afterwards but we really just wanted to get the heck out of there. It was smoky in the front room and after the bath, we didn’t want to smell like smoke before dinner.