Morning in Petra

Visiting Petra is fairly expensive as it is about 50 GBP for a one day visit and if you are a Jordanian resident it's only 1 GBP.

However if you go for more than 1 day the price goes down dramatically. A two day visit is 55GBP, another 1GBP for residents. As Petra has so much to offer we decided to do 2 days instead of just one but we could just as well have taken 3 days in Petra as we still had lots to see...

You can see my ticket and Maria's

Below is the track we were planning on following today. Visit to the monastery

Below is a list with the highlights of Petra and a brief description

The track started the same as yesterday... following the Siq all the way to the Treasury

As we started much earlier, the temperature was a lot cooler, there were considerably fewer people along the path and more importantly... no horse carriages speeding through the narrow gorge...

No human monkeys climbing to any historical monument either so you could actually take pictures with all the time in the world without fearing that if you didn't take the picture on time, they would break it and nobody else would be able to.

It is a pity really that having such great treasures in Jordan people still don't understand that climbing a 2,000 year old statue to take a picture is not the right thing to do... yesterday they were a lot of people just jumping on top of the water channels, hanging their bodies from the few remaining statues etc, etc... not to mention throwing rubish all over the place without hesitation...

All the horses, camels and donkeys fertilise the track on a daily basis and at mid-day the stench is quite noticable although they do have people there cleaning continuously...  

So just before the Siq

If you noticed on the pictures from yesterday there were always lots of people on them... today... not so much... timing is everything it would seem.

 You can see the two water channels on both sides of the gorge on the next picture

 We could actually take pictures without having to queue!! :-)

 If you remember the pictures from yesterday there was a relieve statue showing a caravan and I was saying that there was a man at the front leading the caravan... well... this is the complete relief in 3 photos. :-)

Today I've even managed to get a picture of the Treasury with some camels by the door.

Then the Royal Tombs again...

And then we moved to the new part of the trail that we didn't get to yesterday.

 Today was the Al-Deir track also known as the Monastery because there is a very impressive monastery at the end of the track.

First we passed by the Colonnade

Ternenos gate

 The palace of the Pharaoh's daughter

Right after this we got into a gorge with some stairs where the path to the Monastery starts

And like yesterday we climbed and climbed and climbed... although this climb felt a lot easier than the one we did yesterday but that may just be that today it was a nice and cool 30C intead of the 40C from yesterday...

And then... suddenly... The famous Monastery

Not so interesting on the inside though

Most people stop here as the Monastery is their objective but if you carry on further up there are 3 view points with very different views.

Then it was time to enjoy a cold drink admiring the Monastery view. Right in front of the Monastery there is a very nice place to chill out, buy a cold drink and enjoy it in the shade on a nice cushioned seat and today the whole place was just for Maria and myself...

After chilling out it was time to head back.

Luckily this climb is too steep for horse carriages but instead you can do it by donkey... as some tourists that we found on our way down...

The fear on their faces was undescribable, I bet they didn't expect having a donkey racing up the montain with cliffs right and left chased by the owner as he was chastisising the poor beast to go even faster... it probably felt like a good idea climbing by donkey at the bottom of the mountain...

As we reached the bottom we made our way out via the Siq and this time like yesterday we were full of dust everywhere but as we had already checked out of our hotel we went into the Movenpick which is right outside the Visitor's centre... a very posh hotel with a very nice restaurant...

This is something that I would recommend to anyone doing Petra... after the walk just get in, have a wash in the luscious bathroom, order a beer, some food and relax...

This is something that Maria told me we had to do after Petra and it was worth every penny... and to be honest, is not that expensive... same you would pay in Europe in any normal restaurant.

After lunch, Maria head back to Amman as she had to go to work the following day and I had organised a taxi to take me all the way to Aqaba, down in the south of Jordan (almost on the border with Saudi Arabia).

I normally would have taken a bus but they only have two buses a day and they are both in the morning so I had to choose between spending more time in Petra and travelling by taxi or leaving in the morning by bus... so Taxi it was...

The trip by taxi took almost 2 hours and I was going to a diving resort 13Km away from Aqaba. This resort (Aqaba Adventure Divers)  was difficult to find and we went all the way to the border with Saudi Arabia just to turn around and keep looking until we finally found it.

Then it turned out that my reservation was done via a company/website they didn't work with so it took a while until we get it all sorted out... luckily they had an extra room for me otherwise I would have found myself looking for another place where to spend the night...