Jordan: The Ancient City of Petra

Petra is what everybody wants to see in Jordan because it was in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. However, what most people don't realize is that Petra is an enormous site with a lot more to see than just the facade of the building from Indiana Jones. We made the mistake of trying to see the whole site in one day - we really had no idea how big it was or how much we would want to see there. And don't forget the lack of shade throughout Petra - you're in the hot sun all day. If all you want to see is the building from Indiana Jones, called the Treasury, then you can start up at the visitor's center and walk ~1.5 miles downhill through the Siq (the narrow canyon that's 3 meters wide in some spots) before arriving at the Treasury. Then you walk back out and you're done and it's a perfectly reasonable half-day adventure. Note that, due to some idiots putting graffiti on the walls of the Treasury, you are no longer allowed to go inside of it.

Petra is comprised of "lower" and "upper" parts. The lower part, which includes the Treasury, we covered in a 2-hour guided tour - the tour leaves you at the end of the site and you have to walk all the way back out though (all uphill) which would take another hour. So, in 3 hours with a guide, you could cover all of lower Petra.

Upper Petra is comprised of 3 sites that are not connected to each other and that you have to hike up to separately in order to see - The Monastery, the Royal Tombs, and the place of high sacrifice. To see the Monastery you have to climb over 700 stairs - plus almost 200 more if you want to get to the viewpoint that looks out over the Monastery and gives you a nice view of other parts of Jordan as well. This takes 2 hours round trip if you don't stop for too long. It's definitely worth the trip to see the Monastery so if you go leave time to do it.

The High Place of Sacrifice, where animal sacrifices were supposedly carried out, is up another ~800 steps (I just took that number off the internet, so it may not be exact). We did not go up there so I don't have much to say about it. Our driver told us to see the Monastery first and then, if we had energy left, to see one of the other high sites.

The Royal Tombs are visible in their entirety from many areas of lower Petra, and also from the top of the high place of sacrifice. To get closer to them, you will climb another few flights of stairs and then you can walk alongside all the tombs to see them up close.

Additionally, there is a "Petra at Night" tour that starts at 8:30pm, walks you down through the Siq, and ends at the Treasury with the open area in front of the Treasury lit by candles and lanterns. Then, you turn around and walk back out. This tour only occurs a few days of the week so plan your trip accordingly if you want to do it. We had booked it but ended up being too exhausted to go back into Petra that night after being in there the entire day.

And, bonus, over 60% of Petra is still underground! So, as they continue to excavate more, there will be more to see there.

Finally, below are the pictures from our day in Petra. What we did was start out with a 2-hour drive from Wadi Rum. Then we had a 2-hour guided tour down through the Siq, past the Treasury, and down to the very bottom of the site which is another mile or two downhill. I highly recommend having a private guided tour for the lower part of Petra; we learned a lot. Then we had a quick lunch at a restaurant (really the only restaurant there) before hiking up to the Monastery and the viewpoint above it. Then, we walked back out of the site because we didn't have the energy to see the Royal Tombs or High Place. You have to leave energy to get out of Petra because it's all uphill on the way out and it's a solid 3 miles of walking to get out from the bottom of the site back to the visitor's center.

Walking through the Siq on our way in. In the picture of me standing under a bent tree, I am leaning on one of the two water channels, there is one on each side of the Siq, that ran down into the ancient city of Petra. They were built into the walls so that rain water would make it into the city. The one I'm leaning on was covered, and so the bent tree grew around it.



Finally the Siq opens up to reveal the Treasury - hard to get a good picture of that moment when it first appears.



In the first picture below you can see a lot of loose rocks on the ground behind us - those were left there from a flash flood 3 weeks before we visited. Our Petra guide showed us a video of the flood and the water comes down the mountain alongside the treasury and flows right through the site. Most of the site was filled with loose rocks, which were annoying to walk on. They decided not to clean them all up because they're worried another flood will come through and make a mess again. Anytime there is a danger of flash flooding, they close the entire site for as long as the danger persists.



A kitty resting in the sun at a tourist kiosk right in front of the Treasury.



The patterns in the rocks in some places are really beautiful:



The Monastery, first from the viewpoint we climbed up to, and second up close with Martin standing in front of it for scale:



Me taking pictures at the viewpoint over the Monastery. We didn't take many pictures up there, unfortunately, but there was a little hut with an older man in it. He lives all the way up there, by himself, and climbs down twice a week to get more supplies for himself. His children visit him up there once a year. He had gorgeous views in all directions; not a bad way to live life.



You can, at any point throughout Petra, purchase a ride on a camel or a donkey so you don't have to walk so much. The donkeys will take you up to the Monastery or High Place. HOWEVER, our guide told us that sometimes the donkeys fall off of the cliffs so we stayed right away from riding them. But at the end of a long day it sure was tempting! Here are some of the donkeys and camels. You can also take a horse-drawn carriage through the Siq if you don't want to walk that.



Pictures of the Royal Tombs from various locations throughout the site. They really are quite impressive. Everything in Petra was.



The Royal Tombs, behind a collapsed pillar of the Great Temple (part of lower Petra that we wandered through).



Just some more tombs - these are just outside of the Siq on the way back up to the visitor's center. There are carvings in the rocks everywhere!



So, 10 miles later, we were done with Petra! Even if we had planned a second day there to see the High Place and Royal Tombs up close, it would have been another 10 miles of walking to see those sites, all the way back through the Siq and out again. Our driver said some tour companies have special tours where you can enter at the visitor's center and then exit Petra out the bottom without having to walk the 3 miles uphill back out ... if you do that, then it's possible to see everything in one day. But it's likely expensive to do.

Fun note, we stayed at the Petra Guest House for our one night in Petra, and it has a bar in it called the Cave Bar where we had a drink. This is the oldest bar in the world because it occupies a 2000-year-old Nabataean rock tomb. You can sit where the tombs used to be while you have a cocktail, and we did just that: