A WONDER OF THE WORLD...

This past weekend was our much-anticipated trip South to Petra, Wadi Rum, and Karak.  We left Saturday morning and returned Monday night.  That means everyone got two days off from classes – which none of us complained about. 

Saturday was an early start.  We left Amman at 5:00 a.m. and headed for Petra.  Petra is by far the highlight of any tourist trip to Jordan.  It is one of the new 7 wonders of the world and is an absolutely incredible site.  It’s basically an ancient city carved into rocks and mountains tucked away in a remote valley basin in the middle of southern Jordan’s Shara mountains.  It’s shielded from the outside world behind a huge barrier of rock.

The area of Petra has a long history and is even mentioned in the Old Testament.  It’s believed to be where the Israelites came after forty years in the desert.  In the hills just above Petra is where God commanded Moses to produce water for the Israelites by speaking to a rock.  Petra’s golden age, however, came during the first centuries BC and AD under the Nabateans with a population of about 30,000.   During that time it was a wealthy cosmopolitan city.  A hundred years later the city was passed into Roman hands and declined from there.  It was unknown for hundreds of years until a British explorer stumbled upon it in the early 19^th century.

Petra is difficult to describe in words and pictures don’t do justice.  It’s just something you have to see.  We were in the city for about seven hours and still didn’t see everything.  It was blistering hot and we walked for miles – and drank a ton of water.  We did two major hikes – one to the summit of a big mountain to “The High Place of Sacrifice” where they sacrificed animals and perhaps even humans.  The view was amazing. The other hike was up to a huge monastery carved into the mountainside.

The next day we went further south to a place called Wadi Rum.  You don’t usually think of the dessert as being very pretty but it was gorgeous (and hot).  We stayed at a Bedouin camp and slept in Bedouin tents.  We hiked sand dunes, went on a truck ride through the dessert with the Bedouins, ate their food, and watched a stunning sunset.  If anyone reading this is familiar with Lawrence of Arabia and the movie made about him, he is believed to have gone through this desert during his journey a lot of the movie was filmed here.

On the way home we stopped in Karak and went through an old crusader castle. It was really cool too but this post is turning into a novel so I’m going to end it with that.  It was difficult to decide what pictures to put up.... here is a small sample of our trip!  

The canyon that you walk through to get to Petra

The first thing you see as you walk out of the canyon (aka The Treasury)

Part of Petra

Chana wanted to marry this donkey, we saw him on our way up to the Monastery 

(no I didn't but he does look so cute)

The Monastery

The Beduin camp that we were staying at in Wadi Rum

Chana next to our tent

(it was camel hair fabric which made it incredibly and uncomfortably hot)

The trucks we rode through the dessert in

The view of the dessert from the sand dunes

Our truck group

The beautiful sunset

Karak castle