Petra, Part A

Petra is a really beautiful place, hard to imagine all that they carved out of rock.  We are such small creatures and what we create is nothing in comparison with what our creator has made, but it is hard not to be a little impressed at what our feeble hands can do.

 Of course this journey would start off with a salute to Indiana Jones whose movie put this place back on the map and has provided so much tourism to this part of the world.

 

 The Obelisk Tomb is the first building on the tour, there are a bunch of tombs within this building.

 

 This is the start into the gorge which leads to Petra.  Pretty fun walk in the shade of huge cliffs.  

 On the left you can see the troughs they cut out to provide water to all the camels in the caravans that passed through.

 More troughs and a another view of the gorge.  See the couple up ahead, the chick looked close to my age and was about 5-6 months pregnant.  Tough girl, I passed them later while hiking up the steps to the Urn Tomb.

 Checking out the sky.  The cliffs were about 60 ft up or so.

 Along the gorge there were many carvings like this one.  I read they were representative of the various gods these people worshiped.

 Crazy that stuff can grow down here.

 Another tree in the crack.

 Almost there, almost to the treasury.

One of the more popular facades.   At almost 40 m (131 ft) it really is amazing.  With columns, statues and an urn said to contain pharaoh’s treasures, it's understandable why everyone is attracted to it.

 Close up of the top of the treasury

Just an example of  some huge facades, I dont think these were on the map I got since they weren't anything important, but man are they big.

 This is the roman style theater.  The steps were closed off or I would have gotten a few more pics.

 Inside one of the smaller rooms across the street from the theater.  At about 10 x 10 foot wide it's not too wide, but when you consider it was all carved out of rock, 10x10 is enough.

 Here is a 'door' on the side of this same room.

 I'm down in another room that had a lower floor.

 This is the door to the same room i've been in facing the theater.

 That big facade at the top is the Urn Tomb, not too bad of a hike up there.

 Closer shot of the Urn Tomb.

 This is the inside of the Urn Tomb, as far as I could see, this was the only room in the tomb.  Not really sure where they put the bodies.  See that guy on the right, he's standing in front of that pregnant girl.  She was tired after the hike and they were eating lunch when I took off.

 This is looking down at the valley to the left from the Urn Tomb.

 This is looking down towards the right.  This is where I'm heading next.   I'm going to head up that range in the background to the monastery next.

They had a restuarant before the hike up, it would have been very wise of me to rest and eat a little here since it was about 1pm at this time and i had only eaten some pastacios on the drive from the Dead Sea.  Unfortunately, I am not a very wise man.

This is where I leave you, on my start of the hike to the monastery.