The Day I Died (of Happiness & Exhaustion) at Petra
Our fourth day in the Middle East, we woke to a seemingly paradoxically chilly desert morning. Packing our bags, we met for breakfast in an open air pavilion where we enjoyed omelettes, coffee and hummus for breakfast (hummus for every meal!) before loading on the buses for a short trip north to the UNESCO World Heritage site, Petra.
Petra is a massive prehistoric city built by the Nabataeans and was a hugely important caravan centre for most of the Arabian world in that time. The city and its uncovered architecture span a massive footprint but according to archeologists, 80% of the city has yet to be uncovered.
We spent the first hour of five that we had on the grounds lazily walking through the huge entrance to the city centre, the winding sandstone passageways reminiscent of America's Antelope Canyon. After a few kilometres of gradually winding paths, a column-clad Hellenistic building peaked out - the famed Treasury of Petra. Bleating camels and hoards of tourists crowd the facade. After snapping a few pics, we continued on to the larger expanse of the city, stopping only to admire the amphitheatre and wonder what may have happened there... town halls, concerts, Petra's Got Talent(!), before continuing to try to hike to the monastery. We were about a quarter-ways up a mountain hike before realizing this was not the monastery hike after all - it was the lookout to the Treasury. By this point, being 1:00, we figured three hours was more than enough time to make it to the lookout and back, climb to the monastery and back to the bus by 4. *Narrator: it was not enough time.*
If the first hike humbled me, the second hike broke me. My feet will never be the same. We climbed over 140 flights of stairs that day, walked 30,000 steps, equalling over 21km. It was a half-marathon with zero training and mostly uphill. Luckily for me, my crew was patient as I was most certainly the weakest link, stopping to take photos along the way but mostly dying for an excuse to take a break from the cardio. The views were amazing, and I would have buzzed with excitement at being able to have reached both in the short time we had if I had had any energy left to buzz.
After the first hike the boys powered ahead to try to make it to the monastery with enough time. I drifted slowly behind, Mel and I pondering whether we should give it a shot too. In the end we did, with barely any time to spare. We powered back down the steps, rushing to make the bus with only 45 minutes left and a certainty that if we were too late, they would leave us behind. The walk back to the main gates turned out to be much, much longer than we had remembered and seeing as we were already 10 minutes past our meeting time, my legs were screaming, and we still had several kilometres to go, we paid 100 sheckels to jump on a pair of horses and galloped back to meet our group, sweaty and bone-deep tired. A two hour drive back to the Jordanian-Israeli border, a missing passport fiasco, several near-misses for our buses, and a holiday impacting travel between TLV and Jerusalem, we fell into our beds at 3am feeling that our adventures in Jordan must have been weeks long rather than a mere 36 hours.
Don’t worry! The adventure doesn’t stop here! We are continuing on through to Jerusalem if you care to join.
