Today we docked back in Aqaba - which is where we sailed from a week ago. At 8.15am we were loaded onto 2 coaches for the 2.5-3 hour trip to Petra. The temperature in Aqaba was about 17 Celsius, but Petra is up in mountains and it was only 3 degrees there, so the people who'd worn shorts and t-shirts were finding it a bit nippy.
On arrival we had to get down several sets of steps before we reached the area where you can hire horses or golf carts to traverse the long narrow canyon down to the Treasury building. The builders planned it that way thinking that it was that much more impressive if your friends (or enemies) had to walk all the way down this long canyon and then the first building they saw was the Treasury.
The horses will only take people about the first 800m and it's 2-3Km down this canyon to reach the city. You can walk down, but you are taking your life in your hands if you do, as the golf cart drivers think they are in one of the Fast and Furious movies. Part of the journey is also over cobbled stones, so by the time I reached the Treasury I felt like I'd been on the Indiana Jones roller coaster ride at Disney.
Petra was the capital of the ancient Nabatean civilization. It was rediscovered in 1812 by a Swiss chap called Johann Ludwig Burckhardt - who was supposedly trying to find his way to the pyramids. Not someone you want to ask for directions then....
The most famous building in Petra is the Treasury building - which you will all recognize from various movies - basically any movie that needed a "lost" city. Although in the lost city movies it never has all the tourists and camels in front of it.
Today's fascinating fact is that the building is not a Treasury at all - it's a tomb. The designers made the mistake of carving an urn at the top of the building in the middle. It seems the urn is a symbol of treasure and a lot of people thought that there was somehow a treasure trove hidden in the rock behind it so shortly after Petra was rediscovered in the 19th century, people used to come and shoot at the urn with rifles - thinking that at some point it would shatter and shower them with gold.
From the Treasury area, the only way on is by foot. However, you don't have to walk more than another half a mile to get a good panoramic view of the city as a whole. you can walk right down to the theatre and explore if you like, but Denise and I didn't fancy the rocky path. There were also locals offering to guide you to vantage points high up in the rocks above the city and I saw quite a few (younger) people up there.
Unfortunately the wait for the golf carts back up to the parking lot was dreadful. They wouldn't send down carts until there were people who wanted to come down in them, and most people were walking down and then finding that they didn't have the energy to climb back up again. So the queue was very long and we spent over 45 minutes standing in the cold on a rocky, uneven surface before the hair-raising ride back to the top.
After a very late "lunch" at the Movenpick Hotel in Petra it was a long coach ride back to the ship. Denise and I had a short dinner and spent the rest of the evening packing, as our suitcases had to be outside our room by 11pm.
So that is it - the end of my cruise. Tomorrow morning we disembark and head back to the Intercontinental Hotel in Aqaba for a couple of nights before our flight back to London. Originally we'd intended to organize a day trip to Wadi Rum or the Dead Sea, but after 2 days of walking the rocky trails in Timna Park and Petra we're totally exhausted and will probably spend our hotel time mostly in the hot tub instead.
The first time we went there (1992), it was either horse or walk. The second time (1995) they had outlawed the horses and it was either walk or camel. I was more than happy to walk on both occasions but the first time I had to go by horse as it would have meant being left behind if I'd walked. The way they ride is different out there and you have to get used to a different saddle, etc.
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