Petra!

Today we went to Petra.  We got up early in the morning and went to the Jordan border.  Then we had to get out of our little Jeep and walk from one side of the border to the other.  No cars are allowed to cross the border at that crossing. We rode in a tour bus for 2 hours all the way to Petra.

The houses in Jordan are very different from ours. They are made of concrete because wood is very expensive here.  The houses are also very small and many are made from scraps of metal.  The people are very poor compared to most Americans.  There are Shepards.  They round up all their sheep and goats. The Shepard follows their flock where ever they go,  even across highways. We saw wild camels on the way. All the villages had minorettes for the Arab Islamic call to prayers.  The men all wear head scarves and the women long dresses and head scarves.

We got to Petra.  It looked very different from the visitor’s center then I expected. We walked down a path and all of a sudden we got to the famous red sandstone. The Siq is a very narrow canyon very long and tall.  The Nebiteans who built Petra carved aqueducts and made water pipes from clay so they would have water all the time and not have floods during the winter rains. As you walk you see MA y carvings and towns.  All of a sudden,  there is the Caspian or the Treasury.  It is the main building in Petra. It is the one you see in Indian Jones movies.  

 The young Bedouin boys were very fascinated with my sunglasses.  They were along the trail selling postcards for 1 dinar.  One boy who was 11 wanted to trade me postcards for my glasses.  I did not want to but my Mom did it.  He  was SO excited! Later we saw him 2 times and he was smiling and wearing the glasses.

We kept walking and saw the Great Palace is a lot of column and big staircases.  It was huge! Next we went to lunch.  We ate meat,  hummus,  saffron rice and other delicious food.  I love the food here!

Then we went to the monastery.  It requires you take a long,  windy,  narrow path with over 800 stairs but it was really worth it! It used to have a wall of columns around it but its been long since destroyed. And we walk back to the Treasury and saw camels.  We took a couple of pictures and then headed back to our hotel. We had dinner a

Today we woke up at Petra and had a great breakfast. We went to our bus to start going back to Eilat. Once we got to the border we had to get on to a different bus. It was a Jeep and we did a little bit of off-roading to get to our hotel faster.  The driver gave us a tour while we drove.  We even drove through a drainage trench.  Then once we got to our hotel we went to lunch and watched some volleyball next to the restaurant. Next we drove to Jerusalem we saw camels,  a C-130 and tanks doing meneuvers. At last we got to Jerusalem.  We went to dinner and had great pasta.  After that we went bed.