Last day's walk into Petra

Friday - We wake at 6 am listening for Haroun driving away to Petra to pick up our entry passes - as today is the day we finally walk in. However by the time we're up, washed, dressed and packed ready for the day Haroun still seems to be comatose in his bedding by the vehicle. Khalif has prepared our breakfast and our packed lunches by the time Haroun surfaces and drives off to the visitor centre. Jordanian clocks went forward by an hour last night, so we put the lie -in down to mismanagement rather than too late a night round the camp fire.

View from our tent
Just around the rocks from us is a large Bedouin encampment and although we saw donkeys and goats there yesterday, this morning they have been  joined by a herd of camels.













We were just leaving the camp at 8-15 when Haroun returned with our Petra passes, and then we were off! The walk to Little Petra took around an hour - past irrigated fields growing barley,

past the first obelisk carvings,

 the new water treatment plant serving the major industry that is Petra, and the town of Wadi Musa with all its hotels. The sight of mass tourism with the coaches, tour groups, cafes and bazaars at Little Petra was unnerving after our time in a virtually uninhabited landscape with minimal human contact.

A few hundred yards before the entrance to the Siq  at Little Petra was this large expanse of open ground -  ideal parking and camping space for the large caravans of traders and their camels who frequented the trade routes managed by the Nabateans.


















Walking into Little Petra

After an hour at Little Petra we left the tour groups behind as we continued our walk to the main site past the  remains of Beilah - a village settlement dating back to the ninth & tenth centuries BC, which was excavated  in the 1960's by British archaeologist Crystal Bennett.

Reconstructions of some of the village houses.
From there we followed a good sandy track on to a plateau at the back of the main Petra site - and after a lunch stop at the top of the valley ..........

we were ready for the final march in!

Our first view of the huge scale of the whole Petra central site

Hot, dusty and tired but after 5 day's trekking, we'd made it.

Eid gave us a short tour of the central area, we had a quick look into the museum on site, then it was time to part company as he was due to meet up with his next tour group in Amman later on tonight. He saw us safely to our hotel just out above Wadi Musa town, then left us eager for the next day's walk with a guide in through the "front" door of Petra - down the world famous Siq to the Treasury building - as yet unseen by us.

It seems a little ungrateful at this juncture to mention that we have had a hotel upgrade, but wish we hadn’t. Originally we should have been in a 3 star down in the town of Wadi Musa, close by the entrance to Petra, but we are now checking in to our 4 star, beautifully reconstructed stone village resort of the Beit Zaman – it is situated about 8 kms out of town, and once there we feel somewhat isolated – there go the evening strolls around the bazaars and the café culture. After a decidely cool, un-4 star -like soak in the bath for aching bones we negotiated our way from our stone village house to the restaurant area - it is now cold and drizzling – not ideal weather for wandering round a large site hunter-gathering for your dinner. We have our latest night out for days and make it past the 8-30pm benchmark.