Showing posts with label petra. Show all posts
Showing posts with label petra. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Day 103: Petra by Day


(Her: Joanna)

To minimize the time being in the heat and sun, and massive flock of tourists, we entered Petra before 8 AM.  It was perfect.  We got to the Siq and the Treasury with just a few people.  And the number of donkey/horse/camel owners, and souvenir sellers to urge you to buy or use their service were less. 

We met a kid, Oman, who spoke better English than most adult Jordanian we have encountered, persistently trying to sell us his donkey service.  I’m truly impressed with his skill in offering us different price for different routes to lure us into hiring him.  If he had a camel instead, I would have definitely taken his offer.  Eight hours later, we bumped into Oman again.  Seeing so many tourists, Oman recognized me and attempted for the last time to get me to take his donkey - impressive kid.



It was hard to imagine that Petra used be a place with rivers and trees.  It is all dry land right now.  I can imagine that this city must be a beautiful place with magnificent buildings caved out of rocks.  The details of the decorative craving on the building exterior wall are already decayed but the few preserved in the museum showed that the building used to have really impressive craving.  I found Petra impressive but required some imagination to make it magical.


Monday, August 13, 2012

Day 102: Petra by Night

(Her: Joanna)

Petra was one of the stop that I have been waiting for since the start of the trip to visit.  It was an amazing experience to visit at night and listen to traditional Beoduin (Jordanian who live in the desert) music in front of the Treasury filled with candles.  You can hear the silence of Petra and feel the loneliness of the musician when there’s no tourist talking or people flashing their camera.   I cannot wait to see Petra in the day time.