So I was woken up when Claire stumbled into my room after her flight arrived at 2am or something. Surprisingly she was awake at 8:30 and ready to check out the mozaic map of the known middle east world from a long time ago. Our hotel had prime location for the number 1 site in Madaba. We just crossed the street and entered the church. Its quite interesting from a historical point of view, but even details like a fish in a river are reminiscent of many old paper maps.
Mozaic map
It was then time to dare the Jordanian roads and it drivers. With my phone and GPS app, Claire navigated me out of Madaba and we were soon on the road to Petra. The dual carriageway desert highway was a bit bumpy at times, including a speed hump. I soon worked out that they didn’t actually mark the slower speed limit, just the town area and then put a speed hump in, which was barely visible. I think we flew off one speed hump and i locked the brakes before another one. But once I’d worked it out the drive was an easy one into Wadi Musa, the town next to Petra.
After lunch, we decided to head into Petra for an afternoon sneak peak and it was a great idea. All the weary visitors were mostly leaving, while all we had to do was avoid the offers of donkey or horse. For those unfamiliar with Petra you walk from the visitors center down a path that eventually leads to the canyon, know as the Siq. Then you walk through the canyon until eventually you get a sneak peak of the Treasury, the most famous building in Petra and the one that featured in the last good Indiana Jones film (The Last Crusade, the recent one doesn’t count).
The Siq and a view of the treasury
We walked in and it was pretty quiet, mostly locals whose sole aim was to get you to ride those poor horses. There were some camels also and a young boy who just wanted to sell me postcards. We took a few photos and sat their for a while basking in its glory and returned back to town. We’ll walk past this again tomorrow, but we won’t need to linger as much and have more time to see the rest of Petra.
We had some bedouin dishes for dinner at a restaurant in the “tourist” part of town. It was pretty tasty and filling. I had some lamb dish with some vegetables and spices. It was quite tasty and too much food to eat it all. Anyway tomorrow is going to be a long day and I need some sleep as i’ll be doing half a marathon at least tomorrow.
Me in front of the treasury