Day 17 Jordan - Petra

On this day, in Jordan, we went to Petra, which is one of the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World.

First we had to hike through this immense canyon of red brown limestone.  It was fantastic.  Here's Jacquelyn with two of our friends.

 It was an incredible canyon and this was the ancient way to approach the city of Petra.  They had horse drawn carriages for tourists, but we decided to walk.

 It was so beautiful.  We didn't stay with the tour group on this last day, and went on our own with some friends.  We didn't get the tour talks, but we got to see a lot more and covered the whole canyon.

Jacquelyn with two ancient Petra warriors.

 Finally the canyon opened up on the fabulous Royal Treasury of Petra.  This is all carved out of the rock canyon walls.

 It was quite amazing.  The people of Petra were related to the Israelites and they considered them friends.  Isaac had two sons (Jacob and Esau).  The Israelites were descendants of the twelve sons (tribes) of Jacob (who was renamed Israel).  The people of Petra were descendants of Esau and were called Edomites.

Jacquelyn looking at the Treasury and camels.  There were camels available that you could ride for a fee, and they were always trying to get you to ride rather than walk; but we were having so much fun walking around.

The camels were very interesting and sometimes noisy.

I wanted to put my hat on one camel and take a picture, but the camel didn't like it and started baying at me.  Then his owner yelled at him until he let me.  So here's my Indian Jones camel with Jacquelyn in the background wondering what I was up too.

 We continued on down the canyon with our friends.  We were moving fast so we could see it all.

 These are some homes.  Dr. Madsen said this is probably where Paul was when he was preaching and the people got mad at him and wanted to kill him and his friends had to lower him down out of the city through a window in a basket.

 It you didn't want to ride a camel you could ride a donkey.

 More buildings carved into the sides of the clifts.

 It was a long walk but we were having fun.

 More ruins.  This was an amazing place.

 A picture that I took out of a small cave, which was probably a house.  This is Russ and Dianne, (from Salt Lake City) who were friends that we spent a lot of time with on the trip.  Also Michele who we hung out with a lot also (from Oregon).

 At last, after going up 900 steps at the end, we got to the monastery, at the end of the canyon.  We made it; but we weren't done yet, and also hiked up to the lookout point (see last picture in blog to see how high we climbed to look down on this building).

On the way back we saw a Byzantine Church that was built later in the canyon after the Edomites of Petra had disappeared.  It even had a baptistry for baptisms.

That was the end of our sight seeing, and the end of our trip, except for traveling home.  On Day 18 we flew from Amman to New York, went through customs, and got a hotel in the Bronx.  On Day 19 we flew to Seattle.  Talitha picked us up at the airport and drove us home to Puyallup.  It was the trip of a life time for Jacquelyn and me and we'll never forget it.