Petra Day 1 - 30km

Despite most definitely not being morning people we made the decision to get to Petra around opening time (6am) to have the Siq and Treasury mainly to ourselves, and that beautiful sunrise light. The gate opened at 6am as expected. The ticket office, on the other hand, opens when the first ticket seller gets there. It was suggested to us that this may be between 6:30 and 7, but there was no way for us to get in until then. After 45 minutes of waiting and watching the night give way to dawn the ticket office opened at 7am. During this time a herd of American uni students had turned up and they were not a happy group. We heard all kinds of grievances, fights and squabbles in the 20 minutes we all waited together. We therefore grabbed out tickets as quickly as possible and tried to get as much distance between us and them before entering the Siq.

We were mostly successful and got to enjoy having the Treasury to ourselves for a few precious minutes. The walk down the canyon and the first view of the Treasury were spectacular and exactly what you see in photos. The rest of Petra was totally unknown and unexpected.

Petra is absolutely huge. It's nearly 3km from the entrance to the Treasury and that is really just the start. Once you emerge from the canyon system it becomes obvious that there are hundreds, most likely thousands, of tombs and cave houses. Unsurprisingly we were soon lost.

Having passed through the main city centre we planned to go to the Monastery, which is the Treasury only much bigger and more impressive. It's only less famous due to the fact it's another 6km walk to get there, a large part of that directly up many hundreds of steps. As we got close to where the trail to the Monastery starts we noticed some steps, so we started climbing. We soon found ourselves in a very little trodden area with spectacular colours and shapes carved into the rock. We were continually drawn to the next tomb, the next shape of rock. The rock is amazing, with stripes of pink, white, yellow, black creating beautiful patterns. After an hour or more, we headed back down to the bottom of the mountain we were on to start the journey up the next mountain to the Monastery. This being the more frequented part of Petra we were soon bombarded with offers of donkey rides up to the top. The best of these was the offer of "taxi with free air conditioning!"

After 7 hours of walking we returned to our hotel (another 1.5km up the hill from Petra) to eat and rest for a bit. Just before 8pm we were again walking down the road to Petra for our opportunity to see it by moon and candlelight. Over 1500 candles were placed along the 3km trail from the entrance to the Treasury and 2 by 2 we walked along seeing the stone in a whole new light. Once we arrived into the main chamber with hundreds of candles providing a beautiful soft glow, we were seated, given tea and treated to traditional Bedioun music. Magic!