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After the yesterday long day in the highway, today we will to focus in the visit of the old stone city, Petra, home of the nabateans, who built their tombs digging them in the rock, and engraving splendid facades in their exterior. The origin of these constructions is located around Christ times. Curiosly, they didn't take care of their usual place of residence, that were simple caves.
The entrance and the tickets office are barely 200 meters away from the Petra Palace hotel, and from there, after to pay 5 JD (thanks to the student identification), and walk about 500 meters we found the begining of the Siq. An impressive defile of 1.2 kilometers of lenght, with incredible stratified walls that between curve and curve, they go away and then bring near, sometime giving the sensation that they will close over you. Only the walking by the defile would be enough reason to come here to contemplate it.
When the Siq seems that never will end up, between a lengthened crack of the defile, appears one of the most famous visions of the place : the facade of the Treasury, o Al-Khazneh, without doubt, the most susprising and photographed building in the ruins. It has a colour that changes from rosy to orange depending on the hour of the day. Its exterior is very known thanks to the movie "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade".
In the square, the usual racking of drivers of camel and cars of horses trying to capture tourists. The interior of the monument susprises because it's a simple empty room.
Next, we went to the Facades Avenue to the Theater, where we could observe several tombs, some of them without digging in its interior.
The Theater is huge and surprised see like all the seats and the stage hve been sculpted in the rock. Its reminds us a lot to the contemporary Roman theaters that we have visited in Palmyra and Jerash.
From this place you can also sight the Jebel Al-Khubtha, in its hill are the Royal Tombs
One of the most fascinating things in Petra is the colour and the veins of the stone that cover the walls. Sometime it have the form of dactilar prints, other times seem multicolored waves. As it can observe, any place is good to be preserved of the burning sun of the noon.
At the end of the lonelu avenue, some columns and the ruins of the Royal Palace, welcome to the little things that remain of the city of Petra. In the surrounding area of the lonely museum, of completely dispensable visit, there are a pair of restaurants. This place is also the base of the camels drivers who try to capture customers to return to the Siq or to encourage them to ascend in donkey the hard way through the canyon Wadi ad-Deir, to the second monument in importance of Petra, the Monastery.
The ascent was harder than we expected and we had to stop to rest some times. In some places of rest, strategically, there were sellers of bedouin memories that in few cases, they gave us the sensation of taking advantage of the dirty and poverty of their children to obtainmore tips from the tourists.
In some places is possible to observe as the stone sandy stone comes undone with the simple close contact of the fingers and fall sand of several colours of their veins. We take the advantage of take a simple memory.
At the end of the long way waits the Monastery, also called Al-Deir, which spectacular facade we were contemplating long time from the neraly bar strategically located, drinking something.
After that, we only have to return the almost 5 kilometers that has Petra in lineal extension, goig again through the old city of Petra, the Treasury and the Siq, now in hard hill up. In spite of the cumulative fatige of whole the day, we don't succumb to the mermaid's songs of the camels divers and car drivers, although in more than an occasion we were tempted of it.
The rest of the afternoon, we stay in the swimmig pool of the hotel and the nearly cybercafe, where a blackout kept us outside seated, with the lights of some candles, during more than an hour.
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