Petra...by horse, by foot, by donkey, by camel...and by night

A blog post by Melissa. While normal people decide to see Petra over four days (according to the friendly folks in Petra...all of whom seem to be tour guides) Adam and I decided to see it over 24 hours. Thankfully we had several options for saddle transport which made our fast tour possible. I was able to convince Adam to ride a horse in to the main entrance, then a donkey, then a camel.

We arrived in the afternoon, which turned out to be great because all the tour groups were leaving and by sunset we nearly had the monastery to ourselves. There are 800 steps up to the monastery, but Adam and I cheated and rode donkeys half the way up. The donkey rides were supposed to be to the top, but the two young Bedouin boys who took us up in their donkeys told us we were at the top when we actually still had a couple hundred stairs to climb. Adam wasn't quite embracing our donkey ride. I think his exact words were "Melissa I'm going to kill you" as we climbed up narrow stairways in steep cliffs and our donkeys preferred teetering close to the outer edge. If they weren't on the edge, they would head right towards tourists walking down the steps scaring them and making them scatter out of our way. Needless to say, we declined the boys' offer to give us a donkey ride down the mountain.

So we made record time walking down from the monastery, but we still had about 4 miles left to walk on foot. We bartered a camel ride for half the distance. Let me tell ya, as far as riding goes, camels are the way to go. They are very comfortable. It's also a smooth ride. Camels don't really have hooves, they have pads, so they don't make a sound when they hit the ground.

After a gluttonous buffet at our hotel, we went to Petra by Night. The park employees light the main path by candle light all the way to the treasury (that's the building that you've seen in thousands of pictures of Petra). They had Bedouin music and Bedouin tea for us there with the entire courtyard filled with luminarias. Since the moon was full, Petra was all lit up and very magical. I drove Adam crazy taking pictures every five minutes, but I got some great ones that I'll post when we can download photos to my laptop.