Subject: Post: This has been a long and exhausting day for us. We woke up early, having slept a second really short night on a row and headed to the bus station, to catch a ride to Petra in southern Jordan. The bus was one of those typical to this area, which just wait on the bus station until they get full and leave then, without any strict schedules. The bus drivers were yelling loudly on the station, advertising the bus destination while we waited half asleep on the bus for an hour or two.<p>The bus ride through the moonscape looking country took four hours, after which we we dropped to Wadi Musa, the small town near the historical site of Petra, one of the new seven wonders of the world. We had our heavy backpacks and we were planning of leaving Petra later in the evening towards the Red Sea beach resort of Aqaba. Don had heard a lot of good words about one of the hostels in the city, Valentine Inn. We walked up the hill to the hostel, and asked if we could leave our bags in there for a while, which they accepted. The hostel turned out to be one of the nicest looking hostels I have seen, with a nice outside terrace and really helpful staff. They were kinda sad for us being so short on time, we would only get to see Petra for a few hours, and the area was huge.<p>Well, there was nothing we could do about that, we are really running short of time, and would need at least a few extra days to do justice to all of the places left. So, we pretty literally ran down to the Petra visitors center, bought our tickets and took a horse carriage ride on the gate figuring it would be the fastest way to get into the actual city through the two kilometers long stone-carved pathway leading there. It was, in just 5 minutes we were standing in front of the Petra Treasury, the first actual building of the area.<p>From there we started walking through the site, admiring the huge buildings once carved into the mountains. Petra is an entire ancient city, spreaded on a wide area and having hundreds if not thousands of buildings and caves carved in the stone. It's impossible to describe the place in words, just go through the pictures below to get an idea how unbelievable the place is.<p>There was also a geocache in Petra, located on the top of a high hill which we of course wanted to check out. It was quite a climb up the steep hill and some ancient stairs, but eventually we got to the top and found the cache quite easily in one of the caves there. The view from the top was breathtaking, as we could literally see all of the city around and below us.<p>After walking back to the Treasury and up the pathway back to the city, we felt that we actually ended up having enough time to go through most of the site. Having more time to pay attention on details and explore the caves would have been lovely, but there was not much we could have done about. The entire walk was probably around ten kilometers in just two or three hours including the mountain climbing, so now we are slightly exhausted, totally covered by dust and just laying on the terrace of the hostel enjoying a beer or two.<p>Yes, we finally stayed in the hostel then, as they would have a bus leaving to Aqaba in the early morning and nothing going there in the evening except expensive taxis. We got lucky, and they had just two free beds for us, for mere 5 euros per person.<p>Tomorrow we will depart towards Aqaba around 6.30 in the morning, and will be spending the entire day just snorkling in the Red Sea, enjoying the beatiful coral reefs and one of our last days in here.<p>It's funny how everyone around us seems to think it is unhumanly hot in Petra. We are actually finding the 35-40C daytime weather perfect, and now during the evening the temperature is probably around 26-28C, being as good as weather can get. After the scorching 48C temperature of Iraq and a few other really hot places we have been in, we have got used to the heat and returning back to the northern Europe will be a nightmare. We will probably be wearing sweaters in the "heat" of Finland and shivering :)<p>As a side note, it has been an interesting cultural shock returning to Jordan from the party city Beirut. Jordan is once again much closer to the normal Middle Eastern culture and look, with no much skyscrapers, beer drinking and multi-million cars. It's too bad we are really cutting our visit in Jordan short, as there probably would be a million things to see. Of Amman I couldn't even get a lot of good pictures as we had no time to wander around the city. To put it in words, Amman is a way more modern looking city than for example Damascus, but it still clearly is a desert city in the Middle East style, not a Mediterranean place like Beirut which resembled more for example Greek cities and lifestyle. Latitude: Longitude: Security Code:
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