The Adventures of Kerri & Matt

From the main site of Petra you can barely see the top of the monastery poking out of the mountain.

To see more we had to take a long hike.

Through treacherous tunnels.

It was worth it.

It is very big.

The camel’s favourite snack is the desert onions.

That’s these guys.

And here is the onion part.

This is what they look like when they are flowering.

And this is where they wind up when the camel is done with them.

This was our first daytime glimpse of the Treasury through the canyon.

It is carved into the walls of the canyon, not built.

It is well recessed into the walls and protected by the narrow canyon, so it is pretty well preserved.

It was carved from the top down using scaffolding. These marks are probably from the scaffolding.

It should actually be a full storey taller, but the ground level has gone up so much you can’t see the bottom anymore. They excavated the bottom but you can only see it by getting close and looking down.

It is called the treasury because people thought there was treasure in this urn at the top. They damaged it trying to get at it (mostly with guns), but there was never any there.

When it was finished it was covered with marble, which is now missing. But you can see the holes that once attached it.

Matt climbed to the top of this to get a better view of the treasury.

They took the long way around so it’s not quite as difficult as it looks.

Here he is at the top.

There is the path down. Just to the lower left part of the picture.

And here is the view from up top away from the edge.

It was a pretty good walk with a very different view at the end of it. It looked a bit smaller from up top.

Kerri’s arm was too sore for climbing, so she had to wait at the bottom.

So when you actually see the bottom and people down below for scale it doesn’t look so small anymore.

Petra is a big site but everything kind of blends in with the canyon walls when you zoom out.

When you look closer you can see the holes into the tombs but the carvings are still hard to make out.

There were many camels around for lazy people to ride down the ancient streets.

To one side are the remains of a Roman city.

There are also some churches from later on.

There were storm clouds rolling in at this point. It rained for about half an hour, other than that the weather was nice.

They had an amphitheatre. It wasn’t very well preserved, but it was made of the pink stone so it was still pretty.

Most of the Roman city had tumbled down in the earthquakes.