Petra, Jordan

I've found my favorite place on the trip, hands down. This place is just incredible. Set in a desert landscape, Petra is an ancient city in ruins "half as old as time". The buildings are carved into the sandstone hills, many with ornamental bas-relief facades that somehow managed to survive the half of time. Evidence of a spectacular city is everywhere, with layers and layers of buildings carved up into the cliffs with palaces at the upper level, crumbling cliffside stairways winding throughout the hills of the ruins, terracotta waterways snaking through the valleys, and sacrificial temples overlooking it all on the tops of nearly every mountain in the area. Imagine what a city it must have been! There are no places roped off, no way of visit signs. In Petra, there is the freedom to explore as you will, climbing to vistas or entryways to the tombs and buildings because where the Nabateans or the Romans didn't carve steps, the stone itself will be most obliging. The city was built around 100 BC by the Nabateans and served as the capital of the Nabatean Kingdom until the Romans conquered it in 106AD, after which it served as the capital of the Arabia Petraea province. Earthquakes in the 7th and 8th centuries destroyed much of the city and it was abandoned to all but the Bedouin herders that used the the buildings to house their animals when passing by. It was unknown by the Western world until the early 19th century when a Swiss explorer "rediscovered" it. Now, it is Jordan's premier tourist attraction, famous for being the location of the Holy Grail in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (the Siq and the Treasury). More recently, I have seen in previews, it is featured in Transformers 2 (the Monastery). Although there is a moderate density of tourists along the central path, take a few steps away and you'll be completely alone, exploring the ruins. I spent at least seven hours each of the three days I was here and felt I could spent weeks more exploring every nook, hilltop, and trail. Surprisingly, it never really got that hot. Sure, it was probably in the 80s or 90s, but it was so dry that I hardly noticed, other than somehow managing to drink 8 liters of water a day. Typically, the way people experience Petra is to walk in past some smaller ruins and through the Siq, a deep gorge widened by the Nabateans and paved in succession by the Nabateans, Romans, and much later the Petra Regional Authority. The Siq ends at the Treasury, a rose-colored building carved into the rock face and Petra's most famous sight. On my second day, I arrived at the perfect time to be able to walk down the Siq alone and arrive at the treasury with only 5 other people and a few camels around.

From here, most people walk through the city, with palaces, tombs, houses, and an amphitheater on either side of Wadi Musa, the dried riverbed running through here.

That morning I took the hike up to the High Place of Sacrifice for awesome views of the surrounding area.

Continuing along the Wadi takes you to the start of the hike to the Monastery, a massive building used for religious meetings (though not Christian ones, obviously). I liked the building and the area at the top so much I did it twice, though it is a hard 45 minute hike. There are rocks to climb for spectacular views of the building and about 400m past the monastery is a cliff face looking out to mountains and further out, Saudi Arabia.

And here are pictures from various trails I explored along the way, including the Wadi Mudhlim alternative entrance to Petra, where there are literally no other people anywhere (top left) and hiking up to Al-Khubtha, a mountain with views over looking the ruins and even the treasury (top right, bottom left):

As a side note, I was surprised to find more little desert animals running around here than I ever saw in the rainforests I went to. This desert, for all its barren appearance is quite alive, even apart from the poor donkeys and camels that some tourists ride on. All in all, this place was absolutely incredible.
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Details:
Since I had some flight trouble out of Beijing and ended up getting to Jordan three days later than I intended, I was left for little options in terms of transportation because I already had a plane booked out of Jordan to Turkey. I needed to get directly from the Amman airport to Petra if I wanted to make anything of my time there, but there is no way to do this cheaply. No bus, train, shared car, minibus, anything. There are airport taxis (which charge double the price of normal taxis in Jordan) and rental cars. One thing to maybe try is to go to the Departures area and try to get the normal taxis as they let out passengers, I've heard the one-way cost to Petra is $49/35JD if you are good at bartering. The airport taxis charge $98/70JD. Rental cars are $49/35JD per day at the Avis stand in the airport. A tank of gas is about $28/20JD and it is around a third of a tank from the airport to Petra and back. My cheapest option was definitely the rental car, with the bonus of more freedom, because I only had three days. The road to Petra is really good: flat, straight, and easy to follow it to Petra. The Desert Highway, as it is called (or Highway 15) passes right by the airport and follow it towards Aqaba for about 1.5 hours before turning off (look for signs saying Petra) and just keep following them until you arrive in Wadi Musa.