This morning when we woke up we were gliding quietly into Aqaba, Jordan. By 7am we had docked and by about 9am Mike and I were sitting in the front seat on the bus and ready to take off with our tour guide Joseph. The drive is two hours to the ancient carved city of Petra. Aqaba, the port at which we docked is in the far south of the country and is the only part of Jordan with a coast line. Its neighbours are Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iraq.
Petra is an ancient city where a people called the Nabataeans carved a city out of the soft picturesque sandstone. It made it easy to sculpt. An entire city was carved out of the rock. In places it dates back to 300BC. You enter through the Siq – a gorge which is narrow in places – it is 1.2km long. On a busy day the Siq is entertaining. At the start, there is a block of stables where horses and carriages are used to transport the less fit visitors along the Siq to the city. Young Jordanians ride these horses cowboy style, cantering and sometimes galloping along a designated road. Constantly there is the cry of ‘do you want to ride a horse?’ or “you can go in a carriage” or “ride the camel”. There are donkeys, camels, carriages and horses. Take your pick! With two cruise ships in port and 20 coach-loads of tourists, there were more than a 1000 people trekking to see the ancient Petra architecture. The gap in the wall in the photo below is where the Siq comes out at the end of the 1.2km walk….look at all the people…look how tiny they are and look how high the gorge is….
When you walk out of the Siq, this is what you see….it’s called the Treasury …
It is stunning. All that carved by hand out of rock more than 2000 years ago.
We walked through the city and down to royal tombs. Everywhere, there are holes in the rocks where people were buried..
Then we went up more than 130 steps to get a closer look at a royal tomb. This one was called the Urn Tomb…
Here I am most of the way up to it with a Bedouin type souvenir shop below….
It was fascinating. With a settlement so old and in the Middle East just a short distance from Israel, does it appear in the Bible? Petra is not, but its Hebrew name is Sela and that is.
Isaiah 16:1
Send lambs as tribute to the ruler of the land, from Sela, across the desert, to the mount of Daughter Zion.
And it also appears in 2 Kings 14:7
He was the one who defeated ten thousand Edomites in the Valley of Salt and captured Sela in battle, calling it Joktheel, the name it has to this day.
Amazing!
#446 of my 1000 thanks is that today went so very well. We had an all English tour so the tour guide only needed to speak English. While Petra was busy, we were not bothered by the crowds. We saw all we wanted to see and it was so worth while going. Yay for no breakdowns or lost tourists!
So now we are at sea for seven nights. No land until Seychelles which is only on 22nd October. In fact, once we arrived in the Indian Ocean, (we are still in the Red Sea), the ship has instituted some anti-piracy precautions and we will have our curtains closed from sunset to sunrise. They have also said the internet may not be so good while in the Indian Ocean, so if I disappear for a few days, that will be why.
These are the days!
Keep the smile going!
God bless you.
In His Grip,
Helga xx 🙂