Monthly Archives: May 2013

Petra has been inhabited since prehistoric times. It is a Nabataean caravan-city, situated between the Red Sea and the Dead Sea. At one point, it was an important crossroads between Arabia, Egypt and Syria-Phoenicia. Petra is half-built, half-carved into the rock and is surrounded by mountains and lots of passages and gorges. It is one of the world’s most famous archaeological sites. We spent a little over eight hours hiking around. We even hiked up 950 steps to get to a structure called “the monastery.” I played the Indiana Jones theme song on our ipad while the kids explored a building called “the treasury.” So fun.

One of the guys with the horses told me not to worry- that the soldiers weren’t real. Whew! Thank goodness. Getting daggers thrown at us might have altered our travel plans!

We got to Petra and hopped on some horses to get us to the entrance. So fun until you get off and the horse handlers give you a bunch of crap because they want a bigger tip. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again- we will not miss the haggling and harassment! In some countries, I swear they try to break your spirit! They chase after you trying to sell something or they say the tip isn’t good enough. We talked to people at the tourist information stop before we rode the horses and they told us what was considered a good tip and the horse guys still harassed us. I have no problems telling pushy people to go away- but day in and day out, it gets tiring. Men in various countries do not like to be told “no” – especially by a woman. ‘Too bad, so sad!’
Anyhoo, these are some more pictures from the horse ride. It was picturesque and fun. We rode by an area where the Indiana Jones movie was filmed and tombs that looked cubes are called spirit boxes. Em’s horse stopped to take a huge pee- Lennon laughed about that for awhile. Maddux’s horse handler had a bad leg so he had to walk slowly. Poor Maddux was way behind yelling, “wait for me guys!!!”

These photos are of some breaks we took to stretch our legs, go potty and just stop and take in the magnificent desert view. The air was so clean and refreshing.