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Wadi Musa (Petra)

After spending about 4 hours with my knees to my chest, listening to extremely loud extremely bad music and inhaling the second hand smoke of a minibus fall of chain smoking Arabs I was beginning to hope that this indeed was a 'Wonder of the modern world' as the tourist office and all the banners around the country would have you believe. As we approached Wadi Musa and you could see over town to the mountains behind it and you began to think that just maybe it could be. I would have to find out in the morning.

The siq is a 1.5km long canyon formed by tectonics rather than erosion. I'm not sure if nature intended it but it made for one effective suspense builder. Around every corner my heart would beat that little bit faster in anticipation of what was to come. Finally it did, 'The Treasury (of Indian Jones fame) peered through the gap and I couldn't help but stand, mouth ajar in awe at what stood before me. If the Holy grail did exist you could believe that it was in this temple carved from the cliff face before me. It didn't stop there. The whole valley was filled with temples and tombs carved from solid rock.

Even without the ruined city the area was pretty impressive. I would have spent about 4 hours just hiking through the surrounding mountains. Its hard to capture the feeling you get when you scale a cliff to find yourself at what feels like the top of the world.

One thing I didn't expect to see in the deserts of Jordan was snow, but as sure as it was falling before me there it was. Hopefully the Red Sea isn't this cold.
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