Modern day equivalent of watching my vacation slide show....coming up.
We stopped at a couple of places in Jordan a few years ago when we went to Jerusalem, but we weren't energetic or brave enough to try Petra. With baby number 3 on the way, we thought this might be our last good chance for awhile, so we made our spring break plans. The flight was great - Finley had her own seat and I got to watch a movie, plus it was only about a 3 hour flight.
We arrived in the early afternoon, so we decided to pay the extra $5 for a two day pass and just jump right in to the hiking adventure! First, you have the option to ride a horse about 800 meters to where the cave/canyon starts, so we started there to give our legs a head start. Finley was not a fan, and the saddle was a bit small for two, so Will ended up sitting on half of my lap while I held on tight. Then it was down through the canyon - about a kilometer of narrow walkway like this, but with a few places to jump and climb on rocks, so Will thought it was pretty cool.
His new thing is silly faces for pictures, so you will see a lot of it throughout this virtual slide show. There is a pretty funny series of the pics below as you watch my face progress through irritation/fake smiles while we wait for Will to hold still enough to take a picture. But since I was already at 20 pictures, I left the others to your imagination.
Finley loves jumping, and there were lots of good places for her to practice. She did pretty well - both kids did - walking the distance, which was one of our big hesitations about this trip.
Finley also did splendidly at allowing total strangers to fuss over her and touch her and hold her and photograph her. She was quite the attraction.
And if you have seen Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, this will look familiar - it's the Treasury, and it's pretty awesome to see. A little (kind of minimally informed) history lesson - the caves were inhabited for centuries, and most recently by the Bedouins. For some fascinating reading, try the memoir Married to a Bedouin - so interesting. While they still lived in the caves, they would use their caves as hotel rooms for brave visitors, which is how the Australian woman met and fell in love with her cave dweller. In the late 70's, the government decided to make the area solely a tourist attraction, and built houses for the families who spent their winters in the caves.
This cave had been used more recently as some kind of latrine - it smelled pretty bad, so we went no farther...
There were so many cool carvings like this - the rocks themselves, and the surrounding desert looked a lot like Southern Utah and Nevada, but the carvings and caves reminded us that we weren't in "Kansas" anymore:)
Of course, there were many locals wandering the trails, offering donkey and camel rides, as well as jewelry of all sorts. One little girl gave Finley this necklace, despite my No Thank You, but she said it was a gift. Then she followed us for while asking for some kind of gift in return. I literally had nothing to offer her, other than the clothes on my back, or my watch, and when Nate tried to finally give her some money so we could be free of her, she wouldn't take it. So on we went.
The amphitheater.
The independent 2 year old.
A lonely donkey, who looked cold. Will said he was shivering, and thought he should go to Dubai and get one of his blankets to bring back and put on the donkey's back. So cute.
But it was getting close to time for us to head back and meet our driver, and we knew we had a looonnng walk back. Amusingly, on our way back, we met the little girl who gave Finley the necklace, and when I still didn't have a gift for her, she was mad, so she just wanted the necklace back. Finley was sad to lose her present, but I was glad to have satisfied the other girl one way or the other.
Goodbye until tomorrow, Treasury.
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