We woke up in one of the most serene environments on earth. The sun lit the desert mountains in the distance with a dark-yellow morning light. Eowyn further developed her climbing skills by climbing up a steep rock behind the camp. From where she sat, she had a beautiful view over our camp, the desert and the hills in the distance. The morning was near perfect with only the coffee tasting like re-filtered sand. Anyway, near perfect is not bad.
At about 9 am we had the tents packed up and made our way north through the sandy desert towards Wadi Rum town and then on to Petra. In town we managed to stock up on some veg and fruits including 3.5 kilos of oranges. From this Eowyn learnt her new word "kilo" with which she expected to receive another piece of orange. We tried to kill some time with Stanley throwing an orange peel through the opposite window where Niels was driving and Julia was trying to put that on picture (I don't think it ever worked). It was either this or continue to stare at more sand dunes. After about an hour of driving while Eowyn was doing her daily 9-10am nap, a sudden change in scenery occurred from rocky desert to glowing hills with green vegetation (green is a big word here). Niels thought we suddenly arrived in Ireland. He was wrong: we were getting closer to Petra. At lunchtime we had arrived in Wadi Mousa and enjoyed a lovely Shoarma which was drowning in garlic sauce. I am not sure how this sounds, but the taste was great. In the afternoon, we entered Petra. We had two day passes and needed to fill in name and date. Stanley asked "what's the date?" which set Eowyn off saying "date!? Date!? DATE!?" She really loves the dates here. As a very prosperous town in the 1st century AD, the hidden city of Petra earned lots of money from the caravan trade between the Mediterranean, China and India. It is incredible that this was lost in Western minds till the 19th century. Entering Petra was an amazing experience. A large ruined gate cut out from the rocks is only the beginning of an alley of over 1 kilometer. Walking in a partially natural and partially manmade gorge with beautiful natural colour decorations and shrines until the end where the well known treasury of Petra shines glamorously between the rocks. An absolutely amazing site: an entry to a city as never seen before. With the first building, which is one of the best preserved, you enter in this lost city which is still being excavated and (re)discovered. The first few hundred meters are mainly tombs from Nabataeans Kings and some Roman officials, but soon a theatre, a fountain and a temple arise amongst other things. Truly wonderful.
The evening we set up camp next to a hotel on a rocky carpark. Not the nicest place to stay, but surely the cheapest in town and the toilets are actually fantastic. What else could we have wished.