Petra, Jordan

The entrance to the Park, it’s a beautiful setting.

The entrance to the Siq, about 1 mile past the entrance. It’s a narrow canyon like walkway, but it was torn apart by tectonic forces, not worn by water.

It gets narrow and wind-y, sometimes just 6ft,2m apart. They carved a water channel at the bottom to bring water to the city.

Some school girls.

My favorite picture of the Siq, I liked it when the rocks were the reddest.

You get your first glimpse of the Treasury through the Siq.

A little closer.

The Treasury of Petra — named because they thought pirates stored treasure here in later years.

The inside of the Treasury — just a small square room — it was more about the facade than anything.

I climbed the ledge opposite and had this view looking down

It was very quiet up here, I don’t know why more people don’t go up.

This is a view of the mountain I climbed (no, I did not go straight up, there is a 45 min path behind it), I was at that tippy little white bit.

Some of the numerous tombs that are everywhere in the area, Bedouin lived in them until the area was made a national park.

Besides the pink,red color, the other neat thing about the rocks is the often swirly wavy patterns.

The Roman Theatre — when the Romans conquered this area they Romanized everything — many places I’ve seen have theatres, hippodromes, cardos , and nymphaeums.

More tombs with neat patterns.

The Urn Tomb — a few tombs are very elaborate, probably for royalty.

The landscape — I took this using a super hi-tech camera filter, my pink sunglasses.

The cardo (colonnaded street) also with my filter.

The Palace Tomb.

A view of the Roman Theatre and surrounding tombs.

The Monastery, accessed by a one hour hike, with a larger facade than the Treasury, but I think not as spectacular because it’s not set in the canyon at the end of the Siq like the Treasury is.