Jan 7 and 8 – Petra

Today we began at 8 am and headed down to the Red Rock city! This site is remarkable! Petra was amazing and I don't have words to describe the beauty. The city spans for more than 52 square miles and every bit of it takes your breath away. You may be familiar with Petra from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade or more recently in Transformers 2. Labeled number two of the Seven Wonders of the World I feel very privileged to visit this site.

Petra became so popular as it ran along a trade route from the northern part of Trans-jordan to Egypt. This city is built into the side of many mountains giving it a great advantage as different nations and empires tried to take over. Our tour guide kept pointing out the many aqueducts lining the city to collect water in the large cisterns. Petra had all the makings of the other ancient cities except it was all carved into the side of Mountains. The first to inhabit these mountains were the Nabateans who came from the Arabian desert in the 4^th century BC. They began the great feat that we so fondly admire today.

Throughout the day we made our way up and down the mountains visiting many tombs and residencies. The greatest climb of Thursday (the 7^th) was to the “monastery” which really isn't a monastery at all it's just a really big tomb. This tomb rests on one of the many mountain tops of Petra. As we visited temples, churches, and more tombs we found ourselves climbing two more mountains in the two days we had to explore the great Rock City.

The view from our hotel the past two nights was breathtaking! We overlooked Petra to the west so we were blessed to see the sun set behind Petra. We brought chairs out onto the roof and just hung out as the sun set! After a full 8 hours of climbing mountains this was the perfect end to a full day at the biggest playground I've ever been to.

Tonight (Friday the 8^th) We drove from Petra and crossed over into Israel. We are staying on the coast of the Red Sea in southern Israel tonight and will make our way to Jerusalem tomorrow night after a full day of scaling the countryside tomorrow.

Tomorrow we see:

-Masada

-Dead Sea

-Qumran (Dead Sea Scrolls)

-Jericho

grace and peace,

_joel