Jordan: Day 3 & 4 - Petra The City of Petra & High Sacrificial Place

After the Royal Tombs, we followed this pathway and it led us to the Colonnaded Street, the entrance to the ancient City of Petra. 

 Victor and Damon went off to explore one of the temple ruins while i sat at the entrance being lazy ha.

 The gate you can see in the middle of this photo is the Temenos Gate, the entrance to the sacred precinct of Qasr el-Bint.

 There were a few other ruins and sights in the old city but i didn't bother taking photos. We then headed off to the museum which was situated high up in the hill for some weird reason.

It did give us a good view of the old City and the Royal Tombs though so definitely worth the climb.

The rock walls had the most amazing shades of purples and it kept me fascinated for a while.

View of the Royal Tombs spread out in front of us

 After that, we (ok it was me) decided to veer off the path and go left rather than back down to where we came from. The view was amazing.

Can you see one of the Bedouin dudes taking a rest?

Then we spotted his dead donkey in the valley... we thought it probably slipped and fell from where we were but it died a very clean death so probably not.

 It wasn't long before we were lost and had no idea which way to go. It didn't help that we managed to go off course to a track where there was absolutely no one around. We finally came to a drinks stall and asked the lady for direction and she pointed in a general direction but then offered us a donkey ride We may have been tired and panicky but we still refused to pay for a donkey so we trudged on resolutely.

It was getting late in the day and we hadn't eaten all day either apart from the biscuits so I was having these awful images of having to spend the night huddled together with two smelly boys in the freezing and barren desert.

But just as I was about to lose hope, we got to where we wanted - High Place of Sacrificial!!! This is the place where as the name suggests, the place the ancient people would come to offer up sacrifices to God.

Damon was exhausted so he took a breather while Victor and I climbed the last few steps to check the place out.

Doesn't this look like something out of an end of the world scene?

Victor was ecstatic that we were lost no more... we were lost but now we were found.

The High Sacrificial Place..... it was a tad anti-climatic to be honest and we still aren't sure if we actually were looking at the right thing.

 It was so late that the couple tending the drinks stall next to the place shut up shop after selling Damon a bottle of water and walked back down the mountain with their trusty donkey.

We then started our descent to the other side of the mountain which was meant to take us back to the Siq. It was around 5 pm by then and all the souvenir stalls have been abandoned by their keepers. All the wares were left there though which was weird. 

We didn't steal anything but I got Victor to pretend like he did.

Donkey poo.....

 Yeaaaaah homeward bound!

The path led us to the Street of Facades!!!! Huge sigh of relief all round... after wandering in the wilderness for 4 hours rather than 40 years haha.