Our visit to Petra was simultaneously of the most amazing AND one of the most challenging days on our journey thus far.
Petra is UNESCO World Heritage Site, and historical and archaeological city in southern Jordan. It’s believed to have been settled as early as 9,000 BC. The whole site spans over 100 square miles. It’s HUGE.
A one-day ticket into the site is $70 USD, and we wanted to get our money’s worth (and beat the insane crowds), so we decided to wake up, get there for opening at 6 AM, and pretty much be there all day since it’s HUGE. (Did I mention this is a really big park?)
In order to sustain ourselves all day, we needed to pack food and water for what we anticipated would be about a 12-14 hour day in the park.
One minor snag though: it was Ramadan. Which means that virtually everything (especially in small downs like Petra are completely closed until 7 pm when the sun goes down and Muslims break the fast (Iftar). So the night before, we went to the ONLY tiny little shop in town to see what we find to pack for our big adventure.
As you can imagine, options were pretty limited. So, based on what we could find, we opted for a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, a small tub of jam, and 4 giant bottles of water.
At 4:30 AM the next morning, we made the entire loaf of bread into PB&J sandwiches, shoved sunscreen and the 4 bottles of water into our bags and took off for the park entrance.
The day was epic. We got there before the crowds, walked our faces off, saw all the coolest sites, hiked a couple of mountains located within the confines of the park, ate like 16 pb&j sandwiches, and definitely drank all of our water.
About 12 hours in, Mick starts to get a little woozy. Could’ve been because we hadn’t eaten nearly enough for the amount of physical activity we’d done, or could’ve also been because it was literally 115 degrees in the dead heat of a Middle Eastern summer. We started to make our way out of the park, but at times could barely make it a few hundred feet without Mick feeling like he was gonna puke. We made it to the exit, and he collapsed onto the concrete floor of the welcome building while I went to go find a Gatorade to get his blood sugar up.
Did I mention that we were staying in a “capsule” hostel? Capsule means “a small case or container” which — as it relates to accommodation — basically means that they throw a bed in a wooden box and call it good. There were 40 “capsules” in ONE room, which amounted to about 60-70 people in total. No air conditioning. Yep, none.
So we put over 30k on our legs today, Mickey has heat stroke, there’s no A/C, virtually nothing is open for food, and the entire place smells like a giant, sweaty foot.
Challenging, frustrating, and painful doesn’t even begin to describe what we were feeling that as we basically sweat to death in our tiny little wooden box that night.
And yet… I’m literally beaming from ear to ear as I write this.
Because THIS is adventure. This is the journey.
This was one of the most epic days of our journey so far.
Petra will always serve as a powerful reminder — often times, the hard stuff IS the good stuff
Next up: Egypt 🇪🇬
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