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Petra Jordan
Petra in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan has attracted visitors for many years. It is perhaps best known as the location for the climactic final confrontation in the first Indiana Jones movie. In the movie it is where Indiana and the Nazis find the Ark of the Covenant, and Spielberg could not have found a more dramatic spot for filming this classic conflict between good and evil.
To get to the two thousand four hundred year old city you begin walking from a few miles away and your approach is via a small but deep canyon. In places the red rock walls are only 15 feet apart and hundreds of feet high making you feel small and vulnerable as the walls close in above and around you. As you wind your way along you notice a trough to carry water carved into the solid rock walls for the entire length of the canyon. In fact there were two aqueducts to carry water, the open trough which you see for carrying washing water and an enclosed pipe for carrying drinking water. In addition there were sophisticated water storage systems.
In most places you can only see a few hundred feet ahead but finally after rounding one tight bend you glimpse through the narrow gap a bit of carved rock wall before you. As you continue walking the canyon opens into a courtyard and revealed before you is a magnificent hundred foot tall facade carved into the solid rock. This was known as the Pharaoh's Treasury.
Farther inside the city you see an amphitheater that could seat over 3,000 people as well as carved rock buildings. In some places nearby the Bedouins still live in these ancient houses.
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