On Thursday, October 19, our group headed out at 5 AM to travel two and on half hours south into the desert to Wadi Musa, the small village at the entrance to the ancient ruins of Petra, the former capital of a once flourishing Nabataean empire. This fable d city has become Jordan's prime tourist spot, evidenced by the dozens of tour buses that were already in the parking lot when our 5 buses pulled in.

There is only one entrance into Petra through the long narrow rock slit called The Siq. This is a literal opening in the rock mountain that winds its way down a narrow corridor with step walls on either side. You look up to  catch glimpses of the blue sky capping the red rock walls. Our guide had a sense of the dramatic as he halted our group just fifty yards from the mouth of the Siq to have us hug the left side of the canyon to catch the best angle of view of the monumental treasury building, Petra's trademark.

I have to say this was a most imposing sight. You see the soft rose red columns of the building standing out in relief from the dark walls of the Siq framed against the blue sky. It is a sight of a lifetime. Our entrance into Petra was a little less dramatic than that of the famous scene from the Indiana Jones movie, but just as moving.

They tell us Petra is only twenty percent excavated. If eighty percent of this ancient city is still under the sands then there is much more to discover about the people who inhabited this wonder. We probably walked ten miles through the city viewing many of the rock carved tombs and excavated churches. The walk up the mountain to the Monastery was well worth the climb as we had a magnificent view of the surrounding country, all the way to the State of Israel.

Some scholars say Petra is the eighth wonder of the ancient world. It has my vote to be added to this fabled list. You don't visit Petra without  being awestruck at the skill with which this buildings were cut from solid rock and have stood for more than two thousand years. There is an aura to this dead city that can only be experienced firsthand. I have heard and read of Petra all my life. I have now seen it and conclude with the poet Dean Burgon it would be hard to "match me a marvel save in Eastern clime save in Eastern clime, a rose red city half as old as time..."  There is nothing like Petra.