Petra is magnificent.

Driving into the surrounding town of Petra, those melting red sandstone cliffs that we’d seen so much of in Dana began to express themselves in more powerful and assertive ways. The town itself tumbles down steep hills and breaks like waves against a shoreline of stone that announces the entrance to the archeological park.

After a hair raising navigation of the tight, curling streets of the town, we found our hotel, just a few minutes walk from the mouth of the canyons that would transform over the next two days into the ancient Nabataean capital of Petra. Not only was the hotel close, it was very reasonably priced, had sunset views of the canyons, and had a ridiculously friendly, helpful and hospitable pair of managers. Rod and Moufdy(sp) at the Hotel Esperanza. Tell them we sent you. After a thorough overview of the park over coffee with Rod, we quickly dropped our bags and headed immediately out for the park.

Petra unfolds like classical music.

After an initial discordant crash of Indiana Jones themed shops selling countless Keffiyehs, you enter a shallow, wide, sun drenched canyon, and step by crunching step, you walk a gravel road that takes you around that first long, arching corner. You begin to notice caves and carved out rooms in the melting sandstone… then huge sandstone cubes, the so called Djinn blocks… it’s as if the stone is slowly finding its way to form, finding its themes. Suddenly, the first undeniable statement of Petra’s theme is raised in the appearance of the strange and beautiful Obelisk Tomb. But the theme is quiet yet, and you walk on.

You then enter the quiet and exotic meditation that is a snaking 3/4 mile slot canyon, “The Siq”. The thin crevice of swirling red stone dances like a rivulet of water down a smooth rock. You enter in and out of deep shadows, constantly shaving the aperture of light between the tall canyon walls, slicing shards of light against the shadows, and then pouring out large pools of radiance before eclipsing once again to dark quiet. You know what’s to come, but the suspense of its arrival keeps your eyes trained forward, not wanting to miss a sliver of the reveal… the tune is in your head, the resolve is in your mind, but the moment… waits.

When the curtain parts and “The Treasury” appears, the whole world goes silent. It’s almost as if it slithers into being like a chameleon walking out of it’s disguise. You’re alone with it in all the world for a long breathless pause… like hanging underwater, hearing only your heartbeat in your ears, until finally you desperately need a breath and you emerge into the reality of the surface – and the ancient Nabataean city of Petra crashes into being.

Petra’s theme is a strange, exotically luxurious thing – it feels Assyrian, then Roman, then Egyptian and Greek. It feels refined and humane – civilized. It’s an ideal, an ambition. It’s style is hard to place… and its story gives a lot of insight as to why.

The Nabataeans were a nomadic Arabic people that settled in Jordan between the 6th and 4th centuries BC. They were highly successful incense traders, dealing in frankincense, myrrh and spices, and established highly profitable trade routes through the Arabian peninsula. Dealing in trade meant constantly dealing with foreign influences – and the Nabataeans readily embraced these influences in the design of the monolithic carved stone facades of their wealthy new capital.

The facades were not living spaces, or really buildings at all. At most, some of the dozens of facades have one large room. It’s believed that some official meetings were had in these spaces, in somewhat ceremonial ways. The wealthy traders of the Petra, at a population of up to 30,000, lived in well engineered homes designed to beat the heat in the summer, and with a subfloor designed to draft the hot exhaust of a fire, warming the house in the winter. The Nabataeans were masterful water engineers, channeling water from springs and streams from miles off into the city’s cisterns, homes, fountains and even something of a water park.

The Nabataean genius in hydro engineering plays a big part in the remarkably pristine preservation of the facades – they had the foresight to do things like build water bars and carve gutters to divert water in ways that help preserve their remarkable craftwork. To this day, many of the soft sandstone facades have sharp, clean edges – it’s unsettling, really, on these 300BC constructions. Who knows how Petra would appear today if an earthquake in 363BC hadn’t destroyed half of the city. Still, life would continue… for a time.

Of course, all civilizations fall, and the Nabataeans lost power when Rome shifted the trade routes through Palmyra. Petra was left behind for a new capital closer to trade – a move that the proved only to further weaken the sinking Nabataeans. Eventually the civilization was overtaken by Rome in 106AD. Still 600 years is pretty good. I mean, despite our sense of forever, American society isn’t even 250. What will we look like if we survive another 350 years? What monuments will be standing?

On our first day, we made our way to the far end of the city, up the “900 stairs” to the incredibly well preserved “Monastery” facade. Each step of the trip, we fed our eyes and minds on countless impressive carvings which climbed up every rock face in sight. It’s hard to be anywhere in Petra that isn’t in view of one of these monuments. The extreme grade and intense midday heat of the walk up the steps shaved most of the tourists off in the valley. When we reached it there were only a small handful of people, and we had much of it to ourselves. The return trip from the Monastery, back through the canyon, past the huge great temple, the fountain, the massive royal tombs, the Roman style theater, through the narrow street of facades, sliding by the Treasury, back up the Siq, and to the entrance of the park is a walk of over an hour and a half. By the time we reached the Treasury again, it was almost empty, and again, we found ourselves nearly alone and face to face with one of the “new 7 wonders of the world”.

We kept the next day relatively short, getting up close to the Royal Tombs chiseled high up into the hillsides – huge ambitious facades that would well defeat the Treasury in its grandeur if it weren’t for less gentle aging.

There’s a big elephant in the room about Petra that I’m leaving out – of course it’s one of the most popular and important tourism sites in the Middle East… so there are tourists… everywhere. And where there are tourists there are merchants… and horse rides… and donkey rides… and camel rides.. and coffee shacks… and more merchants. From the moment you step into the park, you’re called to by scarf salesmen and donkey riders and tchotchke sellers. When we first entered the park I took a deep, concerned breath, worried how all of this would impact our experience… and then I took a few steps in, and found myself surrounded in Petra… and I simply forgot about all of the hassle. It’s that amazing. It would be hard to ruin it. In any case, the sellers are friendly – a “no” and a smile works wonderfully, and you just keep your eyes up and feasting on one of the worlds most incredible places.