Petra at last

Well, here I am. Petra at last - the site of my own personal Haj pilgrimage.

Oh yes, Petra is great. Especially for hiking up and down high mountains with fantastic views and for its amazing - totally amazing rocks. The colours of these rocks - crazy swirls of delicate pink, bright blue and mustard yellows... a dreamworld of age worn old temples and tombs carved straight from these multicoloured rock walls. Gaudi would have wet himself!

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And Petra is huge - it's a whole impressive mountain range with thousands of steps to climb, narrow ridges with sharp drops to the valley below and views to stun and awe. Today I only covered under a third of the area.

So this will be my base of operations for the next few days. I hope my legs are up to the hefty hikes I have in mind for them. They are certainly feeling the effects of my first 11 hour day of climbing endless steps and clambering over rocks. No waiting around for mr Sandman tonight!