A lot of the info on Petra online is confusing and unnecessarily complicated. As mentioned in my last post, getting the “bird’s eye view” seems complicated, potentially dangerous, and takes a long time if you look online. However, I found the process quick with just a very very minor hike.
Also in my last post, I showed you how to see about 40% of Petra in one afternoon. In this post, I will show you how to see the rest in half a day, in the most efficient manner possible. After the Treasury, the Monastery is the next most popular thing to see. The problem with the Monastery is that it is located far from the main entrance, and involves a long uphill hike. This is something the guides online dont tell you in a simple way. That is why, starting from the back entrance, will avoid much of the uphill hike AND CROWDS!!!!!!!!! You will still have to hike, but it will be an easier, and MUCH MORE beautiful hike than if you started at the main entrance.
Step one is to get a taxi to take you to the “back door” entrance of Petra. Your hotel can arrange this. The taxi will drop you at a place called Little Petra. Its basically a mini version of Petra and you can see the entire area in about 30 minutes.
After you have had your fill of Little Petra, walk outside of the main entrance to Little Petra and find the ticket booth to buy a seat on the “shuttle” that will take you to the start of the hike to the Monastery. The shuttles will be waiting a few meters from the ticket booth and only leave once full.
After a short drive, the shuttle will drop you at the start of the hike. The hike itself is pretty easy and though I dont remember the exact length, I think it was about an hour (with photo stops). The day we went it wasnt that hot, but dont forget to bring WATER! The hike itself is gorgeous! Look at the views in the vids below which do not capture the beauty of the scenery, but will give you a good idea of the awesomeness.
At the end of the hike, you will finally come across the Monastery.
From the Monastery, you will begin another mostly downhill hike back to the MAIN Entrance of Petra. Along the way, you will encounter some vendors and some more sights (and tourists who did not read this blog and are hiking uphill the other way!).
This hike will take you past many of the sites you saw yesterday, including the treasury and siq; and if you took my advice and stayed at the Movenpick, a nice hotel will be awaiting you once you finish your hike.
After spending about half a day in Petra, we went for lunch at the highly rated Al Wadi.
In my opinion, the food was not as good as we had in other places in Jordan. We tried their Mansaf and it was not as good as Jordanian Heritage.
After lunch, we headed back to the hotel for more amazing ice cream. Dinner was on the roof again, but this time, they had live music.
Tomorrow, we head off to Wadi Rum, where we stay in a Martian dome!
back door are cool fft, good of you to share these hacks. again, you did all the work for us to benefit.this is a big hack too