Petra

It's a one-day excursion. We left from Sharm el Sheikh, getting up at 4.00 if I remember rightly! From the airport we boarded a very small plane that I remember was called “Orca air”. The name immediately drew an exclamation from me: Orca miseria how small this thing is! The outward flight was calm, we saw the dawn and to call it beautiful is an understatement. Landing at Aqaba, a stone's throw from the Israeli border. We got on a bus that took us across an enormous rocky desert. The trip lasted about three hours. We arrived in Petra around 10.00 and began to visit it with the help of a specialist guide. The impression I got from this small stretch of Jordan that we visited is that Jordanians are first of all a much wealthier and more cultured people than the Egyptian one. They are polite, educated and much richer.

Of course, one is almost tempted to say that it's easy to be “well-mannered” with money at your disposal and “dirty, ugly and bad” if you're poor! In reality it isn't always so. Anyway Petra is extraordinary, it was worth spending a small fortune to be able to make this one-day excursion. I still have in my eyes that image that stands out in the mountain and makes the beautiful temple spring, as if by magic, from the rock. Enjoy the photos even if they don't convey much of the beauty of that magical place. The temperature was about 40-45 C° the whole day. We arrived at the hotel cooked to perfection, ready to be eaten!