VISIT THIS PLACE BEFORE YOU DIE! PETRA (JORDAN) 🇯🇴

good morning everyone, here from the world famous Petra here in Jordan. we arrived here the other day from Wadi Rum and Petra is the most famous place in Jordan. one of the sites that we're going to see today, you might have already seen an image of it because it's all over social media and Petra is one of the new seven wonders of the world, so an extremely famous place. this site would receive over a million visitors per year before covid and i think it's edging close to that number of visitors once again. so right now we're in the town right in front of the historic city, so here you just get loads of hotels, restaurants and stuff. i've never actually seen this area so i had no idea what the town in Petra looked like. you see on the hillside, huge hillside there, loads of buildings. and it's surprisingly cooler in this region compared to Amman and Wadi Rum right? which were pretty hot. yeah yeah like yesterday we even had to wear coats and stuff because it was kind of cold, especially at night i think it was around 10 or 12 degrees celsius and we were not expecting to find a place with weather like this here. but yeah it's good because today we're going to walk a lot so since it's not so hot i think it's going to be easier for us. yeah it's going to be better weather to walk around. so i think the max is only going to be about 20 degrees celsius, in Amman and Wadi Rum it was over 30. so this side here is the historic part of Petra, so somewhere around these rocks where we're going to walk today is the ancient city, going to see loads of temples, different historic structures so it's going to be amazing. so pretty good view from our hotel, you have the historic city there and yeah the new town here. all right so we've entered the complex now, so the jordan pass that we bought online before we came to jordan actually had three days included, three days to explore this place you can't do it in one day because there's many trails, we're only gonna explore two days though so today and tomorrow. so right at the entrance it already looks pretty cool, you can already see loads of caves here, windows in the rocks, see some caves back there as well yeah this is going to be epic isn't it? yeah i'm excited. yes you can also travel in these little cars if you want, if you don't want to walk around. we prefer walking though so this part here is the official entrance into the main city, it's called the seek which apparently in arab means the gateway. you have this amazing entry like this in a gorge it's one kilometer long, already got some things carved into the side of the rock here gonna be seeing that a lot in petra this has got to be one of the coolest entrances to an ancient city ever yeah like the cliffs are so huge like that one. yeah they're massive, it's a bit kind of like wadi rum really. yeah. but with a historical city in the middle of it. this place was built by a nomadic arab tribe called the nabateens and it was like their capital in the second century although some people believe they were here in the fourth century, bc that is, second century bc not after. and the reason that this was their capital is because it was close to the trade routes of spices so petra was like a trading hub in the area. i wonder if this is more like some of the original roads. yeah i have no idea. yeah just out of nowhere it's like cobbled streets here and then this is paved over, over there as well yeah. you want to go up the view? no thank you. yeah another part here where it's cobbled cave. you walk through? the shortcut. we saved five seconds, more extra work as well so the romans did rule over this area from a period as well so this kind of looks like it's roman doesn't it? yeah maybe. maybe they did it. there's the people slacking off in their little golf carts so this is pretty much the spot that you'll see if you search petra on google it will always show this area here and that's why this part's so busy. look at this, this is where everyone is it's got the camels, loads of camels oh it's crazy to finally see it in person. yeah it's way bigger than i thought. yeah it is, it's huge isn't it? so i just searched on wikipedia some information about this place so that what i say is accurate so apparently it was built around the first century and it's called the al qasneh, i don't know if that's how you pronounce it. in english that translates to the treasury. believed to be no thank you. and around that time the population in this area peaked at around 20 000 people so quite a lot of people were living around these gorges, these pathways. and i didn't mention but here in jordan we're also using olafly, some of you will know that we use them in egypt for our internet, so it's basically a virtual sim card that you can apply on your phone before you even arrive in the country and you'll have internet straight away, you don't need to buy a physical sim card when you arrive. and in the video description we have a link there and it also has the code jumping places which will give you five percent on. yeah so there's no entry into this place, i was unsure if you could enter. seems to go quite deep though. wow just look how big that is though, that is insane. imagine the amount of work to carve that into the side of the rock. yeah. sandstone is i think quite soft though right? or a rock? i'm not sure. not sure? i still wouldn't like to have all that work. no no. it even goes down here doesn't it? yeah there's a door here over there. yeah i wish we could go inside but there is no entry. it's off limits carol i think that's the most stylish camel i've ever seen. yeah i really like the... i don't know if it's a carpet or... yeah i don't know what it is, it's like a carpet. beautiful designs though so at the entrance you can also get this leaflet here and it shows you where all the main spots are, it gives you some information about them as well. i think on the other side there's like a map so you can see where you're at, so definitely get this at the visitor center and right now we're at number five, the street of the facades. so yeah you can see all the facades around here, there are all the tombs even up there as well. yeah so when you search the pictures you only see the main facade right? the main place that we went right now but there's actually loads yeah and yeah that's why you need a lot of time here because there are many things to see and when you see the pictures you just want to go to all the places because they all look amazing like this one but i think this is the farthest. we're gonna do that tomorrow. yeah. yeah we'll do like half today and half tomorrow and then there's some places that we're just not going to be able to visit another time when we come in 20 years time. i always feel like i'm indiana jones or something when i come to places like this. yeah jordan is kind of like that. maybe indiana jones was filmed here i don't know. yeah we need to search. yeah pretty sure there has been some epic films around here. wow look at that tomb as well. yeah they put a lot of work into this capital that's for sure. amazing carvings everywhere. even here there's another one oh yeah on the side. this area here is one of the coolest parts that we've seen so far probably going to keep seeing that every corner that we turn but yeah look at this there's just loads of tombs on this mountainside you can see little designs as well and then over there is a theater like a really old looking theater we'll check that out and even back there you can see the people walking up some really preserved facades up there. another one there. yeah another one there. wow this place is crazy. it is crazy i can't believe how crazy it is. yeah mind-blowing. yeah it's insane and there's loads of little trails and stuff so there's a trail here the trail of sacrifice or something so you can see people walking up there. we won't be doing that one though we're just doing what's called the main trail which is an easy one. i think tomorrow will be a bit of a harder trail yeah so as you can see some of the walkways are a bit dodgy this is a proper walkway though look there's little steps here got some steps there as well old steps and that is because look at this viewpoint from up here some more amazing views angry donkey. so the more you keep climbing the more you just see how many tombs there are here loads of tombs and now we can see the different side of the mountain look at that for a view so it just shows you how big petra is. we're gonna have to walk all the way around there through the mountain side over there. i can see there's a viewpoint all the way up there as well with a flag. yeah just so many hikes around here i didn't realize it was such like a hiking area. so there is another area i don't know if we're going to be able to see on this trip which is the royal tombs where all like the royal family were buried. this will have just been tombs of other people that lived around here, not royalty. wow so here you get an awesome view of the theater below, much smaller than the theater that we saw in amman but this one yeah looks way more historic. and that is the only theater in the world to be carved into rock the only one. so we just heard a guide say that there's 885 facades in this area just to give you an idea of how many there are, impossible to show them all. and here is the epic theater carved into the rocks. so the leaflet says that about 4 000 people could sit here the seats are super faded now. and it also says that the romans reconstructed the back wall, i don't know if that means that part there. so that probably means the nabateans already had some sort of theater here as well. so about the romans, they ruled over this area around the second century just like many of the other places that we've been lately. but then petra quickly declined under their rule and that's because they started doing trade on the sea, like sea routes instead of land. and there was also an earthquake in the fourth century which just kind of ruined the place, so i think that's why a lot of the places like this are in ruins. there was two earthquakes i think, there was another one in the eighth century but the one in the fourth century already caused a lot of damage. so we are going to be able to check out the royal tombs. on the leaflet it said that the trail is hard but it was just a few steps, wasn't really hard at all. and that is the royal tombs back there. super impressive like the archways below. so we're gonna head up there now, i think that is also some of the royal tombs. got the big jordan flag here and some other views. so it looks like this part here is kind of empty and then it leads to some other sort of buildings carved into the rocks back there. man what a city. so this one right here is called the palace tomb, really really really wide tomb and that's from the second century. it says it was five stories, it doesn't really look like it. looks like the top's fallen off though, would have been like that. and there's also another tomb here, the corinthian tomb. probably head into this one right here. so on this one you can see where the columns have fallen off, all at the same height, strange. there's actually some pieces back here, maybe that's it. how's this guy doing, the guardian? the ceiling looks like some abstract messy work of art, like someone's just splattered paint they were saying that the exterior part has a color but then inside it has different layers and different colors. i'm not sure how they did it to make the exterior look like that or maybe it was just natural. yeah i don't know. yeah unintentional probably it does look different on the inside, that is a nice piece of artwork there man so it's a good job the weather is a bit cooler in this region because we'd be dying right now doing all this. it's still pretty warm but yeah there is a cool breeze hal's got her little headscarf that she bought yesterday. yeah. how much was that? first the guy said eight and then i was able to haggle to five. five dinars. five dinars. yeah so we're leaving the tomb valley behind now, heading to the next part. this place right here is called the petra church so it was first built around 450 ad by the christian community living in petra and around 600 a fire destroyed parts of the church. the cool thing is though that the mosaics on the floor are extremely preserved, look at that. it's almost like in its original state got the donkey there, some other animals as well. yeah loads of different animals that's crazy how it remained like that though. yeah that actually reminded me of the place that we went in portugal. the roman ruins. yeah that had mosaics like that. yeah because that was also completely destroyed but the mosaics were so clear. yeah on the ground. i guess there's something about mosaics that stays really preserved we are now at a famous street called the colonnaded street it's actually sandy here, the only part that's been sandy so far. and right next to the street you have a river or a part that they would have made so water would have come down here they say it floods this area sometimes so right now it's completely dry and this is an original nabitin creation, not roman. and this would have been the main shopping street back in the day still is actually, also a main shopping street now. a wild donkey. hello, no, you got lost? okay and right on the shopping street we have the great temple, nabitin temple. wow so this is an absolutely huge area, 7 000 square meters here. so this place was actually uncovered quite recently it says that it was abandoned until its rediscovery by brown university archaeologist in 1992 and the excavation only started in 1993. so yeah the start of the 90s, you probably wouldn't be seeing much here at all. i wonder what these blocks are here is that some goats? check the goat family. i don't think i've seen any goats here so far i got the baby goat as well. man, carla's a big family, look at all the goats they don't stop coming so we've reached the end of the main trail now, tomorrow we're going to be doing another trail that goes around that corner right there. we actually brought some food with us to eat so i got this kebab sandwich here that's for dinner and you got a tuna sandwich right? yeah same price yeah also for dinner. so we thought that there wouldn't be that many restaurants here inside but there's actually loads but either way this is definitely more cheaper than any place around here so we walked all the way from behind those mountains there so after this gonna have to walk all the way back. you can get a taxi here though if you want but we'll probably just walk. so i think so far it took us like four hours overall right? that's because we stopped a lot. yeah we stopped for pictures and also for filming so i think it would maybe one hour less for normal people yeah maybe. well normal people take pictures all the time now anyway. yeah so i don't know yeah either way four hours overall taking it slow. so we just came around the the rock from where we're having lunch and yeah it's just getting more and more insane, it looks like we've come into the grand canyon or something out here. so i don't know how we came so high all of a sudden we really didn't do any climbing up, i don't know if the road went down. we were super high up right now and over here there's some farms like goat farms so we actually saw one of the places where the goat stays is in one of the tombs in the hole, made good use of the tomb and there's a little restaurant cafe down here might have a coffee there if they serve coffee so carol's found a good hangout spot with the goats and this guy. these guys are all chilling here, this one is looking at me for like 10 minutes, like that, that face. it's the next day now so we're doing the second trail that we mentioned that we were going to do here. so this trail i think they call it the backdoor hiking trail, you can get to it doing the path that we did yesterday but i think overall just to get to the the monastery where we're going it would take four hours to get there, so if you get a taxi to the spot that we just went to i think it's only like an hour and a half the trail and then you walk all the way back through it but it'll be easier. the only problem is dealing with the taxis here so it's kind of an issue in jordan to be honest, probably the only negative part is all the taxis are just a big scam really so they have the meters, they never use the meters. we had an issue like that in amman as well like here right now probably about an eight minute distance, people were trying to charge 20 dinars but it cost us 20 dinars to go from aqaba to wadi rum which was an hour and they're trying to charge 20 dinars just for an eight minute ride so we got one in the end and he charged 12 dinars just for that eight nine minute ride. but it's funny we passed a police checkpoint at the start and the police guy told him to put the meter on because it's obviously illegal and then the meter showed that it was only like one dinar so yeah he charged us 12 times more but there's just no way around it, none of them will use the meter at all so yeah you've just got to accept the scam and try and at least haggle it down so we haggled it down from 20 to 12 at least. what can you do? yeah carol, these walks aren't really for everyone right? they're pretty pretty hardcore, i didn't realize it was going to be so hardcore the walking the hiking. yeah and according to what we read the other way to go to the monastery like the normal way that people usually do you have to climb i think around 900 steps and people said this one was easier because you don't have to climb that much steps but it's still very hard yeah still loads of steps i mean we gotta go all the way up here in this heat no wind on this side so we came from all the way behind that big mountain back there probably even like 30 minutes from there, walked all the way through this. it's pretty crazy how far you can get walking though in such a short distance, doesn't really feel like we could have walked all that that quickly. they do have these like little resting areas where you can get a bite to eat and drink so that's pretty good, quite a few of those. so i think that place over there there in the distance is israel. israel? yeah. yeah that's how close we are so behind these mountains the land vet there, israel is out there, a place that we're hoping to visit another resting area. yeah at least you're fine on this trail for resting areas. and drink as well yeah if you run out of water you don't have to get scared wow look at these views, check this out here the skull and that's where they cook. wow that is what i i call a view though. the rock on this side it's kind of like black. bizarre landscapes. so it's amazing how they've done these walkways so we're like super high and they just have these walkways on the cliff side that goes all the way around here in the cliffs, probably like ancient pathways, bizarre all right so we have made it finally. that last part was actually quite easy it was kind of like flat and downhill and this is what we came for. this is called the monastery in english so people think that this is the most impressive temple of them all. there's like a proper restaurant down here i thought we were coming to some like proper remote area wow i don't know how they made all these things back then with like no cranes or anything like how did they climb up there and it's all perfectly smooth. i'm sure they had like something like iron and stuff like that but yeah it must have been a very hard job to do everything and it's so high i don't know maybe i i think. aliens. and it's so high i think probably some people died building it. oh definitely. if you fall from there it's just game over. game over. yeah i don't know if you can go inside this one there's some dude there, amazing though. yeah so this one has no entry as well. i read online that you could enter and maybe they changed it. maybe in the past not much in there anyway, pretty empty. so that was built in the second century under the reign of a king called rabel the second and it was also used as a church at some point. apparently there's some crosses in there, i didn't see any though. so just like all the other sites there's loads of different rocks you can climb to get different views, loads of different viewpoints and this just shows you how big petra is because from the sikh, the main gateway, it would take you like four hours probably to get to this spot. so yeah it's just a huge city right? four hours of walking and there's just loads of tombs and temples all along the way. guys so if we come from the main trail we'd have to come up all this way here in the dry heat. people are coming up like zombies over here not surprised. yeah there are so many steps people said 900 or 800 something it's just too crazy especially when it's this hot. yeah i'm glad we're just going down on this side traffic jam i like how the guy was on donkeys listening to tupac yeah i thought it was gonna be like a middle eastern song but it was american. tupac on a donkey we're back at our hotel now, so i didn't show this place earlier it's called petra and it was around 55 dollars a night and that includes breakfast, really nice hotel though really modern and super fast internet as well so that's been good to get some work done and we just absolutely love this place, definitely one of those places that you've got to visit before you die and it's easily the best wonder of the world that we've been to so far we've been to the jesus christ statue in brazil, the pyramids of egypt recently, chichen itza and taj mahal, i think those are the other four that we've been to but yeah for us this one is miles better just because it's so big and it's like it's just some crazy ancient city, definitely worth visiting for sure. and this is going to be it for jordan so it was just three videos because we just had a week here, we could have done more stuff but we've been taking it kind of easy other good things to do would be to go to aqaba where you can enjoy the beaches in the red sea and also the dead sea which is shared with israel, so there's a reason that we didn't go to the dead sea because our original plan was to cross the border, the land border into israel and then we were going to do the dead sea on that side but the problem is they almost have like a little civil war going on there right now, it's in its worst phase since like the last seven eight years from what i read so yeah just a terrible time to go there and it's around easter as well so i think things might even get worse so we cancelled that trip and our next video is going to be in oman where we weren't planning to go to but it's been on our radar, everyone says it's a really underrated country, it's supposed to be really relaxed like jordan so we're going to spend about a week in oman and that's where the next videos will come from. so if you like this series in jordan just drop a like to support us, subscribe to see more videos like this one, follow us on instagram and we'll see you around, thank you