PETRA the secret entry you've probably never heard of... The tour bus won't show you this!

Today's very explores are very challenging. I will even say brutal. Welcome to Gryffindor Overland. My name is Steffi and this is my husband Lee. We are currently waiting on the shipping of our Land Rover Defender from Australia to Africa. In the meantime we decided to go on a long distance hike. A 670 kilometer journey on foot. 50 kilometers from any road reached by vehicle. We are isolated. Welcome to episode number four of our Jordan Trails series. A real adventure and definitely the best of our life. Incredible again. So cold this morning. Pulling through with a massive effort because she's in a lot of discomfort and a lot of pain. Day number 18. Last night I was very excited about a hot shower. There wasn't any hot water so no shower. If I had to describe the Jordan Trail I would probably mention the stunning and forever changing landscape. Since we left Dana the descent down into the valley was just amazing. Really easy beautiful walking and then we've just started this steady incline all the way up here. And then all of a sudden saw someone on the ridge line ahead sitting on a boulder. And that is our friend from Poland Agnes. And have a look where we are. Absolutely amazing. It really has been incredible. And spoilt today too because we've been following these enormous rock cans that have been put in place like permanent fixtures. Which means we haven't had to get the phone out every five minutes to make sure we're on track. So yeah very spoilt. Spectacular day. I've said spectacular a few times. One more time. Spectacular. We're in an alpine environment now. Jagged mountain peaks ahead of us. Knowing that when we cross this mountain range or reach the summit there's not going to be any no convenience store. No farmer. We're deep in the mountains now and it is bloody awesome. Set up camp here. We're up nearly at a thousand meters now. Not quite at the summit of the pass. And yeah we're going to settle in. We're starving. Have some food. Sit by the campfire for a little while. Tonight we're going all fancy. Good old two minute noodles. Day 19 on the trail. We usually start hiking at 6.30 in the morning using our headlamps. Of course it makes for an extra challenge. But this is how we can hike a good amount of kilometers per day. On average we hike 10 hours a day with morning, lunch and afternoon breaks. We often walk apart. We don't talk much. We have to concentrate on the terrain. I found long distance hiking to be a personal, physical and mental challenge. All right so we've entered some pretty deep canyons now. There is forecast of rain today. These are the very dangerous areas to be in in regards to flash floods. So as we walk we always look for escape areas. Areas that we can get high quickly if we need to. An hour later we were finally clear from the canyon. But now we were very exposed on the plateau. We've crossed all of this beautiful terrain and then we've come up over the back there. There's Steffi down there. Maybe you can see her. One of many challenges out there is dealing with thoughts and pain. I haven't got much in the tank today. I got my period two weeks earlier. And I only have two pads. We are maybe two or three days away from the town. My hands are getting worse. They're painful and very itchy at night. I don't know what's wrong with my eyes. They were so puffy in the morning. I aged 10 years overnight. Yesterday was such a good day but today a little bit different. The weather's getting wilder and now we've just walked into a little mini hail storm. The wind is just like take off your balance and you're on the edge of a cliff. Hail for lunch. I get there are only little ones but they do sting when you're out in the wind and that wind's coming in horizontal and some of this hail is hitting you in the face. It's a bit painful. Wild day today. Steffi's in sandstorm mode. She says she can just see through her butt there. Is that right? Yeah I can just see. Nine hours of walking today so far. And we've had one decent hour of okay weather. Absolutely brutal. Definitely our toughest day yet. We're about I think four kilometers from Little Petra. We really need to find shelter tonight. We've finally got the tent set up in this really strong gust of wind. We looked everywhere. There's nowhere that is sheltered. It doesn't matter where you go because we have to bear in mind flash floods so we can't go deep into the canyon where possibly we would find shelter from the wind but then we put ourselves at risk. Bon app little girl. Cheers. This is the very first time that we've had to do this in 19 days on the trail. Actually take shelter. How is it? Very average. Average. Yeah first time we've had to actually take shelter in the tent. Prepare the food. We use the jet boil in here to cook the stuff. Pastry noodley looking stuff. Anyway we're gonna have a feed and try and get as much sleep as we can before the rain hits. 1am we woke up to what we thought was rain. It's actually I think it's snow. No I think they're tiny little hail. Ah it's nothing. Breakfast on a long distance trail. Mars bars or Snickers bars. This is a section that we knew was coming. Apparently there's usually a rope but today no rope and it is wet. Steffi will have to stem her way down. Being very very careful. You be careful because it is still how far to the ground? A couple of meters? So this is pretty gnarly actually. She's right about five meters up. Nice and easy. Yeah I would like a backpack. Just stand by there. I'm gonna turn this phone off. So Lee's going first so I would be able to give in my bag. Pretty gnarly. All right well you can come to here and pass me the bag. Well done. I'm glad I didn't have the backpack. So we have come down from the narrowest little canyon in there and wandering down we come and this is Little Petra. Really cool feeling actually that we came down through this incredible hike from our campsite. Slept in a tent last night. Come down this narrow gully and just appear out of the trees there at the opposite end to all the other tourists coming on the buses. Pretty cool. From Little Petra we made our way to the back entrance of the main Petra site. Is this nice walking or what? What's your name my friend? Aran. So we just met Aran on the trail on the Jordan trail heading towards Petra. We've left Little Petra this morning and we're coming now for a coffee at Aran's coffee shop. And as you can see he's got super high security holding the door in place. As we are Jordanian people we welcome everyone to visit Jordan. Oh yeah. Fucking amazing. I'm pretty sure that any photos, any video cannot do this thing justice. A great big tick off of a childhood bucket dream, bucket list item that I have wanted to visit this place since I was a little kid. I actually remember watching Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade for the very first time. It's a really surreal feeling not to mention the fact that we walked 400 kilometers to get here. We didn't arrive on a tour bus. We didn't arrive in a taxi. We walked 400 kilometers from the very north of Jordan to be here today. You're looking up into the tops of these mountains in the background and there's doors and little windows cut out everywhere. You could literally spend a week walking around this place. We haven't got that long. But yeah very special to be here at Petra and it's yeah it's definitely put it on your bucket list. The entire amphitheater is carved. It's not like your typical ancient ruin. This city was carved from natural rock. Completely carved. Majority of it anyway. We are in a taxi on our way to get resupply of food. It's about maybe two kilometers but it's really hot deal and it's very cold and this is a rest day. We're in Wadi Musa today. So this is the major town just outside of Petra where we're staying in the hotel. It's our zero day. We're taking a rest and I've been talking about trying the Mansa for some time now. Which is a very traditional dish and it's essentially it's lamb which is my favorite meat anyway. With a like a yogurt made from sheep's milk, white rice and bread. And you cut off a bit of the meat and put it you mix it with the rice and you wrap it in the bread and eat it and it's bloody good. Our bags I think today are going to be the heaviest they have been on the entire hike. I'm carrying nine liters of water for this section. Steffi's going to be carrying six liters of water. We don't want to do water drops just as a bit of a challenge. Oh it's heavy. First day will be tough though for sure. It's pretty cool to be here this early in the morning. There's literally nobody around other than the people working here and maybe we've passed two tourists already. As we leave Petra behind we start the second last section of the trail. Heading south destination Wadi Rum. This is just one of the many things we've loved about doing the Jordan Trail. Not only do you get this phenomenal mind-blowing scenery but it's the history too. We've walked maybe four to six kilometers since leaving Petra. We're out here in the middle of nowhere and here is an ancient amphitheater. This amphitheater is estimated to be about 2000 years old and it could accommodate up to 800 people. This is such an amazing day, an amazing terrain, amazing landscape. I cannot get enough of it. This one has to be my favorite canyon for now. It's called Wadi Alqa and it's just like incredible. Everywhere you look it's unreal. Oh it's cool. It's a bit early but we found a beautiful camp so we decided we gotta stop. Day 23. The weather should be very nice again today. Very cool. We've decided to call it for the day. We were going to try and make the pass and get on the other side but we're so protected here in this absolutely incredible environment and we've just come across this perfect walled little shelter here. It's even got a little bench top there. It's just amazing and we think we're going to do what's called cowboy camp tonight which means camping out with no tent. You know we were in Petra, one of the most famous, I guess, destinations. You know it's on so many people's bucket lists. It's an incredible place. We were there three days ago or two days ago and it was amazing. It was unbelievable but it doesn't even come close to where we are right now. Surrounded by these formations that are just as cool as Petra but naturally carved and sculpted and shaped and it's incredible. And the best thing is we have the entire place to ourself. This is what it's all about for us. This is why we do the things we do really. This cannot be reached by car, not even close. I think the closest road that you could possibly, possibly even get close to this by a vehicle is 50 kilometers away. This is the life, isn't it? Thank you so much for watching. We will see you next time for the last episode of the series. Until then, take care. Bye-bye.