Petra

The weather was boiling, and the car was much worse. We hopped in anyway because the bus takes far too long and drove the desert highway with a bottle of water in the back, just in case the engine heats up. We pass old caves and huts and stop on the side of the road to capture the view with our cameras.

My stomach is growling and I wonder why we didn't stop for food before. We find a burger shack, sort of like the chip wagons that rest on the side of the sidewalk in front of office buildings, waiting for hungry nine to fivers to get grease on their Tip-Top ties. Just my luck, the luck I don't have, the burger shack is closed. The man on the bench tells me a relative of the owner died, so he's not coming. "Allah yirhamo", I say, and we walk away. I try not to think about the fact that I'm running on coffee in 40 degree weather and walk.

Petra is over 2,000 years old (although the exact time of when it was built is not known). A once lost city (not really lost, just not known to Western civilization but inhabited by the bedouins of the area) built by the Nabataeans, it prospered as the capital of the Nabataean Empire from the 1st century BC.

The intricate facades sculpted into the sandstone red-rose coloured cliffs are magnificent and incredibly preserved. I take my mind off the hunger and focus on how [ancient civilizations] used to build and sculpt things. Ancient civilizations baffle me. What's even more baffling is the fact that this place used to have water...any trace of that is completely gone, just like they thought Petra was. I'm in no mood for history lessons, this is all you need to know.