Jordan and Petra

Let's get this out of the way right off the bat.

This most famous site in Petra is the Treasury, and they really make as much of the Indiana Jones link as they can. I was a bit disappointed to learn that there is only a single room inside this structure, but most of the structures in Petra were only facades. The ones with anything more also only had a single room. Granted, it couldn't have been easy to carve those rooms out of the stone. Maybe one room was enough.

This is the Monastery, and I was much more impressed by this structure than the Treasury. You can see how much bigger it is, but the Treasury is much more intact. The Monastery has a big crack running horizontally and some signs of erosion, but it's still in remarkable condition.

I had no idea how enormous the Petra site is and the wide variety of structures in it. There were quite a few carved into colorful stone that were simply amazing.

The dry climate no doubt helps preserve the site, and you can even see the remains of the original piping that brought water deeper into the site. The tiles and mortar are still in place.

Something that didn't survive so well...