The sun was still very hot as we began the climb up towards The Treasury area where we would exit ancient Petra via The Siq walk through the winding snake- crack in the mountain walk. We passed tall rock monoliths carved in ancient times by clever craftsmen and now standing proud and tall.
Then as we turned a slight bend the massive, now red, rock wall, with the Siq entrance crack, came into view. The colours of these walls are forever changing in tones, depending on the position of the sun which casts shadows across the cliff walls at different times throughout the day.
We knew we were going to make it back to where we began because once in The Siq we knew it would be much, much cooler for us to hike in. Looking back at The Treasury, it too had changed colour and there were many more tourists gathering for photo shoots than when we'd first stood in front of this icon of Petra earlier this morning. The sun was now bouncing off the top of the Treasury heights and reflected in our phot shoot. Ken found an alcove and took one last shot of The Treasury which appeared as a soft pink colour. We turned and headed into the 1.2 km walk out of Petra.
The high walls of this open tunnel walkway sheltered us from the heat of the sun and though it was an uphill trek there was a cool, gentle breeze flowing through the Siq and we had time to enjoy the carved monuments, the water channels on either side of thre pathway and the changing colours of the rock surfaces. We still found it tiring and needed to rest at times and when we finally reached the end of the Siq walk the sun once again blazed 
down on us and the path ahead became steeper and steeper - funny how we'd forgotten about walking downhill as we set off earlier this morning. After about 20 minutes with about 800 metres to climb we decided to take a horse for this last segment because now we were walking uphill in sand and the going was tough. The ride was a new experience and we both appreciated it. Another factor was that apart from being very exhausted we were due to meet our group for lunch at 3pm and it was now 2.50pm. We made it to lunch and enjoyed the coolness of the restaurant, sharing experiences with our party of fellow travellers and we both drank a 2 litre bottle of cold water between us. The food was delicious but we were not that hungry and were unable to finish off the plate of food we photographed.
At 4pm we were headed to Wadi Rum, one of the world's great deserts.
