Sometime during her first trip to Cairo, Egypt, 30 years ago, Nancy Peacock fell in love with the flavors of the Middle East.

The trip was an entree, the first of many by the Honolulu architect and design consultant to explore the culture, architecture, history and textiles of countries where the landscape is both magnificent and unpredictable.

Her host, an Egyptologist, told her about a mythical city, Petra, in Jordan, on the edge of the Arabian desert, hidden in mountains south of the Dead Sea, which had disappeared from maps for more than 1,000 years.

"She told me, 'There are places here that you must see to understand my part of the world.' " Peacock said. "In my mind, Petra became the lost city, magical, and one of the ultimate journeys to make."

Thought to be at least 3,000 years old, Petra is one of 21 finalists in the New 7 Wonders of the World campaign being decided in July. The city's architectural beauty survives from it being chiseled directly from the rose-colored sandstone mountains by nomadic Arabs known as Nabataeans. Temples, tombs, theaters and a highly sophisticated hydrology system are linked by trails and ancient caravan routes.

Peacock and husband Lono Lyman returned to Egypt in October and took a side trip to Petra to experience what she describes as "the fantastic situation of it all."

"The essence of Petra is one of a biblical experience ... with Arabs, camels and dust just as they must have appeared in the 1st century," Peacock said. "Jesus may even have traveled from Jerusalem to Cairo through this area. Because of the way you move through Petra — the city is inaccessible to modern transportation — the journey today is exactly the same as in ancient times."

HISTORY OF PETRA