Aqaba, Jordan: Past Petra, Not Beside It

Jordan is long and thin, and almost everything a visitor wants is on one line down it: Amman at the top, Petra 235 km south, Wadi Rum 110 km east of Petra, and Aqaba at the bottom on the Red Sea. Aqaba's airport is 129 km from Petra, which is the figure that tells you what shape your trip has to be.

It means Aqaba is never a detour. Either you are driving past Petra to reach it, or you have flown into it and are driving up. What it is not is something you add to a day trip: a Petra day from Amman is already six or seven hours in a vehicle before Aqaba is mentioned.

The Petra ticket has two prices and the difference is not where you sleep but whether you have slept. A night in Aqaba counts exactly as much as a night in Wadi Musa: the gate is 50 JOD instead of 90.

So if Aqaba is already in your trip, the expensive same-day ticket is not your problem — you are on the 50 JOD tier by the time you reach the gate. The entry-fee guide has the tiers and the Jordan Pass arithmetic in full.

Aqaba is a port and a town, not a resort strip, and the thing people come for is under the water: the Red Sea reef starts a few metres out and the diving and snorkelling are the reason the flights exist. On land there is the castle at 3 JOD and not a great deal else.

We are not going to pretend that is a rival to Petra. It is a place to stop moving for two days after the driving, and on this site it appears on exactly one tour — the five-day loop — because nothing shorter reaches the bottom of the country and comes back.