How to get here?

The Petra Archaeological Park is a three hours drive from the city of Amman and two hours from the Red Sea port of Aqaba and Eilat/Aqaba border crossing from Israel. We planned a 2 days trip in Jordan to discover the magic of Petra, we joined a Petra & Wadi Rum 2 Day Tour from Jerusalem, where we were staying, with “Tourist Israel”, they picked up us in our hotel very early in the morning around 3am and we came back the night after around midnight, so two full days of fantastic experience between Israel and Jordan. Another option if you don’t want to join an organized tour, is to rent a car and cross the border on your own (but might be a bit more difficult at the border).Reducing the visit of Petra to a single day can be rushed. Remember that Petra spreads out for over a hundred square miles – four times the size of Manhattan. The best is to stay 2 days, we only stayed 1 day because we didn’t have enough time to sleep in Petra (we choose to spend the second night in Wadi Rum desert). It is a site full of history, and crazy great views. The red colour of the mountains is just amazing, around 80 per cent of the tourists stops at the first sight (the Treasury, where the movie “Indiana Jones” was shot), but keep going! Remember to protect yourself from the sun and the eyes from the sun, and bring a lot of water!

Discovering Petra

The magnificent ruins of ancient Petra occupy a high plateau that rises out of Wadi Mousa, the Valley of Moses, in south-western Jordan. This is one of the most magical places on Earth, make sure you have enough time because the site is huge. The entrance to Petra is actually one of the biggest highlights of the experience. You’ll walk through a narrow, imposing canyon, made of smooth, sculpted rocks that guide you to the hidden city. It starts from The Siq, the main road that leads to the city, and ends at the Treasury. The main part of the Siq is created by natural rock formation and the rest was carved by the Nabataeans and decorated with Nabataean sculptures, mostly representing gods – In 300 B.C., Nabataean invaders captured the city of Petra, the Nabataeans controlled the East-West trade routes between the Mediterranean Sea and Arabia, Syria, and Egypt. Their taxes on passing caravans generated immense wealth for Petra, which was reflected in monumental sculpture and architecture throughout the city. Petra also possessed a system of channels, dams, and cisterns that enabled its desert existence and tempered the harmful effects of flash flooding. The Siq opens up onto Petra’s most magnificent façade, the Treasury, one of the most stunning things I’ve ever seen, a dream come true! In this area you can take many gorgeous pictures, from the top of the hills (fantastic views), and with the camels. Just few hundred meters after the Treasury, you will find the Theatre, this site gives a sense of just how imposing and vibrant the city was. The last and the farthest site to visit is the Monastery, there are more than 800 steps through the hills to reach it, but the experience is worth the journey.

Overnight in Wadi Rum desert

Wadi Rum, known also as the Valley of the Moon, is a valley cut into the sandstone and granite rock in southern Jordan, 60 km to the east of Aqaba. One of the most spectacular natural environments in the Middle East, the desert scenery of Wadi Rum is a major highlight of a visit to Jordan. After visiting Petra, we continued our trip to the Wadi Rum Desert and checked in into the Bedouin Campsite in the middle of the desert. Enjoy the sunset in the evening and the fabulous sky full of stars in the night, if you can. Try to get up early in the morning to enjoy the sunrise, you won’t regret it. The next morning we did a Jeep Safari tour (was included in 

the package) with a local Bedouin. They took us in the deep desert, the landscape was fantastic, they brought us in some hidden spot, was really magic. Popular activities in the desert environment include 4×4 tours, camel rides, hiking and rock-climbing among the massive rock formations. The area has been used as a background setting in a number of film, the scenery really looks like Mars, one of the most recent movies was The Martian with Matt Damon.If you love the desert and have time, you could spend two nights in Wadi Rum, the feeling that you get when you sleep in this place is unbelievable, and this kind of landscape are not easy to find somewhere else.