AQABA – stopover port for Petra, Wadi Rum & Dead Sea.

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Aqaba, the gateway to Petra, Wadi Rum, the Dead Sea and so much more.

I did not travel to Aqaba when some of the others were shooting a movie there, so I missed Petra and had to endure hearing about it over and over again. It was on my Bucket list and I did get to go there many years later. If you cruise into Aqaba some ships overnight and stay for two nights it is that special. Marella have sailings that do three days there. See below. It is hard to ignore Petra…… but first let’s stop at the Dead Sea.

20061008 JORD74The Dead Sea

When I finally got there it was an adventure. We had been in Jerash, 48k north of Jordan towards Syria and we drove back towards Aqaba. On the way south is the Dead Sea and Petra.

20061008 JORD75Having lived, worked and stayed in the middle east I have to say I have found nothing but the most warm hearted people, and I am not talking just tourist areas. But, I was in a tourist hotel at the dead sea, and one to rival hotels in many places.

Dead Sea SmallAt the Dead Sea I had to take the mud bath just incase it stopped my skin from getting older. That was a bikini I won’t be able to use again!

 

PETRA

The trip to Petra was as awesome as I had hoped for, and a lot more, the whole of Jordan is spectacular from the Wadi Rum to the ruins. But Petra is very special as are the people who live there.

 

20061008 JORD35 20061008 JORD28It is hard to explain what is a wonder of the world, and no wonder Spielberg used the site for the first Indiana Jones. The sheer scale of these architectural wonders dwarf you.

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To say that an ancient civilisation lived there, a people who invented mathematics and astronomy and much more, puts many high school kids to shame. These people are wise.

The space is enormous and we hired two donkeys to get to see more than we could have by foot climbing all day. Having befriended the guides who we had never met before, I agreed to travel to see their family some many miles and three mountains away, so the donkey trip got a lot longer and the sun was going down. I had no idea where I was going, but this is what you call an adventure.

20061008 JORD44As we travelled there were times when we just had to stop and rest the donkeys and sit and look in awe.

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Arriving at the tiny village in the middle of nowhere we met with the guide’s family and children, and looked out to just mountains. We had really trekked for miles and miles.

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As the sun went down, the family as agreed, put us into their truck with the goats that had to go back to Petra, and we travelled, stopped and watched the sun drop and arrived at our overnight hotel in Petra in darkness.

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If you get a chance to cruise here, you simply must take an excursion to Petra, and if you have seen Petra then see the Wadi Rum, the place where many movies are filmed, from Lawrence of Arabia to space movies.

If you have never cruised, and we are mainly a cruise site, then click here to see how to look at what cruising is.

SEE THE CRUISE BEFORE YOU CRUISE THE SEA.Big Bus Dubai

 

  • Petra is where India Jones & The Temple of Doom was ‘based’, it is certainly the case that many exteriors were shot there.
  • The film we mentioned above which we worked on shot in the Wadi and Petra, A Passion in the Dessert.
  • Laurence of Arabia was shot in the Wadi Run.