“Wow, that’s an ambitious itinerary” was said to us more than once upon sharing our plans. But when one has a limited number of days in which to see all the priority sites, one must be ambitious. We could always adjust on the fly if it became untenable. Happily that was not the case.
I was referred to Israel-based tour company Ahalan Olympus to handle everything we needed for our day trip to two sites in southern Jordan: Petra and Wadi Rum. Crossing the border from Israel into Jordan is arguably fastest from the town of Eilat, at the top of the Gulf of Aqaba. This particular crossing is known as the Yitzhak Rabin Terminal. At this location, Eqypt is on one side of the Gulf and Jordan on the other. The other crossing points between these neighboring countries are between Jerusalem and Amman (King Hussein Allenby Terminal) and in northern Israel (Jordan River/Sheik Hussein Crossing).
Elizabeth (Liz) O’Hanna became my go-to person for this day-long excursion. Liz is a native Brit who went to Israel 40 years ago on vacation with a friend and never left. For Jordan tours, she’s been working with the same group of colleagues who provided an absolutely seamless experience.
With Liz — thank you for your expert arrangements!
The day began with a 6:30 am pick-up at our Eilat hotel by driver Moshe for the short ride to the border. Liz met us there (first time actually meeting in person) and escorted us through all the Israeli passport control points with our previously arranged visas, and then handed us off to Abdullah who guided us through the Jordanian side checkpoints. I lost count of the total number of checks until Abdullah handed us off to Maen, our Jordanian guide for the day.
Our first stop was the vast protected area of Wadi Rum. The terrain is instantly recognizable if you’ve seen movies like Aladdin, The Martian, Lawrence of Arabia, Dune, and John Wick 4 to name a few. We transferred to an open pick-up truck to tour the area, stopping at various places for tea, photo ops, and many explanations of what we were seeing.
Below, this photo could be from any period of time — but taken during our tour of the area
Casting a long shadow in Wadi Rum
With guide Maen in our transportation for the area
From there, we proceeded to Petra after stopping for lunch. Petra is also an enormous area — it can take days to explore while never seeing the same thing twice.
Our plan was to walk down the path (The Siq) to the main sites. It’s not a short walk. Just when you think you’re getting to the end, there’s still a long way to go. Guide Maen stopped us periodically to point out an unusual rock formation and to describe the significance.
Elephants? Whales? What do you see???
Below, walking down “The Siq” which narrows progressively along the way
He stopped us just short of the big reveal, adding a bit of a distraction. We then turned around and saw this masterpiece tomb carved into the side of a rock. The Treasury as it is commonly known stands roughly 128′ tall. One just looks and thinks “how in the world did this happen?” It is stunning, and justifiably one of the New Seven Wonders of the World.
We continued to walk for a bit, with Maen and our kids going even further. Once they returned, we engaged a small cart to haul us back up. Kudos to the many hardcore tourists walking the entire route, many neither young nor arguably very athletic.
Below, the Theater — accommodating 4,000 spectators
From Petra, it was several hours of driving back to the border. We had the same seamless service but now in reverse order, with a hand-off to Abdullah who escorted us to the Jordanian immigration office (as far as he could go), and then across to the Israel immigration office, and finally to driver Moshe. We were tired and hungry so I pre-arranged for Moshe to drop us at a restaurant in Eilat and we would Uber back to the hotel from there.
Ambitious to do this in one day? Defininitely. But we were so very glad to have made the trek. Next part — finishing our time in Israel.
An apt image of the sun setting over Jordan after a spectacular day
2 Responses
But please, just tell us what you learned about the Namibians!
You first 😚