A Jordanian Road Trip: Destination Petra — Carry On, from Amanda Kellner Klein

Our trip to Dubai turned out to be something of a given. Once we pulled the trigger on the Emirates flights, we had friends to travel with, a place to stay and an itinerary essentially laid out for us thanks to those friends. Jordan was our wild card.

It could have been that we chose Egypt, but the pyramids were not close enough for the limited time we had for our trip-within-a-trip. Three days is quick and we were looking to conquer a region that was completely new to us. Our eyes were getting bigger than our vacation days. It could have been Oman, but it felt too close geographically; we wondered how similar the experience would be to the one we would have in the UAE.

Our FlyDubai flight landing at Queen Alia International Airport

Remember when the movie The Bucket List came out in 2008? I, like many other teenage girls of the time I’m sure, created a list of my own. My ideas at the time were centered on idealized emotions as much as visiting places themselves. “Ride on the back of a motor bike through South America,” “Run through the Ruins of Petra” and “Fall in love in Paris” lined the (many) pages of my Word document.

Well, life led me to taking far too many 20-hour-long bus rides in South America and I fell in love in New York. So when, in the reality of adulthood and ever-diminishing PTO days, we identified the possibility of a trip to Jordan, the opportunity seemed like the ideal complement for our Middle East travels. And a way for me to check one off the (now defunct, no longer totally relevant) bucket list.

Jordan offered natural wonders to Dubai’s industrial complex, thousand-year-old ruins to Dubai’s ever-changing skyline and peace and quiet to Dubai’s overwhelming 24-hour lifestyle. The perfect narrative foil, and all within a 9 day trip.

The visitor center where tickets to the city are purchased

Ever the time-optimizer, I planned for us to fly into Jordan early on Sunday morning, arriving at 9 am and to leave for our return to Dubai at 9 pm Tuesday night. This did wonders for our already stifling jet lag! Three days, two nights in total and we planned to drive ourselves to the ruins of Petra, the desert of Wadi Rum, and the Dead Sea. After an easy-enough morning flight from Dubai, the fun started the rental car airport kiosk.

I was apprehensive at the idea of driving around a country we had never been to, particularly one with tumultuous neighbors in which a wrong turn could put us in the fast lane to Syria or Iraq. Joe, however, maintained that we could manage the drive and I’m forever glad we did. The freedom of being able to go at our own pace was truly impactful; actually, we will be traveling to northern Europe this summer where we will again rent our own vehicle. That said, in advance of arriving to Queen Alia International Airport we rented an SUV with the addition of a GPS; when we got there they had no cars left but sedans and no GPS to be found.

Side bar here to tout the merits of an app called Maps.me. Discovered on our trip to Nicaragua, time and again it helped us be sure that we were headed the right direction on bumpy, sign-less local roads. This app allows the user to download the map of a selected country including roadways and public transport. It provides directions and location information on key places (gas stations, hotels, museums) without any internet. Without Maps.me the lack of GPS for our rental car would have been a disaster – in fact, the employee at the kiosk handed us a paper map of Jordan with a facial expression that said “good luck” – but with the app we had the GPS capabilities needed to feel safe. We traversed over 400 miles in a new country using the app on my phone, hooked up to the removable charger from my Away suitcase for continuous juice.

On the road, the initial Jordanian landscape offered tan sand, minimal vegetation, herds of livestock and ramshackle buildings. We would come to see that there are many distinct environmental zones of the country and the car views changed dramatically as we drove south, to include red desert and mighty grey mountains. Stop #1 on our 3-day tour was the ancient city of Petra.

The drive lasted 3 hours and in that time we were stopped no less than twice by the police. Checkpoints dot the Desert Highway and we quickly became accustomed to the process: slow down, policeman steps into the middle of the street and waves us to pull over. The rental plates and our shiny Chevy Cobalt certainly didn’t help our conspicuousness in the local terrain.

The Siq as it winds and curves towards the city

In my research for this trip I had read that the police force in Jordan was particularly friendly to Americans. The US and Jordan have long been partners as the US supports Jordan in its role as a stronghold for peace in the Middle East and has provided funding to back this up. That said, no assurance from an online article would shield me from terror when armed men in uniform approached our car for the first time. The two men gave a look inside the car and asked for Joe’s passport which I fumbled to hand to him. The policemen looked only at the cover of the passport book; at recognizing its United States label, they asked Joe where he was from. When he responded "New York" (keeping his cool, as always), they nodded, handed the passport back and wished us a nice trip.

This differed quite significantly from my past experience with roadside police stops in a foreign country, in which I was on a group trip in Peru in 2011 and we were pulled over thrice on a 4 hour long drive on the Pan-American Highway. Our driver was made to pay bribes to the police each time. I would later learn from our hired driver that the bribes were already included in the price of our ride. Talk about preparedness!

In Jordan, however, my research held true. The second time we were stopped, after the policeman collected the passport and saw its origin, he told us, “United States and Jordan, they’re like this!” placing his two index fingers side by side. “We are friends.” We got through the next two days of driving without incident.

Approaching the city of Petra by car, the highway gives way to slim city streets overlooking enormous cliffs with the brown and red rocks of the ancient city in the distance. Sure, I would have loved to have stayed at the Mövenpick Resort up the road but we were four hardworking mid-twenties travelers and wanted to avoid blowing up the budget. In reality, the Petra Guest House Hotel (~$70 USD/night) was perfect. By perfect I mean it was literally at the entrance to the historical site of Petra; you could only get closer if you slept at the site gates. With the many hours of walking and hiking that Petra requires, proximity to the entrance turned out to be a key factor in our ability to get the most out of our 1.5 days there. The fact that flaunted its Cave Bar as “the world’s oldest bar” also piqued our interest.

We arrived to Petra in the afternoon and dropped our belongings in our room after going through a metal detector. I would soon learn that almost any building (hotel, mall, etc) we entered in Jordan would require a metal detector and a level of security I’ve only seen at airports in the USA. On our drive we were close enough to see the lights of Israel and Palestine; proximity to a zone of conflict felt tangible in the increased security we encountered.

Petra entry costs 55 Jordanian Dinar (~$77 USD) for two days. If staying in Jordan for at least 3 nights, Jordan Pass is the way to go. For a fee of 70-75 JOD ($99-106 USD) the Pass includes the cost of entry to Petra, the price of the Jordanian tourist visa (40 JOD / $57 USD), and entry to many other attractions. It can be purchased online and is a benefit we certainly would have taken advantage of if we had stayed a third night.

Breif note on the Jordanian passport stamp: customs officers stamp the passport with the most enticing passport stamps I have ever seen in my 32 countries of travel. They use actual postage stamps (one orange, one yellow) which are taped into the passport, creating a colorful 3D memory of the trip.

Mid-day stretches in front of an ornate tomb

Petra is a Nabataean city carved from huge stone several thousand years ago. Entering the city is a bit of a maze; visitors must first trek down a wide dirt road (the Siq) with a few ruins built into the surrounding rocks. The road eventually turns into a path which becomes even thinner as the visitor makes their way further down the Siq. The city entrance is built this way intentionally; civilizations thrived here after centuries of nomad life because they were comfortable to put down roots knowing they had the stone canyons as protection from enemies.

The first major indication that we were in the city was the Treasury, aka Al Khazneh, probably the most recognizable symbol of the city. The passage thins to the point of just a person or two able to enter the Treasury at once so it is first seen through an opening between rocks. Carved meticulously into sandstone, this building stands tall and quiet, venerable and oblivious to the hundreds of thousands of visitors who come to see it every year.

Though our schedule was crammed with activities in Jordan, our timing for Petra turned out impeccably well. We entered around 3 pm in the afternoon on the first day as many visitors were already on their way out. On the second day we entered around 9 am, before the large crowds began forming. Day 1 involved a walk to the Treasury and a jaunt around the Nabataean tombs. The following day we walked more quickly through the Siq to the Treasury, past the tombs and up the road to the Temple. We ended the trek with the mile-long hike up to the Monastery. This was the most physically active part of the visit and we were all sweating by the end. The Monastery, in all of its grandiose beauty, was well worth the hike. I would recommend all visitors to take the time to do it.

Petra is nicknamed the Rose City thanks to the color of the sandstone used to carve its buildings. A visual aspect I wanted to maintain in these photos of the trip was how very different the colors of the city looked throughout the day. Depending on the location of the sun, the tombs and ruins appeared to range from burnt orange to white or yellow tan to faint pink.

For one of the New Wonders of the World, I would have expected more foot traffic than we came across in Petra. Of course the open areas around the Treasury and the Monastery were full of people at peak times but in the general sense I felt that we had plenty of personal time to explore the city without bumping into tour groups or distracting visitors. A pleasant surprise but I have since read that tourism in Jordan has decreased in recent years, due to unrest in the region.

There were local merchants selling their wares on the trek up to the Monastery and guides selling their knowledge of hidden routes to passersby in the main areas. I found the locals to be respectful of a “no thanks.” In fact, the merchants who lugged ice cold water up the mountain on the trail to the Monastery via donkey became an oasis and we gladly took them up on their offer. An overarching theme of our time in Jordan was the friendliness of locals to the travelers who help to keep their tourism industry critically intact.

Passing the Temple to access the hike up to the Monastary

Coming from the United States, I appreciate destinations that prove just how young our country is in the grand scheme of the planet. Petra was a faithful reminder of how far civilization has come since carving buildings into a stone canyon was a way to ensure security from other peoples and since the afterlife meant more than life itself. We thought we were seeing the homes of the Nabataeans in the rectangular caves carved into stone but in actuality these spaces were the tombs of the city, ranging in size from the that of a queen bed to the size of a mansion, depending on the status of the deceased and their rank in the ancient society.

To walk through Petra is to recognize the incredible history that Jordan has to share. Over a dinner of hummus and falafel at a spot in town, my group marveled at how much we had seen; and how long we could spend wandering the ancient city if given unlimited time.

Next Stop: the Wadi Rum desert

Visit Jordan, 2018 on Film for more on our travels throughout the country.