Given you're leaving tomorrow I'm probably a bit late here, but having just spent eight days in Jordan I'll give it a crack anyway.
It was awesome. In the literal not surfer dude meaning of the word, and I could write a small book on my adventures. Half the time I was travelling solo, the other half with an old uni friend who lives there - we met up for the first time in two decades last year when I was on a stopover in Doha, and since then he's been badgering me to come visit. So glad I caved.
Echoing
@jase05 above, I'd recommend hiring a car. You could drive down from Amman on the Dead Sea Highway, spend a night at a resort there, then continue on to Petra maybe via Saladin's castle at Karak, spend two or three nights at Petra/Wadi Musa depending on how much you like walking/hiking, then onto Wadi Rum for a night, then drive back up to Amman. Or if you like diving go on down to Aqaba before driving back up.
Depending on how long you have you could then go touring the desert castles to the east or head up to the northwest.
Jordan isn't very big so very doable by car. Wadi Rum back to Amman took me about five hours with a couple of detours. Just don't drive in Amman itself, it's terrifying - get taxis or Ubers.
Everywhere else is fine. There isn't a lot of public transport apart from the Jett buses (sort of business class coaches like they use in south america), so if you're not driving your other option is to hire a car and a driver, depending on your inclination and budget. It's not that expensive, probably about double the cost of hiring your own car depending what model you get, but I think you see a lot more from the front of the car than the back, and I'm big on going your own way. In somewhere like Jordan that's part of the fun - all the guidebooks say the Desert Highway is boring but I loved it.
I hired my car from Monte Carlo Car Rental (
www.montecar.com), a local company rather than an international one, based on their glowing reviews. If you look them up you'll see their latest glowing review from me.
Driving
General notes on driving as a tourist in Jordan (I put most of these in my review too):
- make sure you read up on the speed humps. They're everywhere. I did, and had no problems because I was on the lookout and expecting them. But a lot aren't signed, or the sign helpfully comes after the speed hump, and the warning rumble strip is right in front of the hump so no use at all. General rule: if there are buildings there will be speed humps
- get a car with Carplay/Android Auto, get a data esim from someone like Nomad (getnomad.app), use Google Maps. Just be aware that while the routes and distances on Google are right, the times are wrong - it will take longer
- lanes are optional. Very. And the hard shoulder is a lane.
- two headlights are a luxury.
- tail-lights are optional. Or white not red, which can be confusing if driving at night. Everything I read said don't drive at night, but I arrived in the evening and wasn't going to waste a precious night in an airport hotel, so I did, and had no problems. I'm used to outback driving at night though, where you come across a lot of the same issues with headlights and tail-lights, and unlike the outback they don't have giant road trains overtaking you at 130kph. Also (slightly disappointingly) I didn't almost hit any camels, unlike outside Mount Isa. Although there are a lot of goat herds.
- also a lot of police checkpoints, which they have instead of highway patrol. All the police were extremely friendly, especially if you try to speak Arabic. One who was the spit of Saddam in his beret and mo even made a heart symbol when I said I was from Australia. Mostly when they saw I was a tourist in a rental they just waved me on by.
On that last point: I did half a
Pimsleur course in beginners international Arabic. I never needed it, but the effort broke down doors everywhere. I always try to learn something of the language before I go somewhere, and it always pays off, even if it's just two lessons. Plus I bought the damn family all access package so I'm damn well going to use it.
General Safety
It's completely safe. Jordanians are exceptionally friendly and hospitality is ingrained in their culture. I had a few children confused that I wasn't muslim due to the arabic (I had very limited vocabulary but Pimsleur is great for accent and pronunciation). Just dress conservatively if not in Petra, Wadi Rum or the Dead Sea. Taxi drivers in Amman will try to rip you off by going off the meter but seeing as you're from Melbourne you'll be used to them doing that on the meter anyway, and in any case the amounts are negligible. And in Amman you can use Uber.
I did have a couple of people want to know where I was from in a what might have been a slightly less-friendly-than-usual way. I look a bit like a biker (albeit an illusion shattered as soon as I open my mouth), and most people can't tell the difference between an Australian jackaroo hat and an American cowboy one, so thought there might be a bit of anti-American sentiment at the moment with what's going on "west of the Jordan" right now. Jordanians generally are very pro-American since there are something like a million Jordanians living overseas (10% of the population) and a high proportion of that is in the USA; there are "secret" American air force bases in the country (my friend pointed one out as we drove past); but against that as well as what's gone on and is going on next door, 20,000 people in Jordan lost their jobs last month with the abolition of USAID. However my friend, who's an ook, said it's more the brits who are on the nose at the moment - partly the complicated history (cf. Lawrence of Arabia, and those suspiciously straight line borders on the map), partly the UK currently sending arms to Israel. Either way, they all seem to love Australia and Australians so you'll be right.
Dead Sea
Don't reckon you need more than a night, once you've floated around and smeared yourself in mud for a bit there's not that much to do. The "beaches" are more rocks than sand, as sadly it's dropping by over a meter a year. Which leads to confusing signs on the way down "
You are now at the lowest point on earth - 425 metres" -> "
You are now at the lowest point on earth - 430 metres" -> "
You are now at the lowest point on earth - 435 metres".
You can only access the Dead Sea via a hotel resort. You don't have to stay, but you still have to pay. I went to the Movenpick, which was the best designed modern hotel I have ever visited. I work in film (hence the reason I can jaunt off on international trips at short notice, it's not the most consistent employment), it was like a megabudget film set idea of a luxury hotel, except without a bunch of burly men in beanies sneaking a fa_ behind the flats. It's 25JOD to access the hotel if you're not a guest, and a further 30JOD to access the beach which I somehow got out of paying due to a card terminal problem, so if you knock 55JOD off the price of a night you're only looking at somewhere around 100JOD. The Marriott, Crowne Plaza and Hilton are all around the same price depending on the night and all operate on the same principle; the really
really flash one is the Kempinski where the Russians helicopter in from Amman. Or did, more on that in a bit. Point being, if you're going to splash out, this is the place to do it. From what I saw of the Crowne Plaza and Hilton, the Movenpick is better. If I go again I'd stay there.
Petra/Wadi Musa
Wadi Musa is the modern tourist town, Petra the ancient Nabataean city, now the Petra Archaeological Park. You can do a day trip from Amman, but you'll spend most of that on a bus or in a car. Stay at least one night, ideally three, depending on how much you like walking and hiking. The Mariott is the flashest hotel but it's 8km out of town. Flashest in town is probably the Movenpick. Best mid-range the Petra Moon. I stayed at the Petra Guest House, which is actually inside the archaeological park, has the famous Cave Bar (I've drunk in an awful lot of bars but never before in one that's two thousand years old), and would normally be outside my budget, but I found a great deal on Agoda because...
Crowds
...there was no one there. I'd expected it to be over-run with tourists, as it was for
@jase05 above. But Petra was virtually empty. I was there at the end of Ramadan, and at first thought it was down to that - which it was, partly. Also partly off-season. But mostly it's the war next door. It hasn't and won't spill over into Jordan, but it has put off a lot of tourists from coming, especially north americans. And a lot of Europeans aren't travelling right now due to cost-of-living (what we've experienced in Australia is nothing on what they've experienced in Europe) and general uncertainty. And due to that other war the Russians aren't coming either (although Dubai's full of them, the ones who had the money to get out). Great for me, great for you, terrible for the Jordanians. Especially the Bedoul beduoin tribe who live in Petra.
My first day there I did all the usual tricks to avoid the spruikers and stallholders. After learning a little more, the next two days I bought a 1JOD cup of tea or bedouin coffee from every stall I came across. The Petra ticket is expensive - but they don't see any of that money. Most of them lost their homes, they can't farm anymore, they depend utterly on tourists, and there aren't any. When I did the back door hike from Little Petra to the Monastery, I was the only person that day who did.
On that - if you want to go to the Monastery, Petra's most spectacular site, the back door's the way to go. The main path is very very long and very very steep, it did my knees in just coming down. If you have more than a day, head out to Little Petra (free shuttle buses every half hour from behind the visitor centre), then when done there pay a tout for a ride to the start of the back door trail. There are official government trucks which take you for 5JOD, but they only leave when full. I decided I'd start walking as I wanted to see the neolithic ruins at Bayda, then jump on the truck and pay my 5JOD when it passed me. It never did.
Oh yeah, back to Petra. It's enormous, and you'll be doing an awful lot of walking. The high spots are the best, but you need a level of fitness for that. A day is enough to see the main sites and sights if you're not a walker, but you won't get to the Monastery unless you're doing dusk til dawn. Two days should be good, three will be leisurely.
Wadi Rum
Comfortable three hours drive from Wadi Musa. You can't go in on your own, you need a guide or a tour. You've seen it before - in Lawrence of Arabia/Star Wars/Dune/The Martian - but that doesn't make it any less breathtaking.
There are a lot of options for hiking, camping and glamping. Do your research and pick wisely though.
This very helpful blog post informed my choices:
Wadi Rum Tours: how to avoid the mistakes we made — Walk My World
Driving out from Wadi Rum village passed what seemed like countless tourist camps nestled up against the cliffs, where you're in a tent but with a bed and electricity, and which I imagine would light up the hills so much you'd never see the stars. They drop off pretty quickly, but I'm glad I wasn't in one of them.
At the luxury end of the scale there are rather groovy moon camps, like this:
Luxotel Wadi Rum
My uni friend initially pointed me there, until it was clarified that as I have been determinedly downwardly mobile in the decades since our original acquaintance our financial circumstances differ somewhat, and in any case I'm more accustomed to a swag.
I ended up right at the bottom of Wadi Rum, hour and a half or so in, camping out under the stars next to the goats and camels, after a hike up Jordan's highest mountain Jebel Um Ad Dami (something like the Mountain of the Mother of Blood - I found that out
after I came down) down on the border with Saudi Arabia (at the top of which I took a panoramic 360° video spanning Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Egypt - marred only by the soundtrack of a middle-aged man who had clearly vastly overestimated his abilities and was two wheezes away from a coronary. But which I'm now claiming as a Darth Vader star wars callback).
I went with this mob:
Wadi Rum Desert Eyes.
Can't recommend them highly enough, I was meant to be leaving their reviews tonight but got rather sidetracked here. Anyway, moving on.
The Northwest
I'm flagging a bit here, seems I am writing that small book after all, but the north-west is different again. It's spring in Jordan right now, so about the only time of the year anything looks green, with pockets of wild flowers à la the outback after rain. The northwest is hills of terraced olive groves and bits of what remains of the forests that once covered half the country, you can get a sense of how this (or the place next door) was once the land of milk and honey.
If you're not ruined out, the Roman city of Jerash is something else. Like Petra eventually destroyed by an earthquake, but like Petra has survived since then because for most of the intervening period no one's lived there, until the Circassians got dumped there byt the Ottomans at the end of the nineteenth century after being kicked out of their homeland by the Russians - Jordanian history is *very* complicated.
The East
Lots of castles in the desert and stuff.. okay, I'm done, have to go to bed now. PM me if you want any more info on anything.
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