Jordan - Wadi Musa

Jordan
Historical Site
Author

Oliver Eaton

Published

March 24, 2023

We secured a taxi from the Wadi Rum visitors centre to Wadi Musa for 40JOD, showing up at a hostel with no booking, a capsule room (like Japan) with a double bed was available. We booked two nights.


Our main purpose in Wadi Musa was to visit the Lost City of Petra, the Jordan Pass (which is essentially a tourist visa into Jordan, purchased before entering the country) allowed us three days to visit Petra. We spent two days hiking through it and exploring.

Wadi Musa is at a high altitude, so it is much colder here compared to Aqaba & Wadi Rum. Something I found interesting is the touts here are purely for restaurants. Men stand on the street begging you to come into their restaurant and look at the menu, some even cross the road holding a menu and following you down the street. In no other place had we seen this, I’m unsure why touts that exist here are begrudged entirely to eateries. Regardless, we’ve become pretty good at ignoring them. One tactic I use is to respond with “salam alaykum” (meaning “hello”), to which they respond “alaikum salam”. For some reason, this throws them off and allows you to walk away unscathed.

Petra Day One

Brrr, it was a cold morning, we rugged up in thermal, jacket & scarf. It was forecast to rain on our second day in Petra, so we set aside the first day for a hike from Little Petra, past the Monastery, and finally to Petra which is about 14km.

Arriving at Little Petra by taxi (we later found out the shuttle bus is free 😑), we ventured through it stumbling upon a cafe overlooking a beautiful canyon landscape. Coffee here was a must! A couple cats came to hang out with us. Afterwards, the hike to the Monastery began. Few people were on the train, it wasn’t a challenging hike, mostly along a road where shuttle buses transport those incapable of hiking (lazy), a last one or two kilometre stretch of steps leads to the Monastery.

Woah, breathtaking! The Monastery is stunning. It stands alone and is probably the most isolated of Petra’s buildings. A viewpoint is situated directly across from it, we ate lunch there.

Now onwards to Petra. This part of the hike runs mainly through canyons which is really cool, a lot more people are on this part of the trail. Sadly, pop-up stores line the trail trying to sell junk jewellery and cheap Chinese crap, not once did I see someone purchase something. After a few hours, we arrived at the lost city and explored the Tombs of the Nobles, Roman Amphitheatre, High Place of Sacrifice and lastly the Treasury. The Treasury was my favourite, I can’t get over just how stunningly beautiful it is.

All up we hiked around 20km, it was a big day. I started to lose gas around 13km in, mainly because I hadn’t eaten a proper breakfast, but also due to my fitness not being the greatest struggling most on the way to the High Point of Sacrifice (the highest point in Petra). On the way home we stopped for fries and cola, a young man in the store was playing an Arabic instrument called “Oud”, I found this really fascinating. He asked if I wanted to play it, which I did poorly.


Petra Day Two

It was forecast to rain but we planned to see a few more things in Petra leaving in the morning to beat the rain. Again, it was really cold. The main thing we wanted to see was the Treasury from a high viewpoint (this is the view plastered all over Instagram). Yesterday touts were offering to take us up the short way for 10JOD, but we didn’t want to pay for it so we took the long route.

It was maybe an hour hike, nothing tremendously challenging, but few people were on this trail. At the top we arrived at a cafe that obscures the Treasury view, one must enter the cafe and purchase a drink to see the view (sneaky). We needed a coffee so it worked out well anyway. Wow! The Treasury is my favourite building in Petra and the high view makes it even more impressive.

After leaving the cafe we explored the outer-lying buildings where few others headed. It was nice having the place to ourselves. We headed home after four or so hours in Petra, just as the rain started to come.


Wrap up

Dana was our next destination, Trav scoped out a hike through a valley which looked awesome. We organised a taxi for 30JOD.

Petra was insane, probably my favourite part of the trip so far. If the pop-up stores were cleared it would be so much more pleasant. Sadly, some locals depend on hawking off cheap crappy products to tourists in order to make a living. I wish that could be fixed somehow…