Get in the water first. The Aqaba Marine Reserve protects the reef along South Beach, and the wrecks (the Cedar Pride freighter, a Lockheed TriStar, an underwater museum of 19 military vehicles) are shore entries or short boat rides. Then give a morning to the Mamluk fort, the Ayla ruins and the museum downtown, and a full day to Wadi Rum, 60 km north.
Jordan's only coastline is 27 km of the Gulf of Aqaba, and almost all of it is reef. The city behind it is a working port with a Mamluk fort at its centre, a souk two streets inland and Wadi Rum an hour north. Divers come for the wrecks. Everyone else comes for winter sun on an Arabian sea.
The reference shore reef, and you reach it by walking in. Hard and soft coral runs from a metre or two of water down to a wall, so snorkellers and divers read the same site at different depths. Go before ten, while the surface is still glassy and the day boats are somewhere else.
A 74 m freighter scuttled in 1985 on the orders of the then Crown Prince, now King Abdullah II, and laid deliberately across two reefs. She rests on her port side: the shallow rail is within an open-water diver's limits, the hull below is not. Aqaba's signature dive, and the one every centre runs.
An hour north, 721 sq km of sandstone towers and red sand, on the UNESCO list since 2011. A half-day 4x4 circuit covers the canyons, the inscriptions and the rock bridges. Stay a night in a Bedouin camp if you can: the sky is the half of Rum a day trip never sees.
Completed in 1517 under the Mamluk sultan Qansuh al-Ghuri, then a caravanserai on the pilgrim road to Mecca, then damaged in the fighting of the 1917 Arab Revolt. It is a 45-minute fort rather than an afternoon, and the light on the sandstone is best an hour before sunset.
Nineteen decommissioned vehicles sunk in 2019 in battle formation on a sand bottom: tanks, a troop carrier, an ambulance, a combat helicopter. The shallowest machines are snorkelling depth. The 54 m Lockheed TriStar went down the same year and sits between 15 and 28 m, doors removed for swim-throughs.
Founded around 650 AD under the caliph Uthman, the first Islamic city built outside the Arabian Peninsula. What survives is a walled rectangle of gates, foundations and a street grid, sitting between two beach hotels. Twenty minutes on site, and the museum up the road is what makes it legible.
Two hours each way. A day gets you the Siq, the Treasury and the Street of Facades; the Monastery wants an overnight in Wadi Musa. Leave Aqaba by six and you are through the Siq before the coaches from Amman arrive, which is the whole argument for basing yourself down here.
The house Sharif Hussein bin Ali lived in, now holding what the excavations turned up: Fatimid gold coins, Islamic ceramics, Bronze Age pieces and a Quranic inscription lifted from the city gate. One ticket usually covers the fort next door. Go here before you walk the ruins on the corniche.
The town beaches are free, busy and modest-dress; the good sand and the reef are both south. Berenice runs about 13 JD for a lounger, a pool and a snorkelling shelf, Tala Bay about 20. Come on a weekday: Friday and Saturday are the Jordanian weekend and the clubs fill by ten.
Treated wastewater turned into wetland on what the RSCN calls the world's second most important migration route, with 271 species logged. Spring and autumn passage is the reason to come. The hides look over open water, so the light goes hard by nine and the birds go quiet with it.
Nineteen vehicles sunk in battle formation in 2019, the first of them shallow.
Built in 1975, enlarged in 2011, and carrying Jordan's largest dome.
A Nabataean suburb 6 km from Petra, with rare surviving wall paintings.
Music, poetry and folk performance staged along the corniche.
Bedouin and Red Sea craft: weaving, pottery, embroidery, silverwork.
Daytime kitchens close and the corniche only wakes after sunset.
Jordan's domestic holiday. Beaches and beach clubs fill for a week.
Peak migration over the Bird Observatory, and the year's best hides.
National holiday, with the Arab Revolt flag flown down the corniche.
The bigger of the two Eids. Book beds and dives well ahead.
A half, a 10 km and relays run around the Ayla lagoons.
Jordan's second airport, 11 km north of downtown. Royal Jordanian flies from Amman in about an hour, and seasonal European charters land here in winter.
Four to five hours down the Desert Highway from Abdali station, several departures a day, arriving at the Aqaba bus station. Book ahead over the winter season.
Sailings cross to Sinai from the passenger port about 7 km south of town. Egyptian entry rules differ by nationality and by port, so check yours before you buy.
Downtown, the fort, the museum and the Ayla ruins are one walk. Yellow taxis cover South Beach and Tala Bay; agree the fare first if the meter is not running.
Red Sea fish over rice browned with caramelised onion and nuts.
Jordan's national dish: lamb in jameed yoghurt over rice and shrak.
Rice, chicken and fried aubergine in one pot, then turned upside down.
Shaved lamb or chicken in bread, the downtown late-night default.
Shredded pastry over hot cheese, drowned in syrup, eaten standing.
Whatever the port landed, split, salted and put on charcoal.
Bedouin pit roast, lamb and vegetables cooked under sand and embers.
Smoked aubergine whipped with tahini. Order it before anything else.
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