Wadi Rum and Petra Tour from Aqaba Port - Group Day Trip

Two of Jordan's great landscapes in a single day, both within reach of the cruise port.

This Wadi Rum and Petra tour from Aqaba opens with the Nabataean capital. Collected at the cruise exit door, you'll travel ninety minutes north to Petra, founded around the 6th century BC by a people who built a trading empire on the incense route and carved an entire city into rose-red sandstone.

You'll walk the Siq — a 1,200-metre gorge with walls rising more than 80 metres overhead — to the moment it opens onto the Treasury. Your local guide covers this stretch with you, explaining how it was cut and what the carvings mean.

After lunch at a local restaurant, you head into Wadi Rum, the protected desert that Lawrence of Arabia called "vast, echoing and god-like." A 4x4 jeep drive takes you among the canyons, coloured dunes and cliffs, past rock inscriptions left by travellers thousands of years ago.

Around ten hours, port to port, in a small group rather than a coach.

A note on pacing: this is a full day with roughly five hours of driving and jeep time built in. If you'd rather spend longer at Petra itself, our Petra-only day trip gives you the same site at an unhurried pace. If the desert is what draws you, our Wadi Rum tour is shorter and easier on the legs.