Long-exposure night photograph of Aqaba's lit shoreline reflected in the dark water of the Gulf of Aqaba.

Aqaba, Jordan

Twenty-seven kilometres of coast,
and everything behind it.

Jordan has one coastal city. It sits at the top of the Gulf of Aqaba with Egypt, Palestine and Saudi Arabia all visible from the waterfront, a marine reserve a fifteen-minute taxi ride from the venue, Wadi Rum an hour inland and Petra two hours north. That combination is the reason the conference is here.

Photo: AliAbuRas · CC BY-SA 4.0

Where you are

A city built on being the only way in.

Aqaba is Jordan’s only seaport and its only stretch of sea — about 27 kilometres of it. Roughly 95,000 people live in the city itself, more across the governorate. Since 2001 it has been run as the Aqaba Special Economic Zone, a low-tax duty-free area with its own entry regime, which is why arriving here is cheaper and simpler than arriving anywhere else in the country.

The centre is genuinely walkable. The fort, the flagpole, the museum and the Ayla ruins all sit within a kilometre or two of the corniche hotels and can be linked on foot in a free afternoon. The dive sites and the resort beaches are fifteen to twenty minutes south by taxi.

Getting here and getting in

Photograph from the International Space Station showing the Gulf of Aqaba between the Sinai Peninsula and Arabia.
The Gulf of Aqaba from orbit. Four countries meet within sight of the waterfront. Photo: NASA, Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, Johnson Space Center · Public domain

In the city

Six things worth the walk.

Aqaba has been a port for a very long time, and most of the evidence is within walking distance of the hotels.

Stone walls, towers and gateway of the Mamluk-era Aqaba Fort under a bright sky.

Mamluk, completed 1517 · Walkable

Aqaba Fort

Built under Sultan Qansuh al-Ghawri and later a Hashemite base during the 1917 Battle of Aqaba. Open Sunday to Thursday 08:00–17:00, weekends from 10:00.

The Great Arab Revolt flag flying from its mast above the Aqaba waterfront, with the city and mountains behind.

130 m, raised 2004 · Walkable

The Great Arab Revolt Flagpole

The tallest free-standing flagpole in the world from 2004 until 2008, and still among the ten tallest. It flies the flag of the 1916 Arab Revolt and is visible from three neighbouring countries. It stands beside the fort — one stop, not two.

The excavated foundations and column drums of the early Islamic city of Ayla in Aqaba, palms and mountains behind.

Early Islamic, c. 650 AD · Walkable

Ayla

A walled city 165 by 140 metres with four gates, one per compass point, founded under Caliph Uthman and abandoned by 1116 after earthquakes and Crusader raids. Excavated 1986–93, free, open air, and a fifteen-minute walk from the corniche hotels.

The stone facade and wooden doors of the Aqaba Archaeological Museum, in the house of Sharif Hussein.

In Sharif Hussein’s 1917 house · Walkable

Aqaba Archaeological Museum

Ceramics, glass, metalwork, Kufic inscriptions and coins, nearly all of it excavated from Ayla next door. Open 08:00–17:30 in May.

A glossy ibis wading in shallow water at the Aqaba Bird Observatory, its plumage iridescent green and bronze.

On the second-busiest flyway on Earth

Aqaba Bird Observatory

A half square kilometre of constructed wetland on the migration corridor between Eurasia and Africa, where over 1.5 million waterbirds pass through each year and more than 250 species have been recorded. Early May catches the tail of the spring passage.

Cones of coloured spices in wide bowls at a spice stall in the Aqaba market, with the shopkeepers behind.

Inland of the corniche · Walkable

The old souq

Spices, dates, gold, textiles and Bedouin goods, a few streets back from the water. Best in the hour before sunset, when it fills up.

The Red Sea

Reefs you walk into from the beach.

Most of Aqaba’s dive sites are shore entries along the South Beach road. No boat, no early start — which is what makes a dive possible in a gap between sessions.

157

Hard coral species recorded in the Aqaba Marine Reserve

507

Fish species recorded in the reserve

2.8km²

Aqaba Marine Reserve, protecting 27% of the coastline

22–25°C

Sea temperature in early May — a shorty wetsuit, or none

Cedar Pride

26–30 m Advanced

A Lebanese freighter, fire-damaged and deliberately scuttled in 1985. She lies on her port side about 150 m offshore, now thoroughly encrusted in hard and soft coral. The signature Aqaba dive.

Underwater Military Museum

15–28 m Open Water +

Opened in July 2019 and the first of its kind anywhere: nineteen decommissioned vehicles — a Chieftain tank, an armoured ambulance, an anti-aircraft gun, a combat helicopter — placed on the sand in battle formation.

Scuba divers swimming beneath the high-mounted wing of a submerged four-engine transport aircraft, coral on the sand below.

C-130 Hercules

16–17 m Open Water

A transport aircraft sunk in 2017, sitting flat and intact on a sand bed with the cargo hold open. Shallow enough that novice divers get the whole thing.

Photo: Enrico Strocchi · CC BY-SA 2.0

The nose of a submerged widebody airliner, its cockpit windows still glazed, with three divers on the seagrass in front of it.

The L-1011 TriStar

15–28 m Open Water +

A widebody airliner that was left standing at King Hussein International until ASEZA sank it off King Abdullah Reef in 2019. You swim up to the nose, and the cockpit windows are still in their frames.

Photo: Enrico Strocchi · CC BY-SA 2.0

A diver kneeling on the sand in front of the sunken tank at Aqaba, holding an IEEE Jordan Section pennant up to the camera.

The Tank

6 m Snorkel / Open Water

An M42 Duster — a tracked anti-aircraft vehicle retired from the Jordanian army — put on the sand by the Royal Ecological Diving Society in 1999. Shallow enough to snorkel over, and twenty-five years of coral have grown on it.

Photo: supplied by the organisers

Japanese Garden

5–18 m Snorkel / Open Water

Dense hard and soft coral on a shallow shelf, entered by walking in from the beach. The default snorkelling site, and the easiest way to see the reef with no certification at all.

Seven Sisters

8–9 m Open Water

Seven coral pinnacles in shallow water, reliable for glassfish, lionfish, scorpionfish and nudibranchs.

The reserve has rules

The Aqaba Marine Reserve was established in 1997 and runs along about 7 km of coast — 2.8 km², roughly a quarter of Jordan’s shoreline. Some coral zones are closed to entry entirely. Taking shells, coral, rock or anything living is prohibited. Beach access to the reserve itself is free.

What it costs

Two shore dives, full equipment
JOD 60
One shore dive, full equipment
JOD 35–40
Two boat dives
JOD 70–95
Discover Scuba (no certification)
JOD 40–50
Guided snorkel trip
JOD 15
Snorkel gear rental only
JOD 7
Glass-bottom boat, per boat for 15 min
from JOD 15

Prices are indicative 2025–26 operator rates in Jordanian dinars (1 JOD ≈ 1.41 USD, pegged). Treat them as planning figures and confirm when you book.

Water is 22–25 °C in early May — a shorty, or nothing. Visibility is reliably good year-round.

A diver kneeling on the sand beside the sunken tank, holding an IEEE Jordan Section pennant; the gun barrels and coral-covered tracks show behind.
Gun barrels, road wheels and tracks, all under coral Photo: supplied by the organisers
The blue IEEE Jordan Section pennant, fringed in white, hanging in the water in front of the sunken tank.
The Section’s pennant, hung in front of the tank Photo: supplied by the organisers
Two divers kneeling on the sand, holding an IEEE Jordan Section pennant between them, with the sunken tank behind.
Two divers and the pennant, with the tank behind Photo: supplied by the organisers
Two divers kneeling on the sand, one giving a thumbs-up, holding an IEEE Jordan Section pennant between them.
The pennant for the camera, at the edge of a coral outcrop Photo: supplied by the organisers
A peppered moray eel among sea grass in the Aqaba Marine Park, Jordan.
A peppered moray in the sea grass of the Aqaba Marine Park Photo: Rob Atherton (redseaexplorer.com) · CC BY 2.0
The shoreline of the Aqaba Marine Park in Jordan, with the Gulf of Aqaba beyond.
The Aqaba Marine Park shore, where the reef starts at the beach Photo: Rob Atherton (redseaexplorer.com) · CC BY 2.0

All of these were photographed in the Gulf of Aqaba. Cedar Pride, the Underwater Military Museum, the Japanese Garden and Seven Sisters have no photograph we could use — none freely licensed anywhere we could find, and none among the pictures the organisers sent — so those four are described and not pictured. We would rather leave a gap than show you somebody else’s reef.

60 km · 50–70 min

Wadi Rum

UNESCO World Heritage, 2011

74,000 hectares of sandstone and granite rising out of red sand, managed as a protected area and lived in by Bedouin communities who run everything inside it.

Private vehicles stop at Rum Village. Everything beyond is reached with a local Bedouin driver, which is the arrangement that keeps the tourism economy inside the community that lives there. Entry is JOD 5 and is covered by the Jordan Pass.

The classic half-day takes in Lawrence’s Spring, the petroglyphs in Khazali Canyon, the red dunes at Jebel Umm Ulaydiyya and the Um Fruth rock arch, which you can scramble without ropes. A full day adds the further valleys and time for tea in the shade.

Overnight is the version worth doing. Camps run from about JOD 30 per person for a shared-bathroom tent with dinner and breakfast, up to considerably more for en-suite tents and the transparent domes marketed as Martian pods. Dinner is zarb, cooked in an underground oven. After it gets dark there is effectively no light pollution.

T. E. Lawrence moved through here during the Arab Revolt of 1917–18, staging toward the capture of Aqaba. Since then it has stood in for another planet in Lawrence of Arabia, Red Planet, Prometheus, The Martian, Rogue One, Aladdin, The Rise of Skywalker and both parts of Dune.

Steep red sand dune rising below a tall weathered rock formation in Wadi Rum.
Entry
JOD 5 · included in the Jordan Pass
Two-hour jeep tour
JOD 35–55 per vehicle, up to six people
Half-day, four hours
JOD 55–75 per vehicle
Full day
JOD 80–120 per vehicle
Camel trek
JOD 15–25 per person per hour
Hot-air balloon at sunrise
JOD 130–180 per person, weather permitting
Overnight in a camp
from JOD 30 per person
Early May temperature
31–36 °C by day, 16–21 °C at night
Four-wheel-drive vehicle raising dust on a sandy track between sandstone formations in Wadi Rum.
A jeep trails dust between the valley's rock islands Photo: SinanDira · CC BY-SA 4.0
Sunlight bursting over the rim of a narrow rock canyon looking out across Wadi Rum.
Sun clears the canyon rim and floods the floor Photo: OSAMAZ1 · CC BY-SA 4.0
Close view of wind ripples in red sand along a dune ridge in Wadi Rum.
Wind leaves its handwriting across the dune crest Photo: xorge · CC BY-SA 2.0

125–133 km · about 2 hours

Petra

UNESCO World Heritage, 1985 · New7Wonders, 2007

The Nabataean capital — settled from the fourth century BC, their capital from around the second, at its height around 20,000 people, annexed by Rome in 106 AD and largely emptied after the earthquake of 363. UNESCO-listed in 1985.

From the visitor centre it is 800 m to the mouth of the Siq, then 1.2 km through the canyon itself — three to four metres wide in places, up to eighty deep — before it opens without warning on Al-Khazneh, the Treasury, 37 m of facade in a space too narrow to photograph properly.

Past that the site keeps going: the Street of Facades, a theatre cut for four thousand people, the Royal Tombs, the colonnaded street. Ad-Deir, the Monastery, is 45 m across and sits at the top of roughly 800 rock-cut steps, a climb of about an hour that most people are glad they did.

One day covers the Siq, the Treasury, the Royal Tombs and the Monastery at a brisk pace. Two days is the honest recommendation. Terrain past the Treasury is loose gravel and sand; a golf-cart shuttle runs to the Treasury and back, and horses, carriages and donkeys are available further in.

Petra by Night — a candlelit walk through the Siq with Bedouin music — runs on selected evenings and is not included in the Jordan Pass. Sources disagree on both the current price and which nights it operates, so confirm directly with the Petra Development and Tourism Region Authority before promising it to anyone.

Full frontal view of the carved rose-coloured facade of Al-Khazneh, the Treasury, at Petra.
One-day ticket
JOD 50 for visitors staying overnight in Jordan
Two days · three days
JOD 55 · JOD 60
Not staying overnight in Jordan
JOD 90 — book a Jordan hotel night and avoid this
Jordan Pass
Covers Petra plus 40 sites and the visa fee, from JOD 70
Opening hours
About 06:00–18:00 in summer; last entry two hours before close
Golf-cart shuttle
JOD 15 one way, JOD 25 return
Little Petra
8 km north, free, 45–60 minutes
The Monastery, Ad-Deir, carved into a rock face at Petra with small figures at its base for scale.
Ad-Deir sets its scale against the people below Photo: Jorge Láscar · CC BY 2.0
Row of monumental rock-cut Royal Tombs in the cliff face at Petra under a clear sky.
The Royal Tombs stand in one long row of stone Photo: Freedom's Falcon · CC BY-SA 4.0
View of Al-Khazneh framed between the narrow sandstone walls of the Siq at Petra.
The Siq parts and the Treasury steps forward Photo: Dosseman · CC BY-SA 4.0

240–270 km · 3–3.5 hours

The Dead Sea

430 m below sea level

The lowest exposed land on Earth, about ten times as salty as the ocean, and the one swim where staying upright is the hard part.

Float on your back, ten to fifteen minutes at a time, and do not put your face in it. The mineral mud is applied, left to dry, and rinsed off; resorts provide it, public beaches sell it.

Resort day passes run JOD 25–50 and include pools, towels and showers, which is the sensible option for a group. Do not shave for a day beforehand, wear something on your feet — the salt crystallises sharp — and rinse in fresh water afterwards.

Sun setting over the Dead Sea with the far shore hills in silhouette and orange cloud above.
Elevation
≈ 430 m below sea level
Salinity
About 34% — roughly ten times seawater
Resort day pass
JOD 25–50
Public beach
JOD 20–25
Line of camels with riders casting long shadows on desert sand in Wadi Rum.
Camels stretch their shadows across open sand Photo: John Romano D'Orazio · CC BY-SA 4.0
Bedouin men in traditional dress seated around an open fire inside a tent at night in Wadi Rum.
Talk gathers round the fire once the heat leaves Photo: twiga-swala · CC BY-SA 2.0
Rock arch high on a sandstone massif looking out over the valley floor of Wadi Rum.
The arch frames a valley from its high ledge Photo: Niels Elgaard Larsen · CC BY-SA 4.0
Sunlit sandstone walls of the Siq canyon at Petra narrowing above two distant walkers.
Light falls in a single seam down the gorge Photo: Vyacheslav Argenberg · CC BY 4.0
Al-Khazneh, the Treasury at Petra, lit red by hundreds of candles during Petra by Night.
Candlelight redraws the Treasury for a few hours Photo: Mustafa Waad Saeed · CC BY-SA 4.0
Bedouin camp of long black goat-hair tents beneath a sandstone cliff in Wadi Rum.
Black goat-hair tents pitched beneath a red cliff Photo: Jumilla · CC BY 2.0

What to eat

Order these.

Aqaba is a fishing port with a Bedouin hinterland, and the food follows from both: the sea on one side, the desert on the other, and a table that keeps filling up whether or not you asked for more.

Sayadieh — a whole baked fish served over spiced rice with fried onions.

The coast’s own

Sayadieh صيّادية

Aqaba’s own dish, and the name means the fisherman’s. Red Sea fish over rice browned with caramelised onion, finished with almonds and a tahini-and-lemon sauce. Order it at the seafood houses a street back from the corniche.

A large communal tray of mansaf — lamb over rice with jameed — set out to share.

The national dish

Mansaf منسف

Lamb cooked in jameed — fermented dried yoghurt, reconstituted — over rice and shrak bread. It arrives on one tray for the whole table and is eaten together, traditionally with the right hand. If somebody invites you to mansaf, that is not a meal, it is a welcome.

A tiered zarb rack lifted out of the sand oven, lamb on the top tier over tomatoes, potatoes and a tray of rice below.

Wadi Rum, after dark

Zarb زرب

Bedouin cooking in the literal sense: lamb, vegetables and rice stacked on a tiered rack, lowered into a pit of coals in the sand, sealed, and left for hours. Every Wadi Rum camp does it, and the moment the rack comes up out of the sand is the point of the evening.

A plate of maqluba - rice, aubergine and chicken turned out of the pot upside down - with yoghurt and salad beside it.

Turned out at the table

Maqluba مقلوبة

Rice, fried aubergine and chicken or lamb layered in one pot and cooked together, then the whole pot inverted onto a platter — maqluba means upside-down. Served with yoghurt and a chopped salad.

A plate of hummus dressed with olive oil and parsley.

Breakfast, lunch, or midnight

Hummus and the mezze table حُمّص ومازة

Hummus, fuul, mutabbal, falafel, fresh bread and small salads, ordered by the tableful rather than by the plate. Breakfast in Jordan looks like this, and so does the meal at eleven at night.

Slice of knafeh khishnah pastry with melted sheep's milk cheese, syrup and crushed pistachio.

Eat it hot

Knafeh كنافة

Shredded pastry over molten white cheese, soaked in syrup and scattered with pistachio, cut from a tray the size of a table. It is eaten standing up, hot, and it is worth the queue.

Bedouin man in a red keffiyeh crouching to make tea over an open fire on desert sand in Wadi Rum.

Refuse twice, then accept

Coffee and tea قهوة وشاي

Arabic coffee with cardamom in a small handleless cup, and sweet tea with mint or sage, arrive constantly and are not billed. Custom is to decline politely once or twice before accepting; shaking the cup side to side is how you signal you have had enough.

If you add days

The rest of the country.

These are not day trips from Aqaba — Jerash and Amman are four hours north, and eight hours of driving is not a day out. They are what to do with the days before the conference or the days after it. The Jordan Pass covers Jerash and the Amman Citadel among more than forty sites.

Colonnaded oval forum with a paved stone floor at the Roman ruins of Jerash, Jordan.

About 4 hours north of Aqaba

Jerash

A Roman provincial city that was buried in sand for centuries and came out of it largely intact: the oval plaza with its ring of columns, a colonnaded cardo still showing chariot ruts, two theatres, the Temple of Artemis and Hadrian’s Arch. It is usually reached from Amman, an hour further north.

Amman skyline with lit high-rise towers at dusk under a violet and orange sky.

About 4 hours by road, or an hour by air

Amman

The capital, and where most international connections land. The Citadel sits on the highest hill with the Temple of Hercules and the Umayyad palace on it; the Roman theatre is cut into the hillside below and still seats six thousand. Rainbow Street and Jabal Amman are where the city eats in the evening, and Souk Jara runs there on summer Fridays.

Craft stalls selling textiles, instruments and souvenirs at the Souk Jara street market in Amman.
Souk Jara stacks colour against old Amman stone Photo: Producer · CC BY-SA 3.0
Layered sandstone cliffs and a deep valley in the Dana Biosphere Reserve, Jordan.

About 2.5 hours north of Aqaba

Dana Biosphere Reserve

Jordan’s largest nature reserve, run by the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature, dropping from highlands at 1,500 m down to the desert floor across four biogeographic zones in one walk. Trails run from an hour to a full day, and the village guesthouse at the rim is the reason to stay the night.

Check the Jordan Pass site list and current prices before you buy — it has to be bought before you arrive in Jordan.

Where to eat

44 kitchens inside a kilometre.

Seafood houses, mezze places, bakeries and coffee, mostly in the few streets between the university and the water. Sorted by distance, not by anyone's opinion — this is OpenStreetMap's data, and it carries no ratings.

A spread of dishes on a table at a restaurant in Ayla Oasis, Aqaba.
A table laid at Ayla Oasis, on the Aqaba waterfront Photo: Ghaydaa.s · CC BY 4.0
Distance from the venue

Showing 69 of 69

OpenStreetMap is mapped by volunteers, so this is not a complete list and nothing here is a recommendation — check opening hours and book directly. OpenStreetMap data, as it stood on . Hotel and restaurant data from OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0.

The old souq

Go in the hour before sunset.

A few streets back from the corniche, the shops open onto the pavement and stay open late. Spices by the scoop, dates, gold, cloth, and the coffee grinder running at the corner. Prices are asked and answered — that exchange is the point, and it is done pleasantly or not at all.

Cones of coloured spices in wide bowls at a spice stall in the Aqaba market, with the shopkeepers behind.
A spice stall in the Aqaba souq — sumac, zaatar, baharat, by the scoop Photo: David Stanley · CC BY 2.0
A lane in the Aqaba market district after dark, shopfronts lit on both sides and people walking between them.
The souq keeps its own hours — this is nine in the evening Photo: Davide Mauro · CC BY-SA 4.0
A shaded pavement in the Aqaba shopping quarter, housewares and basketware set out in front of the shops.
Housewares on the pavement in the shopping quarter, a street back from the sea Photo: Jean Housen · CC BY-SA 3.0

How to fit it in

Three hours, one day, or two more.

You are here to work. These are built around the free time a three-day conference actually leaves you.

01

Three hours between sessions

On foot, from the corniche

  1. Walk to the fort, the flagpole and the archaeological museum — they are adjacent, and an hour covers all three.
  2. Fifteen minutes further to the Ayla ruins. Free, open, and usually empty.
  3. Coffee and knafeh on the corniche on the way back.

Divers: one shore dive at the Japanese Garden, JOD 35–40, back inside two and a half hours door to door.

02

One full free day

In and on the water

  1. 07:30 — south to the dive centres. Two shore dives, Cedar Pride and the Underwater Military Museum, JOD 60 with full kit, back by one.
  2. Lunch at Berenice or Tala Bay on a day pass, JOD 13–20.
  3. 16:00 — the old souq.
  4. 18:30 — a sunset cruise, about JOD 180 for a boat of six, which is JOD 30 each.
  5. Dinner: sayadieh on the corniche.

Non-divers: a glass-bottom boat is JOD 15 for the boat, and the Bird Observatory is best first thing in the morning.

03

Two days on the end

The reason to fly into Aqaba

  1. Day one — an hour to Wadi Rum, an afternoon 4x4 tour, and a night in a Bedouin camp.
  2. Day two — two hours on to Petra, a full day at the Siq and the Treasury.
  3. Back to Aqaba that evening, or onward to Amman to fly out.

The Aqaba–Wadi Rum–Petra triangle is why the conference is worth extending. Nowhere else in Jordan puts all three inside a two-hour radius.

Prices are indicative 2025–26 operator rates in Jordanian dinars (1 JOD ≈ 1.41 USD, pegged). Treat them as planning figures and confirm when you book.

Pink and orange sunset sky over the Gulf of Aqaba with ships silhouetted on the water and a palm frond above.

5–7 May 2027

Come for the conference. Stay for the rest of it.

Flying into Aqaba and out of Aqaba means no visa fee at all. Two extra days covers Wadi Rum and Petra properly. The travel page has the visa mechanics, the routes and the practicalities.

Travel and visas Register