Aqaba is a town right on the red sea. It has the usual Movenpick, Radisson hotel targeted towards the package tourists but it also has number of small reasonable 2-3 star hotels where you can get room for 10-12JD. The night life is not that smashing. I came here mainly to dive and to visit Wadi Rum which is about 70Km from Aqaba.

Booked a two day trip to the Wadi Rum desert

We started from Aqaba around 10.30, we arrived at the camp site where we were going to spend a night and transferred from a van to toyota 4x4 and drove around beautiful desert. Visited what T.E. Lawrence called Seven Pillars of Wisdom, couple of arch formations. On the way back each of us had opportunity to drive in the desert which was nice.

The weather itself was actually rather cool, not much wind. We returned to our camp around 4.30, then took a small walk around the camp and waited for the sunset. Must say the sunset was rather spectacular.

We had dinner around 7.00PM inside the tent. It was rather chilly, then we moved outside for some Bedouin singing. It went on till about 12.30. Slept out in the open, but since it was almost full moon couldn't really see many stars but it was nice.

In the morning went around for a walk for few hours, I was really surprised to see large number wildflowers in the desert, I never expected to see them there.

Through the night you can hear a train going through the desert, heard that there was mine somewhere near by but don't know what they mine exactly.

Returned to Aqaba around 4.30 in the evening. Booked a 2 day (4dives) at the Aqaba International Dive center. The diving in my book was certainly better than Sharm. First it was cheap -- 15JD per dive. On first day there were about 8 people diving on the entire reef. On second day count was bit up about 15. This was so much better than sharm. The beaches near diving center were really nice, they all had clean bathroom, though not all showers were working. All the dives were beach entry. Some really nice corals and eels, groper fish. Visibility was about 10-12 meters. The govt has sunk a tank and a large ship to promote diving tourism so can dive around them. Both of them are only about 6-7 year old but there is large eel inside the tank, check it out.

After Aqaba took a JETT bus to Amman, next day took a flight to Toronto via Paris ending a 10 month trip!