Driving to Petra:
We got up early in the morning in our Airbnb at Kerak, after a quick breakfast we headed to Wadi Musa. If you’d like to read about what we’ve been up to in Kerak, please read this post.
Petra is located south of Kerak in the region called Ma’an. To get there, we could find our way to King Highway and drive on the highway or take the back roads and stop in small towns and villages on our way. We had a whole day and only 2-3 hours drive, so we took the back roads option.
The main plan was to stop at the Danaa reserve area and go for a short trek in its great Canyon. After passing Wadi Mujib on the day one, and seeing its visitor center, we thought that Danaa reserve would be the same. Somewhere obvious on the main road with a big visitor center and a car park so I didn’t spend that much time before hand to investigate more. We got on top of the hill on the windy road and saw a Danaa reserve lookout sign. We stopped and had a look at the valley for a while. It looked too far and too down comparing to where we where but still had a confidence that the main road takes us there.
Long story short, we tried few exits with Danaa reserve sign on them and none of them took us anywhere and we return to the main road, then we finally got to the road sign to Danaa village. Cute village mainly with ecolodge hotels and lots of home stay options. Looked like it was a start point for visiting the area but again there was no map, no sign and no visitor center. We tried to start walking the track as we’ve seen few guided tours walking toward the valley but after half an hour walking we decided to give up and return to our car as the track was mainly a gravel road downhill probably for another hour before getting to the start of the track and didn’t worth it to try for us on a hot day with another probably two to three hour up hill climbing on the way back. So I guess, if you want to really visit danaa reserve, plan ahead or maybe plan a guide because it didn’t look that easy to explore, at least for us.
We got back to the main road and drove through massive wind farms and olive farms before getting to Wadi Musa.
Arriving at Petra! Where to Stay?
The township that Petra is located in, is called Wadi Musa. To be honest, I don’t think that it was more than a small village before Petra was discovered and opened for tourists so there’s not much in the town. There’s one main road, packed with restaurants and souvenir shops, always packed with cars, heading to the main entrance of Petra and the town main bus station. All the high end hotels are located right in front of Petra entrance and you can even get Movenpick ice cream from Movenpick hotel there on a hot day walking back from the Petra!
Before visiting Jordan, I tried to look at some alternative options to stay, close to Petra rather than staying in Wadi Musa to experience something different and at the same time experience local life as well.
One of the most interesting options was staying in one of the caves in the mountains overlooking Petra and walk from the back tracks to visit Petra. You can even find these basic caves on Airbnb!!! The more reliable cave stays were all fully booked and the only available ones had some contradictory reviews so we decided to leave that option.
Then I started to look at Airbnb options within half an hour to an hour drive from Petra and managed to find some interesting options but again they were fully booked or too expensive! Finally I found what we were looking for!! A Bedouin and A Dane.
An amazing Airbnb stay in Umm Sayhoun, 5 minutes drive up in the mountain from Wadi Musa.
Our BnB Experience:
Our BnB was exactly what I was hoping for. Tine is a danish lady lived in Egypt for a long time and married to a local Bedouin from the Petra region hosted us in Umm Sayhoun. She was amazing and gave us some some interesting and extremely useful tips on how to visit Petra in two days based on our interests and we definitely couldn’t enjoy our visit as much as we did, without her tips. Apart from that, her house was amazing, very basic but extremely convenient and tastefully decorated. She kindly allowed us to do all our laundry there as well. I’ve changed our plans for few days to manage our booking with Tine but it did definitely worth it.
She was making handmade soaps from her home grown Aloe Vera plants and also had amazing Camel wool scarves with detailed embroidery all over them. She said that they are all old and she gets them from the old locals and wash them before selling. They are extremely versatile and I’m super happy to have one, way better than all synthetic common scarves that are sold in Souvenir shops!!! An authentic piece that I can use over and over again!
Umm Sayhoun Experience:
A lively bedouin village populated by 3500 bedouins from the Albdoul tribe. 500 years ago they migrated from Yemen moving slowly up north until they founded the lost city of Petra where they settled down. They shepherded their goats and made homes of the old Nabateans tombs and caves until the Jordanian authorities in 1985 built this village for them located on a hill overlooking Petra (From A Bedouin And a Dine AirBnB page) and forced them to move to set up the site for thourists.
Umm Sayhoun is the perfect spot to witness how locals live and work around Petra. The main source of income in the area is tourism and all the adults and also kids in the village work in Petra from early in the morning till sunset. The village becomes live after everyone is coming back to village.
We still had two hours to sunset so we went to Wadi Musa to check Petra entry for the next day and east some dinner. Options are limited in the village and we asked locals for the best option in town before leaving. We also went to visit Petra museum as per Tine’s suggestion. Entry to museum is free and it’s located at the main entrance to Petra. It’s possible to visit it on the way back from Petra if you have any energy left 😉
We got back to village right in time to watch the bedouin life in action.
We sat and enjoyed the sunset from Umm Sayhoun overlooking Wadi Musa and returned back to our BnB to arrange tomorrows plans before going to bed. In the next post, I’ll explain our full Petra visit experience over the course of two days 🙂
