Petra Airport Guide: Transfers, Lounges & Layover Tips — Trip Planner

What first-timers get wrong in Petra

Buy the Jordan Pass online before you fly. At 70 to 80 dinars depending on how many Petra days you want, it bundles forty-odd sites and waives the visa fee provided you stay at least two nights. Arriving without it, and without an overnight in Jordan, pushes the Petra ticket to 90 dinars. The short horse ride from the gate is included in your ticket; the handler's tip demand is not.

What things cost in Petra

Entry is 50 dinars for one day, 55 for two and 60 for three if you sleep in Jordan; day-trippers who do not sleep here pay 90. The Jordan Pass at 70 to 80 covers all of that plus the visa fee. Petra by Night is a separate ticket around 17. A mansaf dinner in Wadi Musa runs 8 to 15, and the JETT coach from Amman sits in the low teens.

What to eat in Petra

Wadi Musa, the town above the gate, is where you eat, and the list is short. Mansaf, lamb cooked in fermented dried yoghurt called jameed and served over rice, is the one dish to order at least once. Bedouin camps toward Wadi Rum do zarb, meat buried and baked in a sand pit. Inside the park, stalls sell sage tea at captive-audience prices. Petra Kitchen runs evening classes.

Petra with kids, realistically

Under-twelves enter free, which helps, but the walking does not: two kilometres of Siq before the Treasury appears, and roughly eight kilometres round if you add the Monastery steps. Past the visitor centre the surface turns to gravel and then bare rock, so a carrier beats wheels. Shade essentially runs out once you leave the gorge. Donkey handlers press rides on tired children very insistently.

When the weather turns in Petra

Rain closes Petra, and rightly, because the Siq is a flash-flood channel, which is exactly why the Nabataeans cut a diversion tunnel at its mouth. The authority shuts the gorge on a forecast, so a wet morning may simply cancel your day rather than dampen it. Wadi Musa sits above a thousand metres and can snow in January. The free museum and a Turkish bath are what remain.

When to go to Petra

The month to avoid is January — around 13°C (55°F) with roughly 8 rain days. Prices and crowds track the weather here: May is the sweet spot, January the month most people skip.

Pack for peak season: Summer clothes, plus one light layer for air-con and evenings, High-SPF sunscreen, sunglasses, and a refillable water bottle, Comfortable walking shoes — every guide on this site assumes you'll use them.