Aqaba at the Red Sea

Princess Jasmine on the jet skis with her dad.
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We had a three-day Labor Day weekend, so we decided to go down to the Red Sea. We left right after school on Thursday, and took the Desert Highway down. It was pretty boring, just rocks and dirt and trucks. The only interesting thing was a wedding procession, apparently the groom’s family was taking the bride back to Saudi Arabia. All the cars were flying the Jordanian flag and honking their horns, it was quite a show.

We finally wound our way through the mountains, we got a glimpse of the beauty of Wadi Rum but left that for another time, and saw the Red Sea. I was so excited that I was finally going to set my feet into a part of the Indian Ocean for the first time – a new ocean! We stayed at the Movenpick, which is a wonderful resort with every luxury and fun activity you can imagine but no reefs. We dove immediately into the pool, then cleaned up and had dinner at their Italian restaurant. Very good food, excellent service.

colorful coral reefs

Eagle on the jet skis.
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The next morning we were up early and had a great breakfast buffet and then headed down the coast which is incredible, its just desolate rocky mountains abruptly ending up at the crystal blue water. We stopped at a dive club (we thought it was the Royal Dive Club, but we were mistaken!) and bought snorkeling equipment. All of the people were staring so much at us, its like they had never seen women in western swimsuits before! We were quite uncomfortable, so we got a day pass to a beach club, Club Murjan which had a pool, changing room, lockers, and snack bar. The reefs were quite beautiful, much more alive than in Kaui, and lots of colorful coral. But the beach entry was quite rocky and there was a lot of broken glass and trash. And all those stares!

Bathing beauties
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We dove several times, then went back to Movenpick for the world’s most scrumptious ice cream sundaes. Really don’t pass them up, they’re incredible. We swam some more, napped a little, then went out to dinner.

We got so lucky we found Floka’s next to Movenpick. They have a table full of perfectly fresh fish of many varieties, we choose a small fish called Sultani to have fried whole, and parrotfish sautéed with garlic butter and cilantro. This was some of the most excellent seafood I’ve had in my life. Also they had some very fresh salads, faytoush, tabbouleh, and a local version of baba ghanoush. All for about $30 for four people.

The drive down
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After dinner we walked around and encountered another wedding party, this one had about twenty cars driving around town honking, they passed us three times, then they went to the Movenpick and set off fireworks. Very loud.

The next morning breakfast buffet again and off to the Marine Science Center’s aquarium. Really you have to go there to appreciate and understand what you’re seeing on the reef. They told us that we had not gone to the Royal Diving Center, so we headed off south again and found an even better spot – the RDC!

View from Movenpick room
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They have a wonderful beach club, snack bar, and a hotel where we’ll be staying on our next trip down. You enter the reef by going out on a pier and walking down the steps, directly onto the reef. The coral was incredible, chartreuse green, fluorescent blue, purples and pinks. There were a million fish, hundreds of species, some of which we started to recognize from the aquarium. We dove and swam and relaxed for a great morning. Then we had to go back.

We took the western route home, through Wadi Araba and the Dead Sea area. This was somewhat more interesting, there’s extensive dunes of reddish sand, and desert pavement, and then the Dead Sea. And home to dinner prepared by Josie, we gave her our dirty laundry as a present (we’re terrible).

Beach at Royal Diving Club
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We didn't have an underwater camera, so we've downloaded some images from the internet to show you some of the things we saw underwater.

We went back to Aqaba at the end of September, several of the girls' friends from school came down and they had a wonderful time, jet-skiing and inner tubing and hanging out with the boys!