An unique experience to visit Petra. A very old and very well preserved historical place. Petra was a very important city of the famous Silk Road. One may have a precise idea how the people leave and how the habitants manage the caravanas on the way to China. It is important to bring water and to be prepared to walk 2.5 miles - both ways. It is worthwhile.
It’s a private tour “Petra and Little Petra Day Trip from Aqaba, with Aqaba Port Transfer”, booked directly with Viator, and serviced by the local tour operator “Zaid Tours and Travel”.
The tour started ok. The young driver, Ahmad Nazzai, met our party of four, two couples, at the port, and transported us in a Hyundai van to Petra. But he didn’t know the tour also included the tour Little Petra, and horse rides before “Siq”, the gorge into Petra. He called his office and confirmed. We met an older tour guide, also named Ahmad, at the ticketing area for Petra, and then went to the horse riding platform and got on 3 small horses; one person didn’t want to ride. There’s no formal arrangement between Zaid Tours and horse-boys (men). One horse-boy demanded $25 for tip from the wife of one couple, and wouldn’t slow down when he didn’t hear the tip agreement. It’s a dangerous ride for her. Two other horse-boys were more friendly.
The tour guide indicated that there would be horse rides when we came back from Petra, but there was no such arrangement. The tour guide was pretty bad, just walked a good distance ahead of us, didn’t care that we were taking pictures of this amazing gorge, and didn’t provide much information about the artifacts that guides of other tour groups were providing. At the end of the gorge, we saw the famous temple facade, and took many pictures. It’s quite hot. The guide didn’t show much interest of going beyond, and so we let him go.
We walked back without realizing it’s going uphill and the sun directly overhead. It’s probably better to ride an electric golf cart, $25 per person. We went back to the pre-arranged area and texted the driver for our next stop, Little Petra. We were surprised to find out that we wouldn’t have a tour guide for Little Petra, and the driver volunteered to step in as the guide. But things went bad to worst. The local hustlers demanded about $40 per person for guiding and wouldn’t allow the driver to accompany us. We didn’t feel safe to go with those hustlers and decided to skip Little Petra and just returned to Aqaba. The driver called his office for help and then told us that his office couldn’t help. We were quite disappointed about this entire tour. The driver was however quite pleasant and we tipped him at the port and wish him Happy Ramadan.
Contacted Viator the next day and reported the incident at Little Petra, but only received only that “we understand your fear of safety and disappointment”, and nothing else.