Red Sea Crossing into Jordan

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Next we drove to the Red Sea and bid adieu to our Egyptian tour host, Tommy, and Egyptian guide, Yassir, who were afraid they would drown when we walked across the sea on dry ground.

As it turned out, we had to use a boat, so they could have made it, but we had another guide waiting for us on the Jordanian shore. Moses and the Israelites walked across the Red Sea and when Pharaoh’s army tried to follow, they did drown.

It’s not known exactly where the children of Israel crossed the sea, but it was definitely not on a diesel-powered ferry boat like ours.

We landed at Aqaba at the southern tip of Jordan where three countries come together (Egypt, Israel and Jordan) at the northern tip of the Gulf of Aqaba a part of the Red Sea and we met our Jordanian guide, Aladin. The other northern pointy part of the Red Sea is at the northern end of the Gulf of Suez. It’s from there that the Suez Canal was dug northward to access the Mediterranean Sea.

Jordan has only a few miles of coastline on the Red Sea. The rest of the western shore of the Gulf of Aqaba belongs to Saudi Arabia. Israel has only a mile or so of sea access here, but she has a longer coastline on the Mediterranean. This small strip is the only seaport Jordan has.

The most significant site we visited in Jordan was the ancient fortress city of Petra. The rock formations there (some natural, some man-made) are breathtaking.

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