Travel Tips: Crossing the Israel/Jordan Border By Land (Eilat to Aqaba)

Of everything on the Middle East leg of my trip, the thing I was most nervous about was crossing the land border between Israel and Jordan.  Looking on the internet, you will find stories of those who crossed with no issues - but then you will also find horror stories of long waits, arbitrary delays, difficult border guards, etc.  The thing about the Middle East is that you never know - rules constantly change depending on the day and situation, so I was nervous about the unexpectedness of it.

There are three land checkpoints between Israel/Jordan: the one we went through was the southernmost point called the Wadi Araba checkpoint (it's called Yitzhak Rabin on the Israeli side). This checkpoint takes you from the city of Eilat, Israel on one side, to Aqaba, Jordan on the other.

From Eilat, we took a taxi to the border, which took around 10 minutes and cost 30 NIS (about $10). The taxi dropped us off right at the border.

This way to the border crossing....oh and birdwatching!

The first gate you see when you pull up - the Yitzhak Rabin Border Terminal

• The border terminal opens at 6:30AM, and we'd heard there are times when you will encounter long lines (especially sometimes in the mornings with tour groups).  But when we arrived around 10AM, the entire terminal was pretty empty.  We walked up and an Israeli policeman checked our passports.
• From there, the process was pretty seamless.  There are a series of windows you visit in order.
• The first window (passport control) checked our passports again
• At the second window (customs), we had to pay an Israel exit fee of 104 NIS per person (about $30).   At this window, the lady also gave us an option to change cash into Jordanian dinars using a debit or credit card (which you will need as soon as you exit on the other side to pay for a cab).  Lastly, she stamped our passports with an exit stamp  - you can request her not to do so, since an Israel stamp in your passport can prevent you from entering countries like Iran or Lebanon.  I was too slow to react - that stamp came out of nowhere!  Drew was not too slow, and she was fine stamping a receipt for him instead of his passport.

Walk this way to Jordan.  But first, go buy things duty-free

• Then they make you walk through a duty-free store - just a small one, but there are signs everywhere telling you this is your last chance to shop before entering Jordan.  We used every last penny of our NIS on water and a pack of Twix (the cheapest item in the entire store). 

Looking back...leaving Israel

• After you exit the duty-free store, you approach the no-man's land between Israel and Jordan. 

Eating our breakfast of Twix from the duty-free store and walking through no-man's land

Welcome to Jordan!

• As you enter Jordan, another passport check. Then a security scan, where they screen your bags and belongings. The guards started off a little tough with us by demanding we open our bags and show them everything inside after they'd gone through the scanner. However, in the midst of opening Drew's bag, they started a conversation with us about the NBA and their their demeanors got lighter as they were talking about how much they love the Lakers (yuck why).  Both guards started chattering away and seemed to forget they hadn't opened my bag yet, so we took advantage of the situation by smiling at them, nodding a lot, and picking up our bags and scooting out of the room.  Thank goodness they didn't get into my bag - it was stuffed to the brim and was probably one of those situations where once they started taking things out, I'm not sure it all would have fit back in. 
• More windows. We got our passports checked a couple more times, a couple questions about why we were entering Jordan, and entry stamps/visas stamped into our passports.  As my passport had already been stamped by Israel, I didn't care what was stamped into it afterwards, so all was good with me. However, Drew asked the guard not to stamp his again (because even if you don't have an Israel stamp, if you have a Jordan stamp in your passport showing you entered Jordan by land, customs can deduce you were in Israel beforehand).  This time however, the guard refused and stamped his passport anyways. Whomp whomp.  However, I'm not sure if this was due to a miscommunication, because I've heard of people being able to make it through this border crossing completely stamp-free.  
• Typically there is an Jordan entry visa fee of around 40 Jordanian dinars (~$57) - but somehow we were not charged. I don't know if someone forgot to charge us. Oh well.
• Upon exiting the terminal on the Jordan side, there is no public transport or anything - just a group of taxis. It is known in traveling circles as the "taxi mafia", as they basically have complete control over how much to charge you since you have no other options. You can take a cab into the nearby town of Aqaba, but we were heading to Petra (about 2-3 hours away) - so we hired a cab to take us all the way there.  It is very taxi mafia-feeling - there was a sketchy man who was seemingly in charge and ordered the drivers about and had us move our bags from one car to another. The second car he moved us to, I saw the driver had to pay this guy some money. It was not the most comforting feeling, but at the end of the day, we got to where we needed to go, and at a price we saw was fairly comparable to what we researched beforehand (about 50 dinars, or $71) to go all the way to Petra.

All in all, the entire border crossing process took around 30 minutes for us. We've heard horror stories of some crossings taking hours and hours, or interrogations and such - so overall, I think we got pretty lucky and our experience was almost completely seamless (save for the tiny passport stamp fiasco. I hope I don't have a pressing need to go to Iran or Lebanon anytime soon).  

Beforehand, it was surprisingly hard finding complete, thorough information on the entire process online (or information that wasn't a couple years old anyway) - so hopefully this might be slightly helpful to someone, somewhere.  Even if not, it was an incredibly interesting process that I'm glad I got a chance to do and wanted to detail.

Eilat, Israel: Gateway to Jordan

Drew and I arrived in the city of Eilat after a 3+ hour bus ride from the Dead Sea. Eilat is on the southernmost coast of Israel, and is situated on the Red Sea. Which Drew mentioned was our 3rd sea we've touched in a week (Mediterranean, Dead, and Red). Yay seas.

What It's All About:

Eilat is so pretty - it's bordered by these gorgeous red mountains and is close to both the borders of Jordan and Egypt.  A ton of the coastline is beach and it's a popular vacation destination for families (when I booked our hotel, there was super limited availability). And the boardwalk is just like Atlantic City, filled with carnival rides and food stands and shopping, and mobbed with families and childrens and teens.  Never mind that I've never been to Atlantic City; it's what I've always imagined it to be like.

Lastly, and probably the most important point, is there is a dolphin reef where you can swim with dolphins (eee!). And lots of snorkeling. Again, not like we did any of this - purely from my very cute animated tourist map.


Cliffnotes of the Day:

• The drive down to Eilat was desert as far as the eye could see.  The farther south we drove, the closer the road got to the Jordan border - there were a lot of warning signs that the border was close and the roads were not passable through the border. 

Desert drive

Our hotel room had the prettiest views of the mountains and Red Sea

• We walked down to the boardwalk for dinner. The boardwalk was full of hotels, rides, cafes, those cheesy stores filled with cheap beachwear, clubs with weird lasers, etc. 

Just like (what I imagine looks exactly like) Atlantic City

AND IT WAS MOBBED WITH PEOPLE ON VACATION

The craziest thing to me is that it was this fun vacation/family/beach atmosphere, but then all the shopping mall entrances had metal detectors and security everywhere

• The next morning, we started our journey to cross the Israel/Jordan border and southernmost checkpoint by land.  Will be detailing that in a separate post here.

• And then we got to Jordan!  We got a cab for the 2+ hour drive to Wadi Musa, a town right outside the ancient lost city of Petra and our next stop.  The Jordanian landscape was so pretty -  it was filled with rose-colored rock formations, and ANIMALS.

Prettiest rock formations in Jordan

CAMELS BY THE ROAD. Drew may have asked the taxi to stop so we could take photos, and then poked me awake.... because he knows that I love camels

This looks like a horse but I swear it's a camel

• Our cab driver was awesome - having noted the fact that we love photos, he stopped again at a scenic overlook of the valleys.

Jordan valleys

And then we passed a herd of goats on the road

• And then we got to Wadi Musa.....next stop, Petra!  

Wadi Musa

Fun Facts of the Day:

• The second we stepped into Jordan, the people changed instantly.  They were all super curious where we were from, and when we told them, it was almost always followed with a "I love America!"  Also, apparently NBA is big there.....because when Drew and I told them we were from Boston/New York, they'd go, "Celtics! Knicks!"  In the first day we were in the country, I think we had at least 3 separate conversations about the NBA. Random. Yet awesome.
• So many security checkpoints. Both Israel and Jordan, there are tons of security checkpoints on the highways and roads - you just kind of get used to men dressed in military uniforms with guns stopping your car and checking things out. A constant reminder as to the part of the world we were in.
• Jordan has these groups of Arab tribes called bedouins - they were historically nomadic and lived all over the desert. Many of these tribes are more modernized now, but still retain some of their cultural/living practices today (think of a Jordan-version of gypsies).  We saw groups of them as we drove down the highway.  Anyways, as a tourist, an incredibly cool thing you can do is stay in a bedouin camp (look it up!).  You get to stay in a tent out in the middle of the desert, ride camels, etc. - and the bedouin tribe will cook for you and everything. It's apparently amazing. I wanted to do it so badly, but it didn't fit into our timeframe =(  Next time, Jordan.