Aqaba to Dead Sea Day Trip

Your tour leader collects you from your hotel in Aqaba in a private air-conditioned vehicle, and you'll drive around two and a half hours north to the Dead Sea.

At more than 400 metres below sea level, this is the lowest point on the surface of the earth. The water carries a salt and mineral concentration roughly ten times that of the ocean — high enough that nothing lives in it, which is where the name comes from, and high enough that sinking simply isn't possible.

You'll have leisure time at the shore to float, which is a genuinely strange sensation the first time. The dark mineral mud along the water's edge has been used for skin treatments since antiquity; Herod the Great is recorded as having travelled here for its reputed properties, and the site has functioned as a spa destination ever since.

A few things worth knowing before you get in: the water stings any cut or shave, so avoid shaving that morning. Keep it away from your eyes. And rinse thoroughly in fresh water afterwards, or the salt crust stays with you.

After your time at the shore, you'll be driven back to your hotel in Aqaba.

Around nine hours on this Aqaba to Dead Sea day trip, with your own vehicle and driver throughout.