Jordan - $221.96
We spent almost 12 days in Jordan and dished out just over $2,500, meaning we finished about 10% over target budget. There were several reasons for this. Firstly Jordan is a more expensive country that many people, us included, realize. The Jordanian Dinar is quite strong, leading to high prices for everything from food to petrol. Second, there are a lot of bucket-list spots to visit in Jordan (something the Jordanian Ministry of Tourism knows), so pricing for hotels was sometimes higher than we would’ve liked. Finally, even though tourism is down this year because of the war in Gaza, the tourist oriented areas are still charging high rates for activities, likely to make up for the loss of business. All of this combined to raise our daily cost higher than expected, but thanks to our long break in Switzerland, we’re still under budget for the trip as a whole.
Our biggest category of spending in Jordan was Lodging, with a daily average of $76.80. Consider this with a grain of salt, as this included two upmarket nights, at the Mövenpick Dead Sea Resort & Spa and at the Hasan Zawaideh Desert Camp in Wadi Rum. We chose to spend a little more on each of these nights to ensure we felt like we got the full experience in each location. At the Dead Sea, this meant we could go into the anti-gravity waters at least twice, while at Wadi Rum we stayed in a bubble tent with a great view over the martian landscape and full night sky. We knew these two experiences would cost us a bit extra, so we tried to balance them out with lower budget stays in Amman, Aqaba, and Wadi Musa. While we still enjoyed our hotels in these stops, they helped us keep our per-night cost relatively reasonable.
Our second highest category of expense here was, somewhat unsurprisingly, Activities, which averaged over $40 per day. Although we had initially expected to spend quite a bit of money in Jordan on activities after discovering the Jordan Pass we thought this would be avoided. The Jordan Pass is a great all-in-one visa and entry ticket to Jordan’s most iconic places, starting at only 70 JD ($99). Even with our passes in hand, we still paid for many guides and the more adventurous activities beyond what is included. The bulk of our Activities expenses came from our stay in Amman when we went on two separate tours, a food & Palestinian history tour, as well as a full-day tour to Umm Qais, Ajloun, and Jerash. These two tours cost us over $250 and while we learned some interesting things on each, we think it would be possible to have a similar self-guided experience.
We were able to spend less than we normally do on Food & Groceries while in Jordan, accounting for only about $37 of our daily spending. We kept this figure lower by mainly staying in hotels that included breakfast, as well as our Wadi Rum camp that was full-board. We also had two date nights during our stay in Jordan, removing two pricier dinners from our trip expenses and including them in our personal expenses.
Since self-driving is by far the easiest way to move around Jordan, we rented a vehicle during our time outside of Amman, adding up to $325 spent in total on Rental Vehicles & Gas. To save money, we rented a small vehicle from a local rental agency located near, but not at, Amman’s Queen Alia Airport. This saved us about 20% compared to the international rental companies. Having a smaller vehicle also meant better fuel economy, which turned out to be quite helpful as petrol in Jordan costs more than we expected, at around $5.20 per gallon ($1.30 per liter).
As mentioned earlier, our Visa costs were comparatively high in Jordan because they came bundled in with the Jordan Pass. You can lower your visa costs by only getting a visitor visa, which for US passport holders typically cost $56 per person when not bundled into the Jordan Pass. That said, we don't think that’s the best decision. We paid $109 each for our Jordan Passes, as we opted to include 2 days of access to Petra instead of the standard single day, which definitely covered far more than $53 of value for each of us. In the end, we visited 17 unique sites all for free because of our passes, plus we have a fun piece of memorabilia to take home with us, as each location has a unique stamp for the pass.
Finally, we had some smaller expenses that all added up to about $20 of daily spend. We spent a touch over $70 on Other Transportation, in Jordan consisting solely of Ubers while spending time in Amman. We also had about $160 of Miscellaneous spending in Jordan, coming from unaccounted for cash, our monthly US phone bill, eSims for the Middle East, and some much-needed Laundry in Aqaba.