🇯🇴 Jordan · Tafilah Governorate
🇯🇴 Jordan · Tafilah Governorate
♨ Temperature
48°C
⛰ Altitude
—
⚗ pH
—
💧 TDS
—
🌊 Flow rate
—
📅 Established
Traditional local bathing site used for generations; remains largely undeveloped
✓ Verified on 2026-08-16
Afra Hot Springs (Hammamat Afra) is a natural thermal spring complex located about 26 kilometres north of the city of Tafilah in southern Jordan, where mineral-rich water emerges from around 15 distinct springs at temperatures between 45°C and 48°C. The water carries a mineral profile that includes sodium, calcium, chloride, hydrogen sulfide, carbon dioxide, and trace radon, and flows through a narrow valley shaded by tamarisk and eucalyptus trees. Far less developed and far less visited than the larger Ma'in Hot Springs to the north, Afra remains a low-key destination popular with Jordanian families and travellers en route to nearby Petra, valued specifically for its therapeutic reputation in treating rheumatic, joint, and skin conditions.
Afra sits within Jordan's broader belt of Dead Sea Rift-associated thermal springs, an area with a long regional tradition of therapeutic bathing that predates formal tourism development. Its relative remoteness in the mountains above Tafilah has kept it a more local, less commercialized counterpart to Jordan's better-known thermal sites, valued within the surrounding communities as a traditional wellness destination for generations.
Afra is best known within Jordan itself rather than to international visitors — a place locals from Tafilah and the surrounding villages have long treated as a genuine folk remedy destination rather than a resort experience. Visitors bathe directly in the springs' natural rock pools and the shaded stream that runs through the valley, an experience considerably less manicured than at Jordan's larger thermal resorts.
The spring's output, like other thermal sites along the Jordan Rift Valley, is sustained by deep geothermal circulation associated with the Dead Sea Transform fault system. Afra's low level of commercial development has, incidentally, kept its surrounding valley ecosystem — including its tamarisk and eucalyptus tree cover — comparatively undisturbed relative to more heavily visited thermal destinations in the region.