We were the lucky ones

A calm day hiking around near the dead sea, gone wrong.

It started out on friday morning...afternoon to be more precise. Oksana, Alena and I met on the side of the road and hopped in a bullet proof mercedes driven by two Russian/Ukrainian dudes of varying degrees of sketchiness. After a brief stop at the King's Academy to pick up Natalie and inhaling half of a chicken, we set off for a lazy afternoon hike through the hills.

Our starting point was detailed as "you will pass two hills. then you should be able to find a trail". Off we went. A bit later than anticipated, but we figured that the four hours in the guide Actually meant about 3 hours for agile young individuals such as ourselves, particularly with Sasha the mountain goat Ukrainian leading us and egging us on.


Hours passed, as we frolicked in the wildflowers, escaped mass bee stinging and sprained ankles.

Ukrainian folk songs were sung, piece of mind was found. Greenery in Jordan does exist. Amazing basalt canyons rose up out of sandstone basins carved by water.

"It's so dry. I don't really understand this whole flash flood thing. How can such a dry valley fill up with water? I think they're exaggerating..."

Around 6 pm, as we passed by bedouin camps and climbed with the goats, a black wall formed to the North over the hills. Thunder clapped in the background and the sky lit up. A hilarious Ukrainian joke about whether or not we've seen the movie The Day After Tomorrow.

Come on man, it's just a bit of rain.

Too late. As we reach the road that leads down to the hotel, the drops start to hit. We walk faster. The drops grow, turn colder. Minutes later hail beats down on our bodies, nearly the size of ping pong balls and we take cover under a rock. "We have to get to the hotel." Out from the rock we bound -- a scarf wrapped around my head and my sunglasses on to protect my face from the blast of chaos.

A river forms in the middle of the road. Dark, muddy water that prevents us from seeing just how deep it goes. A deep breath in and we clasp hands and make it across, where we start running blindly down towards the hotel and towards respite from being beaten.

Until we realize that the road has been washed away. As we walk to the edge, the cement fades into mud and rocks. The only way we can go is up.

As the sun tumbles towards the horizon of the Dead Sea, we start to walk back up the hill. On the other side of the Wadi we see flashing lights winding down the road -- each of them stops short of the bottom of the hill, where there appears to be some sort of barricade. We turn our heads towards the main road and continue our ascent, laughing to avoid thinking about whether we were in any kind of serious danger.

Then we reach the river. The river has exploded. Or more accurately, what used to be a single string flowing down the hill has collected all the other strings and has formed a huge knotty braid of water pumping down the hill. Even Sasha won't cross.

So we stand. I start shivering as we huddle in a circle under a piece of cloth, each of our minds weighing the options of waiting for the rain to stop and racing against the impending darkness. "We have to keep walking. Whether it's just up and down the hill, we can't get cold".

I start pondering the bedouin camps and set that as my prize for getting out of this mess. As we walked back down the hill, I suggested that we climb Up the hill, parallel to the river so up we go. Scrambling up the near vertical rocks, I try not to think about how loose the mud is from the rain. Finally we reach what is left of the road. It's been torn apart and water spans the width of it, though it is quite shallow.

I run the last stretch of downhill road and make it to the paved road, just to see a pick up drive slowly by, wave and continue along its way.

Another set of headlights appear. Disappear. Appear. Weaving through the hills towards us. These headlights stop. "Tefaddel". Go ahead, get in. 30 minutes we drive. Lightning strikes close to the car and the driver ducks and mutters "alhamdullilah". Thanks to God.

We arrive at the car drenched to the bone, half of us chilled from sitting in the rain in the back of the truck. The house we parked the car next to opens the door at the sound of our voices "Tefaddel". Inside the boys strip down to their swimming shorts and us girls stand around a small heater and gratefully accept offerings of coffee or tea. As we leave, after having given them our last granola bar (our food rations for the trip include 6 granola bars total...) and off we go, racing just a little to fast for just surviving mini armageddon.

"Hot springs. If any girls ask me to go to hot springs ever again, I'll definitely say no"

Lentil soup and a bit of wine later and we are in a bit better spirits.

In the paper today, we found out what exactly happened on the other side of the Wadi with those flashing lights. Others weren't so lucky...

I guess there had been storm warnings, but only on the Arabic channels.

Search for missing tourist continues



By Mohammad Ghazal
AMMAN — Civil Defence Department (CDD) personnel on Saturday continued the search for a Russian tourist who went missing after a landslide in the Maeen Spa area on Friday.
Second Lieutenant Mohammad Kofahi told The Jordan Times that a landslide occurred on Friday at 6:15pm; rocks and the sand blocked the gate of the spa, increasing water levels to almost four metres high, which caused several cars to drift away.
Following the landslide, the hotel at the spa reported to the CDD that two Russian tourists, a man and a woman, were missing, Kofahi added.
“Starting at 6:00am on Saturday morning rescue teams and divers from the CDD began searching for the missing tourists. At 4:00pm yesterday, they found the body of the 37-year old female Russian tourist five kilometres away from the location of the landslide,” the CDD official said.
The body was taken to Al Nadeem Public Hospital, he added.
Three Jordanians, who were injured because of the incident, were transferred to the hospital and were in good condition, according to Kofahi.
The CDD official said two Jordanian search and rescue teams would resume looking for the missing Russian tourist as of 6:00am today.
“Two teams will comb the entire area of the spa. One team will search the area starting from Zara, close to the Dead Sea, up to Maain, while the second team will cover the Maain to Zara area,” Kofahi said.
CDD personnel started clearing the entrance to the Maeen spa and fixing the damage caused by the landslide, he added.