Canyoning

Well, had my first taste of the Dead Sea hills and it was fabulous, wild, beautiful and so tiring that I can barely walk today - but loved it!

So, rather than just going for a nice walk, my first foray into the wilds was a canyoning trip in Wadi Assal - one of the many rivers flowing into the Dead Sea from the hills to the east of it, on this map the valley starts somewhere near Rabba and heads towards Al Mazraa ...


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For those who don't know about canyoning, it is all about following a river downhill through its canyons and gorges, so usually includes things like hiking, scrambling, abseiling, jumping into river pools, rockclimbing, rock water slides, waterfalls, jungle bashing and stunning gorges. Well, this one had all of these things, with my only real complaint being that it was way too long - 10 hours with only half an hour break for lunch! Lord knows how many kilometres we covered, but the last hour and a half was in darkness, and this despite leaving Amman at 5.30am!

But on the other hand, boy was it exciting, have a look at this ....



This is the first part of the trip, after a scramble down a barren hillside from the road we started a fairly easy walk into the top of the canyon ...















Then the gorges started getting narrower and steeper, and the proper abseiling began - 7 long abseils in all, with the first five in the dry part of the day before lunch ...















And down she goes ...









After that the whole valley got wetter and lusher ... In fact, we decided that while we have 'damp' and 'wet' and 'soaked', we don't really have a word that describes having been in water, and then half drying, and then getting wet, and then half drying again and again, for hours on end - sort of like Glastonbury but without the water from above ... and yet we still managed to be filthy at the end of it! All good fun ...