Since I have been really lazy in my posts recently, I have decided to back track some and tell you about some of the other things that have happened in the last month or so. Thus, let us begin with Wadi Mujib. Wadi in Arabic means canyon, more or less, and more specifically it means a canyon made by erosion from water. This would be like the canyons in Zions, the Grand Canyon, and most other canyons that we know of in the US. Since Wadi Mujib is one of these types of canyons, the entire area is covered with water, and the water that is in the Wadi runs out in to the Dead Sea. If you remember from my previous post about how Utah and Jordan then you should know what's coming next...yes, this is just like the Narrows in Zions National Park.
Just like Zions, which is a great park in Southern Utah, and located in the desert surrounded by canyons and mountains etc. Wadi Mujib is the same, granted it is somewhat smaller. Like the Narrows in Zions, the whole draw of Wadi Mujib is that fact that you can hike through a river up some water falls and through a canyon all at the same time while staying cool and beating the desert heat. However, unlike the water in the Narrows which is super cold and snow run off, Wadi Mujib's river is rather warm and results from the rainy season in Jordan (not that that really exists here, since I have only seen it rain once).
The trip to Wadi Mujib is about an hour and a half south of Amman, and is located right on the edge of dead sea. Essentially you must drive along the dead sea in order to reach the small canyon that houses the river. Once you arrive at the area, you are greeted by a small welcoming center which houses somewhere between 1,000,000 and 1,000,000,000 flies all of which like to fly into your eyes, ears, mouth and nose (just like the little game for kids), where you are given a guide if you so desire to lead you through the canyon and up the river (granted you don't really need one unless you decide to do the more advanced trails that involve rock climbing). We met our guide, who initially tried to tell us we didn't have one, even though we had reserved one and put money down, and after a lot of coercion we finally were able to get him to stop being lazy and take us. If you ask me this was the first mistake of the day, but we needed a guide per BYU rules.
With our guide in front of us we all grabbed our life jackets to begin walking through ankle deep river water, for fear that someone might drown not knowing how to swim, since we live in a desert and headed for the trail up the canyon. The canyon (wadi) itself was rather beautiful, the rock like most of Southern Utah is red rock, and as you walk up the river you are able to see the different levels where the water used to run, as well as the way the river carved through the rock over thousands of years. Walking through the river is relatively fun, and if you are not like me, carrying a digital camera along with a few other things which you don't want to soak in the river, then it is really fun to wallow around in the shallow water and try to float for a few feet before becoming a beached whale on a small rock, or sand bank in the middle of the river.
Further up the river you reach a series of small waterfalls which are about 8 feet tall or so, which require some scrambling up of boulders with the aid of a rope or "ladder" mechanism to aide in moving against the "raw power" of the water flowing down the boulders. All in all, very fun, especially if you are carrying a camera, because it adds a new element of difficulty and skill in order to make it up the waterfall without getting soaked. In most cases I through the bag behind me, but the strap in my teeth and scrambled up the rock hoping with all hope that I would not slip smash my face into the rocks like many of the students before me, wash down the rock and into the pool of water below me drenching not only myself but potentially my camera as well. After making it to the top of about 3 or 4 waterfalls you reach the main waterfall of the trail which is really quite nice and maybe 20-30 feet tall.
It was here that the troubles began, seeing as how our guide was rather ambitious to return to his cushy seat back at the welcome both, after about 10 mins max, he ordered everyone from our group start heading down back to the opening of the canyon, which to me was rather ridiculous seeing as how we were paying for the experience, we should be able to determine how much time we spend at the end of the trail. So before I had time to remove my camera from the garbage bad and ziplock bag I was using to waterproof my camera and take a picture of the water fall, I had to begin the precarious descent back down the same water falls back to the mouth of the canyon. This proved to be more difficult than I imagined, seeing as how the haste of our guide resulted in us jumping down the waterfalls into the small pools at the base of each one. This required me to get to the top of the fall, and then throw all of my equipment down to the people before me and hope that they could catch my equipment without dropping it into the water. To my surprise and great relief I made it down all the waterfalls without soaking, dropping, or even remotely getting my camera equipment near the water.
On the short walk back down the river to the mouth of the canyon, and along a relatively level area I managed to drop my entire camera bag, camera, and equipment from off my shoulder into the river. Go figure, just when you think you are home free, something like that always has to happen. However, due to my incredulous cat like reflexes, I was able to grab the bag within a second of dropping into the water, pulling it out with only the pockets full of water. Upon opening the contents of my bag I discovered that no water had made it into the bag, and even more so, no water had penetrated my garbage or ziplock bags, preserving my camera in once piece, and not forcing me to curse the heavens and the stars for their wicked alignment against me that day.
The incident with my camera made me think of a similar accident with my brother and sister-in-law a few years back where they lost there camera to a climbing accident. My brother was wearing their point and shoot digital camera on his belt, while climbing up the cables of Half Dome in Yosemite, shortly before my mission. About half way up the cables, the button snap which was holding the bag on his belt unsnapped dropping the camera, which then proceeded to go head over heels bouncing down the mountain until it was launched into the sky and off a cliff and dropped about a thousand+ feet to its death. However, to make their sad story happy, they did find the camera which enabled them to retrieve the shattered pieces of their camera, and their intact memory card, preserving their memories of the trip.
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