Hiking Wadi Gweir

I had reservations about Wadi Gweir hike because of its steep price, especially as we would probably had no one to share the guide's cost with. I do not regret booking it anyway.

It's winter and this hike is at the bottom of a canyon, the weather determines if you can do it. Our guide, Hassan, explains that the tourism police is the one who informs guides and hotels if certain trails are open or closed. We are in luck, it's a fantastic clear sky and sunny winter day.

We drive through the plateau to the edge and start a zigzagging road down to a viewpoint first. Hassan explains the way and shows us a black mountain real far in the distance. We will end next to this one.

Wadi Gweir trail is about 14km and we will go mostly flat to down. The car leaves us at the bottom of a valley and we walk along the rivulet of water into the canyon proper.

It's beautiful. The sides are tall and imposing and the rock is red. At this stage we can see the layers of rocks, flattened sediments upon each other. The water has carved elegant curves and smoothen the sharp edges.

As we continue, it gets narrower and now we observe undulating patterns of minerals in the rocks: swirling elegant arabesques.

At some point of the trail, it's no wider than 1,5m. And while we always follow the water, it sometimes disappear into the pebbles and rocks to surge a little further away, it continues its journey underground for small distances.

We reach a junction. Another wadi joins this one and more water comes into the channel we walk along.

But it's not spring water like before. This one seeps from the stone, as if the rocks was sweating it. The bottom of the cliffs are green, slimy and covered in a form of moss. But with this abundance of water, which is available all year round, comes life and plants.

The other name for Wadi Gweir is Wadi Palm, because of the numerous palm trees growing inside the canyon. And we finally see them.

The canyon opens up, snakes and narrow down as we walk along this new scenery. We also start to have deeper pools of water and it's time to don our water shoes so we can walk right in the middle.

I absolutely love the landscape here. Plus it's super low season and we are the only ones inside.

It's only at lunch that we cross two locals walking the trail up, on the opposite direction. Our guide prepared some fresh verbena hot tea, and it's so welcome with the just warm temperature.

We started this trail at 1,500m above sea level and it was frisky this morning, as we descent to the same level of the dead sea, the air gets warmer.
I found that I didn't mind the cold water at all during this hike.

At last, we reach the black mountain. And it's so sudden. We were in a canyon and then, we are not. It's a wide river bed with pebbles on the floor and a shallow river snaking in its middle.

The rock color is a strong contrast with what we saw before in shades of orange, white and reds.

It's the very end of the trail and the most boring part. Probably 30/40min walk.

In total, we needed 5h55min the complete the trail, including a good 45min lunch break. I took a lot of pictures and was pretty slow. Since we hardly saw anyone during our hike, it was just really relaxing. It's an easy hike, with some passages were you scramble over boulders, but really, that was pretty doable to almost anyone. In summer, the constant shade and refreshing pools must be really pleasant, although apparently, there would be too much people to genuinely enjoy it as we did.

Our driver is waiting for us as the end of the trail and we start the long drive back. We are all the way in the plains and we need to go back up.

The road is steep, winding along the slope and takes a good 2h30min.

On the way, we drop off Hassan and also pick up some new guests for the lodge.

Diner is another feast, and this time it's one of the traditional dish, chicken Mansaf. We had it before, but this homemade one is just exquisite.

We end the evening with more conversation with the owner and some tea before calling it a night.

This is really a great little gem of a place.