Over a year ago, Pat asked Philip and I if we wanted to go spelunking with the boy scout group that he was a leader for. Neither of us had time at the first invitation, but having only gone spelunking once before, I was definitely interested and told Pat to keep me posted on possible repeat dates. Well, there was another invitation put out, but the date fell during the time I was in Tajikistan last year and once again I had to miss out. Although Pat and his family returned to America for the 2009-2010 school year, his legacy lives on through the Zubiya Cave Expedition of 2010.

My friend Joanna had already been to the cave with Pat and the scouts last year, and she told me and fellow spelunker Margie to dress warmly. I borrowed the car from Aaron and picked Margie and Joanna up from their house at about 8 in the morning, dressed in 4 layers of (old) clothes that I didn’t mind utterly destroying with mud and bat feces. We had our sandwiches, our Coca-Cola, brownies I’d baked the night before, and I had my Nescafé to keep me awake during the two hour trip. Margie tried to convince me that drinking Nescafé is the equivalent of drinking hot chocolate sludge, but I couldn’t bear to part with it. I’m no coffee thouwaq (gourmet).

It was almost exactly a two hour drive to reach the cave, and it was quite easy to find thanks to the excellent driving instructions that Pat had left for us. The only problem came at the end, where we weren’t entirely sure we should park. I turned the car around in a driveway, as two older Arab men and a similarly-aged woman gazed at us from the steps of a small brick building. I decided that it couldn’t hurt anything to ask for directions, and the three of them offered to escort us back in their car and then lead by foot to the cave itself. We certainly weren’t going to turn down an offer like that, so we waited for the three of them to pile into their old maroon sedan and drive at a stately pace back up the road about a 100 meters.

We piled all of our gear into backpacks as I introduced ourselves more properly to our new guides. Their names were Abu Haitham, and Abu and Umm Ali (Abu means father, and Umm means mother). They asked me with familial concern if we had brought enough food and enough lights, and after I tried to dispel their worry in my broken Arabic, the trio turned off the road and led us off the road into the dew-moistened and wonderfully green grass of a tree-lined meadow.

Messrs. Abu Ali and Abu Haitham amble along through their beautiful countryside

Messrs. Abu Ali and Abu Haitham amble along through their beautiful countryside

After a few minutes of walking – or sliding – through the grass and mud, we came suddenly upon the limestone maw of the cave. There were no signs, no guards, no rails – the only sign that this place had ever been discovered before were a few spray painted arrows and the ubiquitous small sacks of garbage. Margie dug into her pack and pulled out a third headlamp which she handed to me. Our guides looked reassured to see us all with lights, and me with my biking helmet (I’m paranoid about my height and pointy stone ceilings, okay?!) and together the six of us descended into Zubiya Cave.

I was pleasantly surprised that we weren’t immediately up to our ankles in water. On the way up we had voiced fears that because of the rains that had swept through the country during the past week, it might be dangerously damp in underground caverns, especially in the more temperate north of Jordan. There was plenty of mud, though, and I joked with the other men that I was going to be several centimeters taller thanks to the new stilts I was wearing on my soles. I noted that they were all just wearing sandals and figured that they certainly would know better than us about what to wear. All three of them told me that they had lived in the area all of their lives, but then admitted that they’d actually never been in this cave before, although they knew their children had been. I gave Abu Ali one of my flashlights and the three of them cautiously trudged behind us, muttering incomprehensible things as Umm Ali attempted to not step on her abiya robe and drag it through the mud.

Pat originally sent a black and white map to me, so I added some colors after we got back...

Pat originally sent a black and white map to me, so I added some colors after we got back...

The first path we walked along was obviously well-traveled – wide and dusty, with many footprints. The light of the grated entrance vanished within seconds after we rounded the first corner, and instantly we became helpless without our headlamps and flashlights. Stalagmites, huge, brown and round, hedged our footsteps and deeper down into the darkness in front of us we could hear faint squeaking and if we stopped walking for a moment we could detect the softest rustle of wings.

Only a few meters into the cave, there's still enough light to make the flash get all confused

Only a few meters into the cave, there's still enough light to make the flash get all confused

After walking what was probably 15 meters into the cave, we came to the edge of a small cliff that split into three separate paths. It was here that Umm Ali looked like she’d had enough. She took a tentative step down one of the cliff paths, stumbled a little, then straightened up regally and intoned, “khulaas” which means “That’s it.” The two men looked at each other, and then told me that they would go back now with her as well. I told Abu Ali to hold onto the flashlight and use it to get out. He thanked me and squinted into the unknown gloom while waving the feeble beam ineffectually at it. “This is a dangerous path, so I ask of you to take care,” he told me, his voice clearly telling me that he would like nothing more than the three of us to give up, turn back, and join him and his wife for tea and biscuits. I told him that Joanna was an extremely experienced spelunker who knew the cave very well (it was a good thing that she couldn’t understand what I was saying, or else the horrified look in her eyes may have given my white lie away) but the old man was mollified and smiled. He invited us to come back to the house when we were finished, and vanished into the shadows, waving the paltry beam of my 2 dinar flashlight in front of him.

All three of us were starting to feel the strain of coffee and Coca-Cola on our innards and indeed had been since before we entered, but we didn’t want to immediately follow behind our erstwhile hosts and heed nature’s call in the bushes outside the cave. We exchanged pained looks and debated on what we should do. “Let’s just follow along quietly behind them, not making a sound, and wait for them to away from the cave mouth,” I suggested as I started rapidly towards the entrance, which was followed by the sound of Joanna making “pthbbtth! pthbbbbbth!!” noises. “There are bugs flying into my mouth!” she retorted to my raised eyebrow.

We crept back (almost) silently to the main entrance. I motioned to the other two to stand back, and I went all the way up to the metal bars of the security door that has probably never been closed. I heard their voices up above us and I scurried back to my companions, and we stumbled back into the wider chamber we had just vacated.

Arabic Word of the Day: the colloquial word for bat is "wutwut" which is probably the most awesome thing ever.

Arabic Word of the Day: the colloquial word for bat is "wutwut" which is probably the most awesome thing ever.

Needless to say, “vacating” needed to take place and I’m not ashamed to admit that we made do like the bats obviously had been doing all around us. I heard one chittering above me and felt like I was being watched by a small, furry voyeur. There were plenty of tiny little alcoves and chambers all around us that it was like the cave was designed for that exclusive purpose. Feeling much better, we struck out towards the east of the cave, stopping to pile a small cairn of stones at the edge of the cliff as a marker. These rooms we were traversing now were extremely large, with ceilings at least 15 meters above our heads in some places. I could see the spidery ends of plant roots above us just barely in the glow of my headlamp, and I dug my remaining flashlight out of my backpack to use as an auxiliary light source. Between the previously-shown map that I was constantly annotating, my camera, the light, and a pen, I found that my hands were quite full most of the time! However, this part of the cave (shown on the map in light baby blue) was a cakewalk compared to what we were about to get into.

Our first steps out of the baby blue were in the northwestern section of the cave where things started to narrow on us for the first time. That entire section, as you may be able to tell by reading the fine print, is up on one end, and then a drop on the other into a lower chamber. I didn’t even try to lift myself up into the orange section on the left, as it was almost a foot above my head, I wasn’t wearing any gloves, and I didn’t really know what was up there. However, all three of us were able to shimmy down about 2.5 meters into the yellow-colored room marked “below” on the map. That room was quite small in all dimensions (I was barely able to keep from hitting my head) and filled with strange pits in a ring shape all around us. It looked unsettlingly like the site of numerous unfinished burials.

After we made our exit from the Up and Down cave chambers, the real fun started. That long orange path to the south was the toughest we’d done yet, about 15 meters of crawling on our hands and knees in a maze of stalagmites, the ceiling pressing down on us just centimeters above our heads. I was happy to be wearing my helmet! There was some confusion at first about where to go, because the map said “? Under here” and I was about ready to try to crawl under a pile of rocks like a trilobite before one of my companions stopped me and pointed out the small shaft above us. We never did make it back to that pile of rocks, and I still don’t know what “? Under here” really meant.

We reached our first major junction at the end of this long path, and came to something even more interesting in the red section. Yes, red does mean bad. As we crouched there in the pale glow of each others’ lamps in the wider yellow section of the map, I could barely see anything down the red path – there was nothing visible but a mass of stalactites jutting out at us like broken teeth. Without batting an eyelash, Margie volunteered to venture down this “path,” if you can use that term, and see if it got any wider or continued farther on. As Joanna and I shined lights down behind her, she reported some “tight squeezes” but didn’t sound alarmed. We ventured down after her. And this happened.

How do I manage to find myself hanging upside down between limestone columns all the time?

How do I manage to find myself hanging upside down between limestone columns all the time?

Yes, although it looks like I might as well be stuck between two mud blocks, these things really were stone and had the durability of it. I had to flop about, fishlike, kicking my legs feebly as Joanna and Margie watched with amusement. After my feet finally gained purchase on another pillar behind me, I was able to kind of squirm around until my newly-broken body dribbled out the other side. Both Joanna and I described it as “being birthed.” There was nothing in this little room to to the side though, but I used a key to mark “2010 الأجانب” which just says “2010 foreigners!” I was all excited at the thought of squeezing into an undiscovered location, but then peered into a tiny impassable crack into the farthest wall (on the map, it’s actually the farthest south east part of the cave) and saw more Arabic writing, Mohammad and Ahmad and realized that some tiny Arab child had already somehow squeezed his way in there. Better luck next time.

Before stopping for lunch, we tried the last chamber that doubled-back north again, and found a mysterious, miraculous pool that Joanna stared at for a moment before commenting that Pat told her that it was called the ‘Fountain of Youth.” I didn’t even see it at first; it took a minute of peering onto the ground before I realized that this puddle filled with bat poop was actually what she was referring to. “And then Pat drank out of it,” Joanna added. I thought of Pat and and his love of “roughing it” and outdoors experiences and realized I wasn’t actually that surprised. His immune system hardened after years in Egypt and Jordan, he had obviously survived his “miraculous” beverage…but none of us were going to follow in his footsteps.

I hadn't expected the Fountain of Youth to be quite so...chunky.

I hadn't expected the Fountain of Youth to be quite so...chunky.

Food always seems to taste more delicious in a cave, perhaps because you really appreciate the fact that you’re enjoying a delicious flavor while you’re surrounded by rock, dust, and bat dung. We crouched under the low ceiling in the small central room that connected the previous two chambers, headlamps pointed inwards, and ate our sandwiches, chips, fruit, and the much-anticipated brownies. Thankfully for me, the girls had brought hand sanitizer to share; I didn’t want to even estimate what I had on my hands but they were kind of a greenish-white color.

After repacking our now-empty bags into our rucksacks, we connected back into the four-way intersection shown on the map, and were intrigued by what looked like a black gash on the wall, marked on the map only with the words “Narrow crack” and one of those maddening question marks. We all wanted to know what was on the other side of that question mark. And so began the most dangerous part of our journey.

Once again, Margie volunteered to go first, sliding off her backpack and carefully feeling her way forward into the darkness. The white limestone reflected much of our headlamps’ glow back at us, and the narrowness of the crack meant that distances were deceiving. Joanna and I hung back, trying to offer more light wherever possible and listening to Margie’s calls back to us from the crack. It seemed that there was one point in which the ground in front of her just ran out, and she could feel an empty room ahead of her. This seemed to jive with what we had on the map, so I came forward after her to grab her in case she started to fall through the crack. She slid down through what looked like a ridiculously tiny gap, only 20 centimeters wide or so, and reported that there seemed to be some sort of a ledge she could feel with her feet. She was silent for a moment as I watched her, and I could tell that she was trying to move herself downwards with as much force as possible. Already, she was up to just past her hips – it was disconcerting to watch the earth itself swallowing up my friend. Suddenly, there was a jerk, and she was through and I saw new shadows and light playing through the gap below me – she had landed on the ledge and was safe. Now it was my turn.

Suddenly I wasn’t so sure about this. I’ve never been “claustrophobic” persay, but this was a different sort of situation then what I could have gotten myself into in a cave in America. I cautiously shimmied forwards, feeling the cold stone press first against my back, and then against my stomach. I was now wedged into the crack in the wall, and the only way left to go was down. I slid down as far as I could, feeling my ankles twist slightly but not painfully as I forced them sideways…the curse of having size 13 feet. Light shined on me from below as Margie called up to me encouragingly, and Joanna had slid partly into the crack to do the same from the other side. I muttered something to them about hoping my pants didn’t rip, and then felt my right leg twist underneath me against solid stone as my left leg swung uselessly in the air, somewhere above Margie’s head.

I was at a little bit of an impasse here. My right leg stuck, my left leg unable to propel me back up, and my arms were in similar situations. I was suspended in a dark crack in the middle of a cave, partly over a pit of unknown dimensions, thousands of miles from my standard healthcare provider or at least a few hundred from the U.S. Embassy. Trying to remain calm, I tried the standard “tremble frantically” technique, which succeeded in worming my body another 5-6 centimeters down. This was actually worse, if that was even possible. My trapped right leg was now sending painful warning signs up my knee, and I was now chest-deep in this hole. The stone pressed against me hard on both cheek, chest and back, and I was forced to rotate my neck to the right, staring at Joanna’s feet as I tried very hard not to pant from the new tightness on my lungs. Images flashed through my head of Joanna having to take the car back to Amman and call the Embassy, me spending several days in this hole while people debated what to do, Margie unable to leave either because of my rear end blocking her only escape route, and the two of us slowly becoming covered in bat poop until a few soldiers arrived and had to break my legs and several ribs in order to extract me. I did not like having these rocks so close to my heart. I wondered what it felt like to have ribs broken.

I started to hyperventilate slightly and I squinted as dusty light swam around me. Joanna’s shoes appeared to be doing some sort of bizarre jig in front of me as my vision blurred and I decided that keeping my eyes closed was probably a good long-term solution. I could hear them trying to talk me through the situation, encouraging me to go back and not risk it – not realizing that I didn’t think it would be possible for me to go back. I realized that I didn’t mind being trapped in a cave and unable to move, as long as the duration of that entrapment was a second or less. Anything more than that was too much.

I had probably been in this position for no more than 30 seconds, to a minute at most. I had the barest movement of my right hand and right foot, and I timed what force I could muster against the rock, while kicking futilely against the wall with my left foot. As the seconds dragged agonizingly on, I ever so slowly started to rotate myself clockwise, moving my torso to the right back towards Joanna. The pressure on my hips and back changed, and I found that being sideways not only allowed the blood to rush to my head and in a pleasant way, but also it allowed my rump to fall into the hole all of the way, and my shoulders and back suddenly followed suit. As I came lower, Margie guided my left foot to a foothold on the ledge and with a final shaky wave of my mostly-numb right arm snaking behind me, I fell through the floor with a crunch. It was over. I was through and all of my bones were still in one piece.

As I slowly calmed myself down and played my headlamp across the room, I realized that it was much larger than what the map had led me to believe. After watching what I had just gone through, Joanna was in no rush to try the same thing, and excused herself to find the lady’s restroom. I tried to size up the dimensions of our incredible new find, which I was sure that no sane person would have ever reached before because of the near-impossibility of that path.

Suddenly there was the play of a third light on the far wall and Joanna’s voice sounded a lot less muffled. She also sounded a little confused. “Can you guys see my light?” she called out. I affirmed that we could, and I crawled along the ledge until I reached a corner, and peered to my left around it. A dim light shown from behind another rock ledge, and I heard the pingpingping of small rocks (probably compressed guano) falling from that ledge. Within a moment, a leg appeared, and then Joanna appeared at the mouth of a hole which was probably a good meter in width. I swore slightly under my breath. I would have killed for a meter-wide hole after what I had just jammed myself through. As I watched, Joanna leapt down and after a mere minute, was on the floor of the cavern which Margie and I had spent a combined hour trying to crawl into. I said a few more choice words, mostly to myself, and with Joanna’s help, I lowered myself off the ledge and joined her on the floor. Meanwhile, the amazing Margie had actually turned around and slid back up almost effortless through the gap she and I had just come down. “It’s all right, Zach,” she laughed, “at least we can say that we had the experience.” Right.

Within a few more minutes, we rapidly determined that the map had erred – we were actually inside the central, largest chamber in the cave, and there were actually a total of six separate entrances, two of which were not mentioned on the map. Instead of a mysterious, “?” marked chamber at the end of the narrow path like the map proposed, we had gone all the way through the central wall and dropped down, and there was also the small route Joanna had found. Neither of those were listed on the map. If she had walked another meter, she would have discovered that there was the third, largest path that merely walked down into the room with barely a scramble. Oh the irony.

By turning my camera down to its highest sensitivity, I was able to get this picture of Joanna and a stalagmite without using flash

By turning my camera down to its highest sensitivity, I was able to get this picture of Joanna and a stalagmite without using flash

We had essentially completed the cave at this point. From inside this large chamber we could reach almost anywhere else where we wanted to go, and within minutes of climbing out of the northern-most path, we came across our carefully-piled rock pile, guaranteeing to us that we had successfully made a full circle around the entire cave. We celebrated by drinking the last of our Coca-Cola and reveled in being able to stand up straight again and stretch our arms.

As an experiment, we tried switching off all of our lamps and seeing how our senses adjusted to the darkness. We tried to be totally silent and listen to the sounds of the cave (bat wings, namely) but Joanna burst out laughing. At first I didn’t understand why she was laughing, but as she explained her reaction to the dark and silence, it made sense. After all, we had been laughing and talking and joking around with each other since we came in. Humans aren’t used to completely pitch-black environments, and it’s very likely we were subconsciously trying to reassure each other of each other’s presence then. But in silence, in the darkness, I felt like I was half-floating, and my eyes began to play tricks on me. Even as we started talking again, I would hold my hand in front of me, moving my fingers and making a fist, almost sure that I could see the familiar lines take shape in the air. I waved my hand, and was sure I saw myself, or saw something. Completely impossible of course; it was completely black there. But my brain tried to draw a picture out of the blackness, and because it controlled how my hands and arms moved, it used the perfect “blankness” of the dark slate before me to draw dim lines of my body that I could have sworn were real instead of mental illusions.

Then we turned the headlamps, the large chamber was flooded with blue light again, and we were returned to our bodies as we knew them. It only took another two minutes from there to reach the entrance again, and we were bathed fully in the full light of the late afternoon. We had been in the cave for five and a half hours. The difference in light and the fresh air actually made me dizzy, and for the rest of the evening I had a slight headache caused by the bright light. It had been quite the trip, from our friendly local guides, to the “Fountain of Youth” to my near-panic in middle of a cave wall. I’ve tried to upgrade Pat’s documents, such as with his map and instructions, to help anyone else here in Jordan that might want to go caving and wants any help.

Now that it’s over, I can definitely say it was a very exciting experience. I’d love to find more caves in Jordan now that I’ve been through Zubiya, or as Google Earth calls it, Mughara al-Thaher (Cave of the Sunset). I’m not sure if my knees will recover from their banged-up state, or if my backpack will ever smell quite right again, but I’d do it all (almost all) again if I knew where to find the next cave to explore!