Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Israeli Grandmother Drowns While Tubing on Guatemala River

RIO DE JANEIRO (JTA) — A 60-year-old Israeli woman died after drowning at a popular tourist area in Guatemala during an activity with a women-only expedition.

Hadas Ayash, from the northern town of Tivon, drowned Tuesday in a river tubing accident at Guatemala’s Cahabon River near Semuc Champey, which is a natural bridge and major tourist attraction in the region of Lanquín, Alta Verapaz, reported Prensa Libre news portal.

Ayash, mother of three and grandmother of two, had traveled to Guatemala as part of the annual Queen of the Desert group, an Israeli travel agency that specializes in women-only expeditions to test their limits.

It is still unclear what caused her to fall into the water and drown. Liran Eldar, one of the trip participants, told the Israeli news website Ynet: “It isn’t an extreme trip. It’s like tubing in the Jordan River in the summer.”

“The Israeli Embassy in Guatemala and the Department for Israelis Abroad are helping the family during this difficult time in order to bring the body back to Israel,” read a statement released by Israel’s Foreign Affairs Ministry.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:

  • Credit the Forward
  • Retain our pixel
  • Preserve our canonical link in Google search
  • Add a noindex tag in Google search

See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.