Day 8 The Dead Sea

Saturday, February 26th.

Today was a busy day. We had a good breakfast at the guesthouse before packing up and boarding the minivan again. We drove for two and a half hours through beautiful, roughed, desert, mountainous, terrain before reaching Karak Castle. This one was harder to see from below, but was actually in better condition. It is another crusader castle. It is huge and the ruins still contain some rooms, tunnels and chambers. The kitchen, oven, barracks and church all still exist in some form.

It was really cold and windy up on top of that mountain. Actually the weather here in Jordan has been cooler than I expected, and we keep going up mountains and down into valleys, and the temperature changes a lot. Plus, being a desert it cools off a lot at night.

After that we stopped and picked up some shwarmas for lunch and then drove an hour or so, down from the mountain to the Dead Sea. We all put on our bathing suits and went for a dip in it. We were warned that it is not for swimming because the water is much saltier than any other sea. It's 30% salt and chemical and very hard on eyes, mouth and things like cuts or jewelry. This is because it is land locked (it is the lowest place on earth at 412m below sea level!) and only fed by the Jordan River. The water evaporates with the heat and leaves the high concentrations of salt. As a result, you float on the water! You can keep both hands and both legs out of the water, or if you roll over you can keep you head up and bend your legs so they are above the water too. Very weird sensation.

Then we drove back up from the valley to the top of Mount Nemo, which is about 900m above sea level. This is the place where Moses came to see the Promised Land and apparently where he died, or was buried. They have never found his actual burial site, but Muslims and Christians recognize it as the place of his memorial. Even John Paul II came here and acknowledged that. The last picture is of the view of the Promised Land and the sign that indicates the direction and distance to everything you can see in Jordan and Israel. Unfortunately you can't see very much from vista points in Jordan because when the wind is blowing there is a lot of sand and dust in the air. It's not mist or pollution, it's sand.

From there we drove to our hotel. We checked in and had a hour to relax before Jess gave us our briefing about tomorrow and then took us on a walking tour of Madaba and then to a restaurant for dinner. It was a cheap and easy dinner. Just basic sandwiches in long flat buns, but they were yummy and I had a glass of fresh lemonade and another of fresh orange juice, both squeezed by hand not machine. After dinner, those of us who had never tried it before, had a taste of smoking Jordan apple flavoured tobacco through the hookah pipes. There is a name for it but I forget, I think it's “sheesha” or something like that. We sat and talked for a while and then headed back to the hotel for the rest of the evening blogging and then beddiebyes.