Sojourn a journey through life

Dead Sea

Yesterday, we took a day trip from Jerusalem that hit up a bunch of sites in the vicinity including Qumran (where they found the Dead Sea Scrolls), Masada, Jericho and the Dead Sea itself. Temperature soared to 50 degrees Celsius - and was a heat quite unlike anything we've experienced. It felt like your skin was being melted off - not unlike being in an oven, I suppose.

Floating on the Dead Sea was a fantastic experience. I don't think that we could quite describe how bizarre the feeling is - you need to experience it for yourself. It's actually impossible to sink yourself. Once you reach a deep enough point, and try to stand up, you can't. The water just lifts you up off the bottom and you're floating. Carly was cursing that she'd just shaved her legs the night before. Ouch.

Common practice is to cover your body with the mud from the sea, apparently it has Wonderful Healing Powers™. Our guide told us that we're not supposed to be in the water for any more than 30 minutes, and you need to rinse off as soon as possible once you get out. If you start to dry off, you can actually see the salt begin to crystalize on your skin.

These entries are going to be out of order, but we want to start putting these things up. We still need to blog about our night in the Desert in Wadi Rum in Jordan. It's coming soon, we promise. We're off to Tel Aviv today, with any luck we'll be there in a couple hours.