A Day at the Dead Sea

  Wadi Musa, Jordan
Tuesday, May 1, 2007

We left Amman this morning, relieved to be out of the city.  Our adventures with luggage probably didn't help, nor did the fact that our hotel was located basically in the middle of nowhere, and we had to trek for miles to find food or internet (unless you count greasy kebabs from the bus station down the road...)

We also had a bit of a problem at the hotel - one of the women in our group, who was stayin in a room on her own, was woken up in the middle of the night by a man trying to get into her room.  She struggled with him and called out for help, and he finally left.  It turned out ot be one of the night staff at the reception desk, who had apparently misinterpreted her being polite as an invitation to come into her room while she was sleeping.  Luckily, he was identified and our Tour Leader was assured he had been fired, but it was not a good start to the day.

Down Past Sea Level

Luckily, things improved from there on out.  Our first stop, mid-morning, was the Dead Sea, specifically a spa complex with access down to the Dead Sea.  Famous for being the lowest surface point on earth, the Dead Sea has a salinity level of about 37%, ten times that of a normal ocean, which means two things:
1. If you have any cuts, shaving rash, or broken skin anywhere, it STINGS like crazy!
2. You float!!!! 

Floatsom Dan

It was a very cool sensation walking out into the water, once it reached about chest height you realised that you were no longer touching the bottom, and that the water was so bouyant you were floating standing up!  It was a bit strange, but very fun once you got used to it, and we rolled and splashed around for a while before heading over to the mud banks opposite to coat ourselves in the rich black mud, which is supposedly very good for your skin.  Suzy, a massage therapist and aromatherapist on our tour, kept telling us how much we would have to pay to cover ourselves in Dead Sea mud at a beauty clinic back home in NZ, evidently we were getting a pretty good deal being able to just slather it on!

The Mud People Strike Back

After we had dried and cracked and the mud had worked its magic, we rinsed off and headed out to the freshwater pool to lounge around and swim, before tucking into a FABULOUS buffet lunch at the hotel restaurant.  Life on the road is so tough, sometimes!

We did have a sobering moment during the day though, when someone asked one of the girls in our group, Catherine, about an unusual scar she had.  It turns out that Catherine is a survivor of the shooting which took place at the roman amphitheatre in Amman in September 2006.  We hadn't realised this, but it was an Imaginative Tour, the same one we were on, at the same amphitheatre we had been at yesterday.  They had been visiting as a group when a lone gunman with a pistol opened fire, wounding five and killing one person, a British tourist, before he was taken out by police.  Catherine was shot in the chest and shoulder, and was lucky to survive.  She is the first of the group who survived to return to Jordan, just seven months after the attack, which I think is incredibly gutsy of her.  Suddenly, it made sense why she hadn't been with us yesterday - it turned out that she had an audience at the Royal Palace, and that the Jordanian King himself had paid for her ticket to come back and finish the tour.  She was very calm talking about it now, but it was clearly horrific at the time, and we were all pretty awed by her courage in returning so soon, and sobered by the realization that it could just as easily have been any of us.


After a lovely relaxing morning at the Dead Sea, we got back on the bus and headed to Wadi Rum, in the Jordanian desert, where we are spending the night tonight in a Bedouin-style camp amid the red-gold desert landscape, and getting up early tomorrow for a camel ride with our Bedouin guides.  It should be awesome!

Total Luxury

All our best from Jordan,
Dan and Gabrielle