Dead Sea Region,
Jordan
Sunday, August 10, 2008
The next day we rented a car and drove ourselves to the Dead Sea. Along the way, we came across an interesting sign that read "Jesus' Baptism Site". We thought it was a typo but followed the signs curiously. By golly, it was Jesus' Baptism site and had only been open for a short time because the area was a war zone before between Israel and Jordan until the late 90s. Most people don't know about it. They had a small, modest exhibition and when we actually arrived at the site it was not ornate or highly decorated but just a couple of wooden platforms and some other improvements on the site but there it was in front of us. A small lake-like area of natural water where John the Baptist baptized Jesus. It was pretty fascinating stuff. We also met a really delightful Jordanian family that was from Colorado. The father was the proprietor of the largest liquor store in the US and was in the Guinness Book of World Records. They helped us tremendously and got us out of a rut when we were scarily low on fuel in the hills going to Moses burial site. Thereafter, we made our way to the Dead Sea. This experience was fantastic as I finally was able to swim in water without those funny looking inflated duck-floaties that went around my arms to keep me afloat. I floated without them this time. We were able to take a cool picture of ourselves reading a book while floating in the Dead Sea. We've heard of other people eating in the middle of the Dead Sea by floating their plates and silverware. Rachel and I were also black for a day as we paid a few bucks to get covered in the healing dead sea mud which was rich in minerals and oils. It started stinging in certain parts but after wiping off it felt really good and our skin was radiant. Now I won't have to do as many manicures and facials since we actually purchased some of it (in Kenya we got stopped at the security checkpoint as they thought we had a sharp metal object or rocks in our bag - it turned out it was the minerals in the Dead Sea mud scrub - incidentally, the scrub was a decoy and they never found the pet rock we smuggled in - Mmwwwahahahhah!!!).
Jordan is definitely a place that we didn't have enough time to enjoy and we want to revisit in the near future. We didn't get all of the opportunities we would have wanted to enjoy the country's hidden treasures.
