Dead Sea - Day 2

Still catching up on our Dead Sea trip. I blogged about “day one” a couple of weeks back. Now, on to day two.

Sammy woke us up at 6:30—just in time to see the sun rise over the Dead Sea. And, since it was actually the third time he’d woken us up since we’d all gone to sleep, Nicki decided to sleep in a bit longer. So, I went for a quick photo-drive (light is always best early in the morning, you know).

Here is a shot of the rocky landscape just behind our hotel in En Bokek.

And in this one, you can see the tourist town of En Bokek in the background.

Another picture of the rocky landscape. This is looking West from the Dead Sea

A road sign pointing to Masada. We’d be visiting Masada later that day.

Speaking of Masada, here it is from the bottom. Can you see the ruins on top of the mesa? And, the snake path leading up (we opted for the cable car—we had Sam as an excuse, after all).

This is a salt canal of sorts—moving water (and salt) between the north & south sections of the Dead Sea. For the record, we learned that the south section has the highest salt & mineral content (best for floating).

Another view of the land between the two sections of the Dead Sea. This “stream” looked a bit more natural.

Fortunately, there were instructions on how to bathe/swim in the Dead Sea—and we followed them to the letter (except for the last one…it certainly wasn’t hot the day we visited). This is at the public beach in En Bokek. Our hotel’s “private” beach was closed—not that it mattered.

One critical component for any Dead Sea bather is to lather oneself with the mineral-rich mud—a natual mud wrap. And for us fair skinned types, the mud doubles as a sunscreen—not that you’d need much at the Dead Sea. Along with the super-low elevation comes an extra thick layer of atmosphere, filtering out some of the sun’s damaging rays.

A non-muddied Russian woman took this picture of Nicki and I (cropped for blog based on request). Then, she said some things in Russian and we figured out that she wanted to pose with Nicki—so I took a picture of the two of them with the woman’s camera. Our new friend was not the only Russian at the public beach in En Bokek. In fact, we seemed to be the only non-Russians.

Here’s Nicki floating in the Dead Sea--nature's spa.

And here she is again—this time, doing a stomach float. No, she is not laying on a sand-bar…the water really is that buoyant.

A view of the Dead Sea from our hotel room in En Bokek. Not bad!

In the afternoon, we visited Masada, a cliff top fortress rising 400m above the Dead Sea—and most certainly a terribly hot place to live during the summer months. Built more than 2000 years ago, the site is famous for the Jewish Zealots who chose to commit suicide, including killing their wives and children,  rather than to surrender to Roman invaders in AD66.

Here’s a view of Herod’s “Northern Palace”. Yes, Herod “owned” Masada for a while.

This shows some of the mesa-top ruins with the mountains of Jordan in the background.

And here is the Dead Sea as seen from atop Masada. Yes, it was a beautiful day.

Another view of the Dead Sea from Masada—this time with an Israeli flag and some fellow tourists. We met a group of South Koreans who were visiting the Holy Land. Sammy was quite a hit with the Koreans while descending via the last cable car ride of the day at 4pm.

Speaking of Sammy, here he is back at our hotel. Lately he’s been uttering sounds such as da-da and nah-nah. Nicki and I are split as to whether or not he’s purposely saying “words”—I’ll let you guess which one of us is sure that his first real word is dada J.