Floating In The Dead Sea

After a buffet breakfast, we met the remaining couple who had arrived late last night (you guessed it - eastern suburbs of Melbourne), piled into the bus, and headed north to Jerash. 15 in the tour group. Canadians, Brits, Japanese, Mexicans, a Finn and somebody from the Netherlands as well as the ever present Aussies. As always, when you travel, you meet travelers, and between us all we've been most places. Our guide, Aywan (iWan) is a Jordanian Arab who lives in Croatia.

Everything is close, and Jerash was about 45 minutes away at the northern end of the country. The attraction there is one of the three most perfectly preserved Roman cities in the world, and it was very good. Construction was started about 100 BC, and it had two theatres, a forum, hippodrome, piazza, temples, fountains, and high street, surrounded by several sets of walls and elaborate gates. It was built on Greek ruins, so you could see those too, and slightly to one side there were three Byzantine churches from the 4th century AD when the Roman gods were replaced by Christian ones.

We were told that local entertainment was on the cards as we sat in the main theatre and gazed at the good condition is was still in. Sure enough, two Bedouin entered to play to us - on the bagpipes! Very traditional Jordanian tunes they were too, including the Skye song, and Happy Birthday. Luckily we didn't get Scotland The Brave, as the Scot in our tour was already wincing enough.

A word about the tea towels. I always thought that Yassar Arafat wore his black and white tea towel because it was a traditional Bedouin headdress. Not so. The tea towels are quite recent. The British introduced them in 1948 when they ruled the place after the second world war. They wanted to keep the waring parties apart, so Arabs from the west side of the Jordan (Israel and west bank) got to wear black and white checks, and Arabs from the east side of the Jordan (Jordanians) got to wear red and white checks. At least they then knew who to shoot at. Don't say I never teach you anything!

Back in the bus after a couple of hours exploring, to retrace our tracks to Amman, then west down a dirty great big, long hill to the Dead Sea. Amman is 600m above sea level, and the Dead Sea is roughly 400m below, the lowest point on the planet, so we descended about a kilometre in one long hill. All the guys were contemplating what would happen if the brakes or the tyres went half way, as there were no run offs. All of the girls were not impressed that the guys brought the topic up.

Most of the beach front on the Dead Sea has been bought privately, so we went to the privately owned public beach resort. After paying to get in, we tackled the buffet lunch, then had a couple of hours to try to drown ourselves in the Dead Sea. It's almost impossible, so the lifeguards just blew their whistles occasionally to keep themselves awake. There are 330 grams of salt and minerals in every litre of water, which makes you incredibly buoyant. As Mandy put it, you feel like you are lying on a lilo. You can float around on your back reading a book, which is the party trick for the photos, but it came unstuck for one of our group when the book fell apart and drifted off. The seashore is actually salt hardened to be like rock, so it's quite hard to walk over.

It's almost impossible to swim underwater, though you don't want to try as the salt will damage your eyes and mouth. Standing up from the floating position is really hard, because you can't get your legs to go down underneath you. However, it's meant to be really good for your skin, and the beaches are visited by many people with skin issues as a treatment. A good shower afterwards was a must, and then it was back on the bus for the slow grind back up the hill on the way back to the hotel.

Not the kind of scene I expected to see out the bus window. Snow (well at least the ice left behind after the snow) in big piles. They has a big snowstorm about 10 days ago, and it still hasn't melted. Snow in Jordan!

Out to another Jordanian restaurant with the group for tea. The house specialty was cooking meals in sealed earthenware pots, then cracking them open with a huge machete at the table.