Floating in the Dead Sea

Armed with sunscreen, books and a packed lunch of abergine, Marseille and I hop on a public bus to visit the famous Dead Sea. The driver asks us where we are going, and we tell him (Kalia Beach). Half an hour later, he stops the bus on the side of the road and tells us to get out.

I look out the bus window and there is no apparent body of water. “Dead Sea?” I ask.

He points to his left. “Over there.”

So Marseille and I get off the bus and this is all we see:

This is supposed to be the Dead Sea bus stop?

We exchange perplexed glances, shrug, laugh and walk the way he pointed. It’s a desolate road; there are no other vehicles or people in sight. Fortunately we see a little sign pointing us down a path, so we follow it. But then we start seeing bombed out, graffittied buildings.

Buildings from the 60's bombings

There’s a lot of these sort of buildings, no other people and no apparent body of water. By now it feels a little creepy, like a scene from “No Country for Old Men” or something. But we keep walking and are eventually rewarded.

We finally find the Dead Sea and it's beautiful

The sensation of floating in the Dead Sea is awesome. It’s like wearing water wings or something as a kid, but your whole body just sort of floats. It’s easy to lose your balance. The salt in the air and the water is, as expected, viciously strong. After a couple showers, I can still feel it on my skin.

Reading my book in the Dead Sea

The mud in the Dead Sea is supposed to be very good for the skin, so we coat ourselves and laze around in our newly black skin.

Self administered mud treatments

Free facial mask

We are fully enjoying ourselves, relaxed on the beach, when some overzealous Muslim dude who is camped out quite closely to us sits Indian style on a little white table and starts singing and praying very loudly. It’s extremely annoying and I fear that Marseille is going to lose it because she’s livid. He continues to wail and finally we move to the other side of the beach, making no attempts to hide this fact. We can still hear him. He should have prayed that the little white table he was sitting on would hold. It eventually breaks and I regret that I was in the bathroom when this happened. But just seeing the table in pieces on the beach and hearing about it from Marseille makes me laugh a little vindictively.

A guy wails his prayers on the beach and we are extremely irritated by it

There is a bit of conflicting information regarding return bus times and where to actually catch the bus. We find the place but end up waiting an hour and a half for the bus. Just as we are starting to get suspicious that there is no bus because it’s starting to get dark, a full one pulls up. There are no seats left, so we do like the Israelis do and sit in the isles. We are giggling over this and taking pictures of each other. I am only vaguely aware a few minutes later that the bus has stopped again to pick up more people. My back is to the front of the bus. I am wearing a tank top (thrilled with it, because I dared not bare my shoulders in any other Middle Eastern country) and two things happen at once. Marseille’s eyes grow big and I feel something cold on my back.

I turn around and my face is about 2 inches from the barrel of an M16. A bunch of soldiers have just gotten on the bus, their guns slung over their shoulders. This soldier is talking and laughing to his buddy and doesn’t realize that his gun is pointing into my back.  I know it isn’t dangerous or anything- I mean, I assume that the safety and everything is on, but it’s still a little startling.

Originally my back was to this guy when I was sitting in the isle and his gun was poking me

We eventually move because the isle gets too jammed. Marseille finds a seat and a couple soldiers in seats throw their duffel bags in the isle for me and make a seat for me in between them.  I talk to them the whole time about their gun policies and they laugh and talk and let me take pictures. The soldiers look intimidating but are nice.

Sadly, my time in Israel comes to a close and the next day I have to say good bye to Marseille. It makes me sad to part ways. Once again I am travelling solo.

I can’t fly to Dubai from Israel, so I have to fly from Amman, Jordan. Getting to the airport from Jerusalem goes like this: bus to the border town, cab to the crossing area, exit Israel through customs, bus to Jordan customs, enter Jordan customs, cab to the Amman airport. It takes several hours and I get outrageously ripped off by the cab drivers, and don’t really have any say or negotation powers if I want to get from point A to B because they are all in it together. By the time I get to the airport, I feel angry about getting so ripped off, angry at all the resumed staring, and once again I feel very alone. But I’m excited to see Dubai. I take a deep breath and tell myself to chill out, and I look forward to the people I’ll meet in Dubai.