Salty Water

Yesterday I hit a new low: 1388 feet below sea level. Visiting the Dead Sea was an interesting experience. For example, once in the Dead Sea, I could actually float without needing to move my arms to stay above water. I couldn't even do that in the Red Sea. It was slightly unnerving at first to see several other people out in the water at a distance that they couldn't possibly be standing, and yet, their shoulders were out of the water. All you had to do was walk until you could no longer touch the bottom and suddenly you were floating. The water was extremely salty and I found out that I had a few more small cuts on my hands and feet than I had thought. A fellow intern attempted swimming normally, but splashed water up into his face. His eyes were red from the salt and he looked a bit sick from the water that had reached his mouth. Imagine water that is several times saltier than ocean water and then give it an oily taste and you have the Dead Sea water. After spending some time floating in the Dead Sea, some of us headed down the beach a ways to find some good Dead Sea mud. Apparently the high salt content makes it a great exfoliator. So we rubbed down with some dark brown mud, let it bake for a minute in the hot sun until it was dry and then washed it off. Between that and the oily water, my skin felt pretty good. It was also really neat to see how high the salt content was in the water. After swimming in the Red Sea, I had some streaks of salt deposits on me where the water dried, but after swimming in the Dead Sea, I had a good 1/8 inch of salt covering my skin.

Earlier that day we had visited Mount Nebo and the place where Jesus Christ was baptized by the Jordan River. Mount Nebo was different than I had expected. Mount Nebo is not very much higher in elevation than Amman, but from the lookout spot on Mount Nebo, you could see Jericho, the Dead Sea, and much of the surrounding area. From there we went down to the Jordan River. Most of the landscape near the river was the same as the rest of Jordan: basically a desert. However, when we got closer to the river, we were suddenly thrust into the middle of a tangle of bushes and sea cedar trees. These cedar trees look just like any other cedar tree, but they can utilize sea water. Evidence of this is found easily enough. Licking one of the cedar leaves, leaves a salty taste in your mouth. I was a bit surprised at the location of the baptism site. I had always assumed that it was in the middle of the Jordan River, but it wasn't. Archeologists have found what they believe is the baptism site which is a spot located just east of the river in a rather secluded area. Support for this theory comes because of the many ruins of church building that were built around the area as well as records kept by many of the ancient churches. There was very little water in the baptism site because of how dry the weather is, but the ravines around the area lead me to believe that in the winter, there is actually quite a bit of water there. Soon, we reached the Jordan River.  The water was green, murky, and not very cold.  But that only makes sense because the temperature outside was hot enough to make me start melting - almost literally.

=)