Float in the Dead Sea, Jordan

DECEMBER 29, 2012

That's NEGATIVE and in meters.

I’m pretty much the worst travel agent ever.  I wing it almost everywhere I go.  A day ago in the Detroit airport I was joking with a guy about where we were going to get stuck that night.  Just in case, I cached the map on my phone with the street level view of Amman, Jordan.  And that’s where I would be stuck.  By the time I made it through Immigration and dealt with getting my flight rebooked 48 hours behind schedule, I had spoke with enough locals to build my agenda.

 After checking into my gratis hotel and passing out from 10 am until 3 pm, I spoke with a real travel agent and paid a small fortune to get a private driver to haul me to The Dead Sea.  In two days, I would spend as much in Amman as I would in the following two weeks in Sri Lanka.  But hey, when else will I be back in the Middle East?

The "beach" was mostly salt.

It broke up easy and left your skin oily.

 

The Dead Sea is very interesting.  There is nothing on it or in it.  Plants can’t grow.  Animals can’t live.  Boats can’t properly ballast (and would rust away if they could).  There’s nothing. 

When you get in the water, the salinity is so great that you basically float on the surface.  Lying on my back, my chest, feet and knees popped out of the water.  Floating vertically with your feet under you takes a ton of effort as your lower torso is drawn to float to the surface.  Its like when you were a kid and tried to sit on a beach ball in the water.  It works for a few seconds then you tip over.

On the way back I had the driver take me in town for dinner.  If you’ve every traveled abroad you know that every driver is going to take you to his buddy’s place that serves $#it food to tourists at double the going rate.  This guy insisted that I eat at a restaurant where all the dignitaries eat.  He wasn’t BSing either – there were pics on the wall.  I had falafel and hummos, naturally. The hummos was floating in olive oil.  The best olive oil I’ve ever had.  The processing plant was about 10 km away from downtown.  Talk about fresh.  It was amazing.  I’ll never be able to eat hummos in the U.S. ever again.  A Top 10 meal of all time without question.  Total cost for the entree?  About $2.70 USD.