Lowest of the Low

After all this time worked out how to do more than one photo per blog- duh!. Anyway, today Helen and I joined the lowest of the low and swam in the Dead Sea at 429 metres below sea level. The Dead Sea was not like we imagined it. It was beautiful to look at, a nice blue colour and the water was quite clear despite it being 9x more salty than the ocean. It was warm (20c), the day was sunny, Amman Beach not too crowded, a perfect end to the day. The swimming was like being a cork. The water felt kind of oily and if you had any cuts or nicks on your skin it stung very bad, but you knew that if there were any bugs, they were dead. There a signs warning you not to put your head under the water, not to get water in you eyes or mouth, and to stay in for no longer than 15 minutes because its hard on your skin. Despite the warnings Helen decided to taste the water and before I knew it she was heading to shore to wash her mouth out. The most salty bitter thing she ever tasted she reckons, and it feels like its burning the inside of your mouth.

The Dead Sea is going down on average 1m a year due the the Jordan River being depleted by both Jordan and Israel for irrigation. Some of the road we drove on would have been under water 20 years ago and there are large areas of mud flats at the south and north ends. On those mud flats you can see the slime/tar pits mentioned in the Bible in the story of Abraham, Lot and King Bera of Sodom. The Sea has dropped so far that if it wasn't for the industry of Jordan and Israel the whole bottom third of the Sea would be dry, making every Bible Map of the Dead Sea out of date. Both countries have created large evaporation pond systems to harvest salt, of course, pumping water up from the Sea to top them up when needed, adding to the draw off. Add to this large industrial plants on both sides of the border that also take water to extract potash and other minerals, the Dead Sea is slowly disappearing, although at the current rate it will take another 700 years to dry out completely. For those interested in the climate warming debate the Dead Sea will reach its historic low in about three years, which happened during the time of Abraham and Lot, due to warm climatic conditions.

Apparently there are a couple of schemes being talked about to put water back into the Dead Sea. The Med-Dead scheme is to tunnel water from the Mediterranean Sea, and the Red-Dead scheme, which is more realistic, is to canal water from the Red Sea. But of course one of the most contested international borders and regional tensions probably mean this will never happen.

The Dead Sea reached one of its historic highs about the time Jesus was around on earth. We visited a ruin called Callirhoë (like Ngarahoe) which was a trading port built by Herod the Great for his fleet of trading vessels that sailed the Sea. The port is now on top of a steep cliff that must be 75 metres high. We stood in Herod's home away from home Palace, that was serviced by a nearby hot spring. This is the place he chose to go to try and alleviate his many ailments that led to his ghastly death descibed in the Bible, and the place where he breathed his last.

We also stopped off to visit Lot's wife (2nd picture). I have to say that she was much much taller than we expected, and wasn't salty at all. At the very bottom of the Dead Sea we went to Lot's Cave (3rd photo) where he and his daughters ended up after the desruction of Sodom and Mrs Lot being pickled. The Byzantinnes had dozens of caves to choose from, and heaven knows why they chose this one.

Photo 4 looks about 15km across the Dead Sea to Israel and the hills of Judah from where we swam at Amman Beach. Unfortunately the photo doesn't show what we were actually looking at. On the last range of hills in the distance we could see quite clearly high rise buildings. That is Jerusalem. So close, and we will be there in less than two weeks!