Masada and el Mar Muerto

Thursday January 31st, 2013 - Masada and El Mar Muerto

I was picked up at my Jerusalem hotel about ten minutes after 9.  I was expecting them at 8:45, but since I assumed (correctly) that they were coming from Tel Aviv and it was pouring down rain, they were late.  This frustrates me, is there no tour that leaves from Jerusalem?  Yes,I got to sleep in an extra hour for which I am grateful, but it just seems so inefficent to drive people all over the country.  Anyway, English speakers were in the minority on this tour, so Oberto's commentary started out in Spanish and switched to English.  His name and his accent suggested to me that he had Spanish before he had English, but his English was good.  We headed south through Jerusalem and to the Dead Sea.  I could follow a fair amount of the Spanish, this time not having heard it in English first, but with words like el Mar Muerto it isn't too hard.  What is with so many South Americans visiting the Holy Land in January?

We didn't stop, so this picture is moving by us at 100km/hr.  I have been below sea level (dry) before, but Death Valley isn't as low as the Dead Sea.

The Dead Sea has retreated over the last 2000 years.  (There is no exit, but it isn't getting as much imput as it once did.) For some reason, the ground is very fertile and there are date palm plantations and banana groves, even green houses built on the salty soil of the dry sea bed.

El Mar Muerto is the lowest place on earth (to which I keep mentally adding, above water) I did have to pop my ears once or twice as we descended from Jerusalem, the total altitude change being more than 1000m, but I couldn't really feel a difference in the pressure or amount of oxygen available the way I could when up very high and playing with my altimeter watch in Peru and Ecuador 

That is -225m.  I am not sure
 if it was the lowest we got,
but it was the lowest while
I was paying attention.

This is the pressure in hPa,
a unit I understand but
 never use. One atm is 1013hPa,
 so this works out to 1.04 atm.

It is raining for most of our trip, which increases the difficulty of taking pictures from the window of a quickly moving car, and doesn't make me too excited about going swimming in el Mar Mureto.  Oberto says they wont let us swim if the wind is too strong as we will get the water in our eyes and mouths.  How bad can that be?  Certainly I have had ocean water in my eyes before and it isn't great, but it isn't deadly.  Oberto is also worried about flash floods.  He keeps pointing out to us the dry river beds that we are crossing and he lets us know that if there is a flash flood we could be stuck behind one for hours and not be able to get to our hotels and be stranded in the desert and the impression I got was that he thought that would be bad.  

Another thing we passed without stopping was the Qumran caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found.  There was a brown sign (is brown an internationally recognized color for place of historical interest?) pointing off the highway and Oberto pointed too, but there were lots of caves, so I have no idea if this is the cave or not.  They were impressively high up on cliffs and I could believe that you could hide something there for centuries and with the dry heat it could survive.

The Qumeran Caves - where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found

Finally we arrive at Masada, the whole area reminds me of Southern Utah/Colorado with the mesas and erosion patterns.  The rain had stopped but it was still cloudy so the colors don't come out as well as I would have liked in my photos.  The museum at the bottom has a model which shows how the mesa Masada (meaning fortress) is built on is isolated from the others and therefore more difficult to attack.

Masada from the east looking west.  The developed parts were all at the north.

The same model, but now looking from the north to the south.  You can see the developed part (at the north) and the Roman ramp on the west side.

We took a cable car up the hill, but it is possible to take the snake path and we saw several groups of folks both walking up and walking down (presumably having hiked up early to see the sunrise).  This was the same path that was available to the slaves who were building the fortress for Herod in the late -0s (just before Christ) and the Romans who were trying to sack it in ~66AD, but of course it is very exposed and the zealots who were defending the fortress could easily pick off the Roman soldiers who tried to climb it.

The snake path leading up Masada.

I am a sucker for technical details.

Our shadow as we ascended.

Once we got to the top it was cool and windy, but the view was nice.  This picture has had help from Picasa as the colors in person were not even this vivid.  You can see the desert, el mar Muerto and the Jordanian hills on the other side of the sea.  

The Dead Sea with sun from a break in the clouds from the top of Masada

Our guide told us that Herod had never actually lived there and it is unclear to me if he ever even visited, but he was paranoid and had made enemies that he felt he might need to defend himself against so he commissioned this fortress/palace to be made out in the middle of nowhere on an almost impregnable mountain.  He didn't want to rough it, so everything was made to 5 star levels.  He had 29 of these storerooms filled with dry goods stored in clay pots that helped to preserve them.

One of 29 storerooms filled with dry goods so that someone could stay on this fortress for a very long time.  

He also had cisterns for water to drink, to bathe in and to farm crops so that he could have fresh food as well.  When I asked how many people lived here, Oberto's response was no body lived here, only slaves.  I wasn't quick enough to question him on this, aren't slaves people? but it was interesting that this wasn't a town, but really just a hiding place for Herod that he never ended up needing.

A friendly bird that would (according to Oberto) eat out of your hand if you had anything to feed it.

Herod died of natural causes at his palace in Cesarea in 4AD and never needed to hide from his enemies at Masada so it was abandoned although apparently fully stocked when the last of the Jewish rebels fled there in 66AD.  The Jews had revolted against Roman rule and had been mostly squashed but the last group that was still fighting came to Masada as their last hold out.  There were a lot of Roman soldiers, enough to fill eight camps of the size shown in this picture.  The Romans couldn't come up the snake path and they couldn't starve out the zealots

One of 8 Roman camps around the base of Masada during the siege.

The zealots converted this store room into a synagogue, the first synagogue ever as it was already in place when the second temple was destroyed.

So the Romans start building a ramp that they can bring their siege weapons up with.  They take dirt and rock from a nearby pile and eventually they get up level to the walls of Masada.  The rebels had big rocks they would roll down the ramp in a game they called bowling for Romans, but eventually the soldiers made it to the top.

Early Jewish bowling balls.

The rebels had built a wall of earth and wood, so the Roman's battering ram wasn't effective, instead they tried to light the wall, at first the wind started burning the Roman's siege tower, but eventually the wind changed and burned the wall.

The Roman ramp, which has eroded somewhat but used to reach the top of the wall.  

Once the zealots knew they were out of chances they all killed themselves rather than be taken alive to become (at best) slaves of the Romans.  

Again, the fortress was abandoned until some Byzantine monks came to live here in solitude.  They built a church with mosaics and everything.  

A Byzantine church built on Masada several hundreds of years after it was abandoned.

We took the cable car back down the hill where it was fairly warm and a swim didn't seem like such a bad idea any more.

Masada in person, from the bottom with the cables for the cable car visible on the right.

Our next stop was the En Gedi Spa, a kabutz on el Mar Meuerto.  We got there at 12:30 and had three hours to do what we liked (including eat lunch) before meeting up again to go back to civilization.

...above water.

This tractor pulled a train clearly
designed for a much bigger crowd.

I rented a towel, changed into my swimsuit and went out to wait for the tractor to take me to the water's edge.  When the kabutz was originally built the sea was right outside the door, since then it has receeded 2km.  Since the area is mostly flat, this isn't as much water as you might think, but it is still an awfully long way and must be bad for morale.  When my train (which I can say since I was the only one on it) reached the waters edge there were a few people there, but they got on the train to return to the spa so for a few minutes I had the entire sea to myself.

Not exactly a hopping place.

The salt crust continues even under the water,
\proving it is a saturated solution.

I took some pictures in the interest of science and then got in the water.  It was cool, but not as cold as the Pacific Ocean, and it was a very interesting feeling to float so high and so easily.

On top of the sand a crust
of salt that was hard and sharp.

It is hard to tell, but I am floating much higher than i would be in a pool or a regular ocean.  The wind was pushing pretty hard from the right and i was paddling hard to stay in one place.  

 Clearly I was not alone at the beach any longer, two guys who had been on my tour walked to the beach and were kind enough to take my photo while I was in the water.  The wind was making waves and pushing me north and I was paddling hard to stay in one place and riding the waves.  One wave crashed over my shoulder and water got in my eye and mouth.  What I said above about how bad could it be?  Well, it was pretty bad.  My eye felt like it was on fire and the taste in my mouth was awful.  It was beyond salty, it hurt.  It was metalic and sharp and yucky.  I don't have the words to describe it.  I probably would have stayed in longer but I couldn't handle the pain in my eye and the taste in my mouth so I made my way to the shore.  One of the vets offered some drinking water to wash my face but fortunately there was as fresh water fountain there and i was able to get back to feeling normal pretty quickly.  The train had come back, so I toweled off, dressed and went back up the beach to the spa.

The next stop was the mud.  Not one to miss an opportunity for a new experience (especially when it is free/already paid for) I found the vats of black mud.  Again I was the only one around, so there is no picture of me covered in mud, but that is probably for the best anyway.  The mud itself was soft, but it had rocks or pieces of salt in it, so when I rubbed it on myself it scratched and stung.  It was cold and windy, so I didn't let the mud dry (which I was told you are supposed to do) before going to the sulfur showers to wash it off.

Mud, mixed with rocks or salt.  

The sulfur showers.  I guess they are from a spring near by as they were always going and the one all the way to the left was pleasantly warm.  

 After showering in bad egg smelling water, I headed back into the spa for a soak in the mineral baths.  They weren't as hot as i might have liked, and they were salty enough that I floated higher than I wanted to, although not as high as in the sea.  I had to work to submerge my neck, which would have felt nice to be warm and cozy.  The rules said 15 minutes max in the mineral pool, so I dutifully got out and went to the locker room to take a real shower and change into my regular clothes.  Then I went downstairs to the restaurant where I ate lunch and chatted with the two American veterinarians until it was time to meet the bus.

This was the composition of the water, which is cool, although, without units it is almost meaningless. 

You have to love lists of numbers without units.  It looks like there might be units in the Arabic version.  Can any one help me with that?  There are many things wrong with this, like when I add up the positive ions I get 76,795, but the chloride alone is more negative than that.  So what are the other cations and why are they left out? Why is potassium's K small? And why are some of the charges before the symbol and others after?  I want to talk to this chart maker's chemistry teacher!

The rain must still have been going on to the north because it created this beautiful rainbow.  I could almost see 180 degrees and I am pretty sure this is the first time I have for sure seen land through the bottom of the rainbow.

Dead Sea coast from the road as the sun was coming out.

Oberto said he had been working as a guide for 45 years coming to Masada and only 3 or 4 times has he seen waterfalls here.  He was clearly very excited about seeing them.

There were no flash floods that we saw, but what were dry river beds in the morning were not so dry in the afternoon.

Bedouin goats on the side of the road.

Bedouin camps.  They are not so nomadic anymore, there are too many borders and it is too easy to buy water

We retraced our steps back north along the Dead Sea coast and to Jerusalem, we dropped a couple of people off and then went the rest of the way to Tel Aviv. Oberto dropped me a block from my hotel, which kind of pissed me off, but I had already been there on my first night in Israel, so it wasn't a big deal.