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Wednesday, July 09, 2003 THE DEAD ZONEa little over an hour east of JERUSALEM lies THE DEAD SEA. en route, we crossed a desert that looks alot like the hilly parts of ARIZONA, except for the sheppard people who live in shanty tents on the sides of the hills and are dressed like extras from a CECIL B. DeMILLE epic. if you were to imagine the highway out of the panorama, you could swear it was 1000 B.C. we listened to BANANARAMA’S GREATEST HITS as our driver got up to speeds nearing 100 miles per hour and the temperature outside hovered somewhere around 100 degrees. we spent only 2 days at THE DEAD SEA, but trust me, that was quite enough. there was absolutely nothing else to do but lay on the beach all day and get into the hot salty sea, and that’s exactly how we spent JOELLE’S birthday. no slot machines, no strip clubs and no outlet malls. JOELLE read a book and i listened to my new IPOD with a catalog of 3000 songs (4500 more to fill it up). we had been warned to not dive into the sea because the sulfur rich water would burn our eyes and make us sick if it were ingested. what they didn’t tell us is that we’d be hard pressed to even try to get our heads underneath the watermark. because of the salt content (i’m guessing), you float on the surface of the water like the BART SIMPSON balloon at the MACY’S THANKSGIVING DAY PARADE, all the while minerals are extracting toxins from your body. it was like taking a hot bath in a sea of epsom salt. it was a pretty cool experience, except that i scraped my toes and fingers on big pieces of rock salt in the water and it felt like a bee sting. JOELLE and i floated in the water for an hour at a time, with big straw hats and sunglasses in place. all the other sea soakers were well over 70 years old, presumably there for the water’s healing benefits. strangely, no fish or other creatures can survive in THE DEAD SEA, hence the name. . | Permalink 2009 RuCo, Inc.—All Rights Reserved |
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