View over the dead sea.
The dead sea is a lake at the end of the Jordan river that divides Israel from Jordan. (And the Sea of Galilee is a much smaller fresh-water lake at the other end of the valley that is the source of the Jordan River). The Dead Sea is salty because there is no outlet for the water and all the salts that are leached from the land that the river waters pass through are left in the lake as the water evaporates with the sun. And over the millennia that has amounted to a great deal of salt.
In fact the Dead Sea is dying... Its evaporating fast because humans are drawing so much water from the Jordan river that less and less water is reaching the Dead Sea each year. The Dead Sea is already renowned as the lowest point on the Earths surface and is about 440m below sea level... That's a long way down!! But each year it loses about another 1-1.5m of water!
Anyway, I went to have a swim to see what its like... And its rather an odd experience...
The water is so intensely salty that it doesn't really feel like water at all... Its more like a very light oil... it beads off the skin strongly and it feels thick and greasy.
Greasy water that beads off the skin.
Then once you get into the water there is so much buoyancy that it feels kind of like you are wearing a 12mm wetsuit with no weights (Like you would use for surfing or diving in arctic waters ). You float so high that its actually quite difficult to swim... Your feet are up out of the water so using a normal kicking motion doesn't work...it just makes lots of splashing and no propulsion!
And when you try to "stand" in the water (floating vertically) you constantly become unbalanced and start to flip over... very interesting!
And the water is intensely salty indeed... Its far too salty to drink and even trying to taste it is unpleasant because it burns your mouth... It burns any area of skin on your body that is normally moist...Like inside your mouth or your nostrils etc...You can put your head underwater only briefly but then trying to open your eyes after you come up again is very painful because the salt is in your eyes.
They say you should not stay in the water for more than about 20min since the osmotic pressure is rapidly dehydrating you by sucking the moisture out through your skin... But after you do get out and wash the salt off with fresh water, your skin does feel much softer... I guess the salt triggers your skin to release more oil and clears out the pours pretty well too... There is a thriving spa industry around the edge of the Dead Sea; and the mud is apparently very therapeutic too... you can buy tubs of the mud in very nice cosmetic packages :)
Floating level with lungs absolutely full.
Floating level with lungs absolutely empty.
No, Im not touching the bottom at all... just floating like this!
All the tourists lolling about.
And after an hour or so there is not much else to do so I went back to Jerusalem which is only about 45 minutes drive away (Its such a small country).
