Another Round at the Dead Sea, or Mixed With Mud

Here are a few photos from a weekend's excursion to the Dead Sea, with a few helpful captions:

This is a spa near the Dead Sea. They had huts.


This is the Dead Sea, with Jordan across the way. The Dead Sea has shrank noticeably in recent years. As you walk down to the coast, you find markers for where the sea level was in 2004, 2000, 1991, and 1985. Certainly in 1985, all this dry ground you see was covered in sulfurous, mineral-rich water. Somebody call Al Gore.


Ahh yes, the four languages that make Israel the place it is. And of course, all of it just to say the dirt is muddy, and when the dirt hasn't been muddy in years.


Hey, nice shoes! Comfortable for taking the long stroll down to the Dead Sea, but not quite durable enough to go in the water with. Fortunately, my nimble steps kept me from cutting up my feet on the rock hard salty ground on the Dead Sea beach and below the water, so as to not have gashes on my feet that the salty water could rip into like salt on so many wounds.


Despite my failure in gym class to drownproof or float or whatever we had to do for 10th grade gym, I managed to lean back and float on the Dead Sea. I guess I'm not that strong.

I look like either my older brother in the early 90s or Andrei Arshavin. The common ground? Russianness and mullets. The latter feeds into the former, by the way.

Of course, that was when I emerged from the sea the first time. Then, after sleeping in the depths for two thousand years, I ended up getting a little crusty, and a little dirty, and, well...


Somehow I still had spandex on. There's more mud beneath the spandex than on it, by the by. Or is that too much info?


Let's just say that this towel got really dirty after I was through with it. Ok, I only washed my hands off with it, but it was still really dirty. And the sulfur showers did a pretty good job washing off all the mud, except it was a little difficult for the mud in my spandex. No, really, it was real mud, not "mud".

Ok, a few of you have done some sleuthing and are wondering who took all these lovely photos. That is, who accompanied me on this trip to the Dead Sea? Well, fortunately, I got a picture of my companion right over here...



Oh, wait. That's not it. I stopped seeing that camel in August. Hmm. Let me see...ahh...wait...right here...this might be the one...



Or to paraphrase Dazed and Confused, I bet we're pretty cute once you wash all that mud off of us.

And next week is my return to Spain, so stay tuned!