The Dead Sea

After a week of craziness and super hectic schedule. My roommate Julianne and friend from Qasid, Sammy decided to go to the Dead Sea on Friday. None of us had been before so we were pretty excited and had no idea where we were going or how this worked.

We got the bus station at 7am as we had been told by friends, but it was empty and we left on the bus at 815am. Oh well. The bus ride to the Dead Sea from Amman is only about 45 mins to an hour. Its really close. Its was a nice bus and a good ride. We arrived at the Dead Sea in front of the "public beach" sign for the Dead Sea. We had been told by everyone that the public beach part is always really crowded and kinda gross so go to a hotel and use their beach...we assumed that was the next stop....it was not.

So instead we stayed on the bus and were taken about 12K up the biggest hill ever to the Ma'in Hot Springs, which we had discussed trying to also go to, but now we were there. We made a new friend on the bus from Florida that had just arrived a few weeks ago in Jordan and was going solo, so we adopted him and he hung out with us all day.

We grabbed a little breakfast and were off to the Hot Springs that we beautiful, so warm and unreal. The whole science behind it is lost on me a bit, but it was fun and a cool experience. We were there for hours despite the huge crowd that was there as well.

After many hours there, we got a taxi to drive us back down the hill to the Dead Sea. It was beautiful! There is a light blue strip that goes along the shore of the sea that is so pretty. Directly across from the Dead Sea was palestine. Sammy was picking up the Palestinian phone service because we were so close.

Floating was really fun. We were all a bit like little kids again, being so excited to float and figure out the different water techniques and Superman moves we could do while we floated along the water. I went searching for big salt clusters that has formed on to rocks and tried to find some of the real mud in the sea. Found some and that was cool to use. I The shore was all salt and clusters of salt. So weird, but really interesting to see and feel.

We floated for about am hour and half or maybe 2 hours. Just floating and talking. Eventually we got the bus back around 5pm and got home around 630pm. It was a really long but good day and Julianne and I went to bed around 9pm. We were exhausted!

Link to more photos of the Dead Sea and the Ma'in Hot Springs

http://www.flickr.com/photos/90572684@N08/sets/