Burning Up the Middle East

With a break from standard operating procedure, EvilGM (currently typing) will be filling in an entry after a recent trip to the Middle East.

I have been to Jordan several times in the past, but I’ve never had the opportunity to visit much of the country. This time around I took two days to do a little site seeing. I spent the weekend at the Kempinski Hotel overlooking the Dead Sea (البَحْر المَيّت or al-Bahr al-Mayyit in Arabic). From what the locals told me it is 20km across and about 70km long. In case you forgot it also sits about 420m (1,378 ft) below sea level, which merits the status of the naturally lowest place on the surface of the Earth . You could clearly see the West Bank on the other side in the day, but nighttime lights made it easier still.



Mimicking the locals, I went over to an urn containing a very dark mud, which is used to coat the body before going into the Dead Sea. Although you can pay people to do this for you at the spa, I did my best for free on shore. After slathering the stuff on you sit out and bake in the sun for a while until the mud is not so moist anymore. My initial reaction was one of mild disgust, but when a local Jordanian urged me to “try it,” I gave in. Some people pay thousands of dollars for the privilege, and since most of my cost was paid for me, why not? (Kind of like the time I tried deep fried lamb brains on a previous trip to Jordan. One sampling was enough. I can explain it in gory detail if you’re ever so inclined to hear…)

It took about 10 minutes for the mud to bake in place. I was blacker than I had ever been in my life. The mud is a burnt gray/brown/black mix, even more so once the moisture goes. I walked into the Dead Sea, albeit with some difficulty. I had heard tales about being able to float in the water without any effort, but the experience was still surprising. As I walked into the water I found that it took great effort to remain on my feet. Once I passed my belly button I could no longer stand up and allowed gravity and the waters to carry me safely to my back. Rubbing off the mud took a little while, and the results gave me markedly smoother skin, even on my elbows, which for most guys (real men don’t use lotion) is one of the roughest spots on me.

I tried to “stand up” in the water and was unable to do so for more than brief moments. The salt just pushes you around like so much flotsam. It was somewhat unnerving that although I could force my body to do what I wanted, the environment simply refused to go along. After regrettably getting a touch of water in my nose (it burned for quite a while) I waffled over to the shore and rinsed off. The place is so ridiculously salty (9x the ocean) that you can smell it and see it everywhere. I also found out that Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority are contemplating excavating a canal to connect the Dead Sea to the Mediterranean or Red Sea so that they can replenish the rapidly lowering sea. It is currently depleting at a rate of just under 1m per annum. For the interested you can check out the following link for the Two Seas Canal.



Another piece of interest is Mount Sodom (جبل السدوم‎ or Jabal Usdum in Arabic), which is right at the base of the sea. Per local legend, it is the resting place of Lot’s wife, who was turned into a pillar of salt for returning to Sodom despite God’s warning to flee. The entire mountain is made almost entirely of halite (rock salt) and is a scant 5x3 miles. The little pillar/spire is called Lot’s Wife by locals.



One of the must see attractions in Jordan, and a World Heritage Site, is Petra (البتراء or Al-Butrā in Arabic). Many people have seen a small part of it when they watched the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Petra is mentioned in the Dead Sea Scrolls as Rekem and was spoken of by Eusebius, Jerome, Pliny the Elder, Josephus, etc. as a trade hub for a Semitic caravaneer group. You don’t need to know the history to explore and appreciate its beauty. I bought the services of a hotel driver and off we went. Even though it took 3 hrs to reach the site, it was still very much worth it.

After some initially boring structures, you run into the natural, narrow clefts in the rock leading to the main sites inside. The rock clefts run for a good ¼ - ½ mile. Coming out of the fissure you quickly run into the structure used in many movies, as seen below.



The beauty of Petra is that virtually all of the structures are carved right out of the rock as a single piece. It is evident that some pieces were added to the outsides here and there, but most of the various locations at the site were carved from a solid rock face. The natural beauty of the stone, coupled with the obvious skill of the craftsmen, has embodied magnificence in a palpable form rarely seen in this plastic age. If you ever have the chance, I urge you to visit.




One final note on Petra was that you can see the majority of the sections worth seeing in roughly 4 hours. At 1330 the group I was with decided to go and visit the location known as “The Monastery” or Jabal Al-Deir (#24). The map we had been given was fairly accurate so we didn’t fear the seemingly 600m trip from #22 to #24. You should always fear what you don’t know.



Just like in the movies that have the grizzled veteran do “one last job” I should have known that nothing ever works as planned. The map should have mentioned that the drawings for this final section were not to scale (everything else had been!) If they had drawn the map to scale, it might have looked something like this:



Our very own Bataan Death March got longer every time we stopped someone to ask how much farther it was. “We gave up and just turned around,” was our first group's response. Eventually we got, “Oh, just another 20 minutes.” Five minutes later, “Oh, just another 20 minutes.” Another 5 minutes goes by, “I’d guess about another 25 minutes or so.” Eventually we got down to 15 minutes, then 10, then 5, then sweet, sweet victory. (It’s always worse when you can’t see the finish line.) 600m turned into 45 minutes uphill in the sun. I drank 1.5 liters of water on the trip up. I noticed the price of water increased the further up the hill you went. Eventually I gave in. They could have charged a lot more than 2 JD (~$3) for the half-liter of water and I would have gladly paid it. At the top I rested in a tent, bought a Fanta and two Snickers bars and they have never tasted so fine. This little excursion added another 2 hours onto our day and helped me get toasted to a blistering red veneer on both arms, hands, and my neck, SPF 45 and two applications be damned. I suppose 6 hrs in the Arabian sun would be enough to do anyone in. A week a later and I’m still red…