Alive in the Dead

We finally managed to get to the Dead Sea.

No signs of life as yet. It lives up to its name, it’s pretty damn dead.

Lowest place on earth apparently. Oooohh!

We walked down to a ‘beach’ which consists of a crumbling stretch of uneven salty sludge. Much fun was had running around in the sludge, each step like walking in deep snow.

Looking down at the beach, I could see thousands of years worth of sediment in layers of greys, browns and whites, piled onto each other. It looks like hard rock, until you batter your feet into it and watch the rock disappear into a bluish clay smudge, like some kind of cartoon trick.

We did a kind of big-stepped moon walk, falling a good foot deep into the soft beach on every stride.

As we approached the water, a very gentle tide, swaying back and forth, our steps went deeper. I would entirely lose my leg in the quicksand. Slurp sounds would be heard. Much giggling.

I plastered my entire body in this pure salt sludge solution, resembling an alien in a primitive horror film. I dived as far into the very shallow sea as possible, taking good care not to submerge my head. Effie explained that to get an eyeful of this salt water would temporarily blind me.

We had arrived quite late, so I was able to stare open-mouthed at the surrounding scenery of the desert mountains as the enormous moon was rising in the pink dusk sky.

Riding home with my entire body itching from the salt was not the most pleasant of experiences, but once showered, I felt very soft indeed.

People pay twenty quid a pop for a little bag of the Dead Sea to rub on themselves. Strange world.