Day 12: Dead Sea

Well, when we arrived at our hotel on Wednesday afternoon, we realized we were staying at a nice hotel, right on the Dead Sea!!! There is a group of Hotel's called Leanardo that sit together, and they over look the Dead Sea. What we came to find out is that the main part of the Dead Sea is up North a little and what we are seeing is the excavating part where they harvest all the minerals, but it still looks really cool, as you can see from the pictures!

Today (Thursday) we left for a jeep tour of the desert. It was lead by a company that does this kind of thing, and they take us around to different parts of the desert and explain some of the geological and historical aspects of the region.

Such as, did you know that in Jesus' time, salt and gold were worth the same in money? Soldiers in the Roman army would be paid in salt, it's where the word "salary" comes from. Also, there are over 500 different forms of salt...well, if salt were worth what gold is today, this region would literally be a gold mine, salt is everywhere in this region!

We trekked through in these 5 passenger jeeps, which was a lot of fun as the terrain was a bit crazy at times. We stopped in the area that is traditionally known as the place where Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt. We listened to the story inside this cave, because it is a natural air conditioner and goes deep into the mountain, like 6 miles...we only went about 20 feet.:)

If you remember, God warned Lot and his family to leave Sodom and Gomorrah before he destroyed those places for their wicked ways, and he warned them not to even look back, but Lot's wife longed for the place she lived and so she looked back. As a result, she turned into the material of the region...salt and the picture you see is traditionally the rock the attribute to the pillar of salt that was Lot's wife...probably not, but it makes an interesting story!

We had lunch under a huge Acacia tree, which are enormous trees that are perfect for the desert. They are able to grow without much water and their roots systems are 3 times the size of their branches, so they go down deep.

We then came back the hotel and decided to just relax for the remainder of the day. Some took advantage of the services of the hotel, like having fish eat the dead skin off of your feet!!!! I put a video clip showing some of our women having this done...weird!!!

We will have a full day tomorrow, Friday, as we tour En Getti, Qumran, and Massada before returning to Tel Aviv for our final night before flying out early Saturday morning...

More on that hopefully tomorrow...