David Sokol Photography: Days 12 and 13 - Masada and the Dead Sea Area, and Shabbat in Jerusalem

Friday.
Yay, we're heading off to warmer weather!! Today will mainly be spent on the bus, travelling out to the Dead Sea area and back so we're up and at it at 7:40am. That's not a big challenge for me because I know that I'll be asleep on the bus within 5 minutes of being picked up. And so it came to pass .....!!! The first stop (after my half hour sleep that brings applause from everyone else on the bus because I now have the regulation of sleeping more on the bus than anyone else) is at Qumeran, the site where the Dead Sea scrolls were found. After a nice walk in the sun around the ruins of the town ( and the obligatory visit to the souvenir shop - actually a large one, and, yes, I finally buy some goodies there) we continue south to visit Masada.

Out of the window if the bus as we travel, what can I say - now this is desert!! And yet the Israelis have managed to provide enough irrigation to plant thousands of date trees - it really is amazing to see these dark-leaved trees spring up in the midst of rubble and rock, rubble and rock (I'm sure you get the picture). And then our tour guide Uri prepares us for Masada. Wow, what a site for a resistance fortress. It's big.

One of our group decides he wants to walk up the track to the top. The rest ride the cable car and start the tour - our walker reaches us 45 minutes later; he looks hot and bothered - actually we do too, but the sun is kind enough to hide behind clouds every so often to make it more bearable for the only idiot that his cap on the bus! The two hour tour provides me with a chance to take around 150 photos - it's an amazing location for a movie - oh yeah, there was one made here and many of the rehearsal areas are still visible down on the ground as we look down. The tour takes us to the ancient synagogue of Masada and onto explore all aspects of the ancient fortress. Here was the last struggle of the Jewish Zealots in their struggle against the Romans.. The Zealots held out for three years against legions of Flavius Silva and chose to die as free men at their own hands in preference to Roman slavery.

After the tour we have another cable car ride down to the bus - these are no small cable cars, they hold 80 passengers each (that's before lunch - I'm sure after an Israeli lunch each cable car would probably max out at 60 people).

So, back on the bus to head to the lowest point on the surface of the earth - the Dead Sea is 398 mtrs below sea level. But we're not heading to just part of the Dead Sea. Oh no, not us, we're going to a US$500 a night hotel with it's own private beach onto the Dead Sea. So we stop at the Crowne Plaze Hotel to have a smorgasbord lunch that brought tears to our eyes and 10kgs to our stomach-line! Some of the tour went for a swim to feel the buoyancy that 39% salt content can provide (compared to 7% in our normal swimming oceans). The rest of us took advantage of the Hotel's facilities and just sat around the pool in sun-lounges on beds of artificial and very green synthetic grass. It's sad to find out the water levels are dropping on the Dead Sea and what was once one Sea has already broken into two water areas as a sand-bank has been created by the falling waters.

After a few hours there it was back on the bus, saying goodbye to the 30C sunny weather to head back to Jerusalem where the temp was 14C and the skies were grey and gloomy. Uri, our tour guide, books a group dinner (it's Friday night, the beginning of Shabbat, so the hotel dinner rate is US$75 a head) at a fabulous place called Focaccia, which was walking distance from the hotel, where I finally had a slab of meat - a beautiful cut of steak prepared magnificently).

Then back to the hotel for a long night's sleep.

Saturday.
Today is a leisure day so it was a slow start. No buses to rush for, no breakfasts to gobble down. So a group of us met up at 11:00am to walk through the Mamilla Mall (which was pretty empty since no shops are open on Shabbat) and through the Jaffa Gate of the Old City. The weather today was cold, showery with a biting wind that made it feel like about 8C. We walked through the markets in the Muslim quarter which were doing a brisk trade and onto our second visit to the Western Wall. We thought that being there on Shabbat would be something special but we'd pretty well missed the action and there was only a small minyan being held by the Chabad group (wisely under cover to one side of the Western Wall). But I've got to say it was still very special to be there again. The rain held off until we got back under the partial cover of the market stalls so we found a place to be ripped off for lunch called Friends Restaurant where paid too much for a typical Israeli meal. But the restaurant was amazing inside so I don't think we minded too much that as we were charged more than we should have been. These places have no menus and therefore no prices displayed - the guy seemed to be making up our bill in his head when it was time to pay. But the food was fresh so it was all good.

We all went our separate ways after lunch so we could shop at our own pace. At one stage it began bucketing down but, as has been the case all tour, the rain passed in 2 or 3 minutes and then I walked back to the hotel for a two-hour afternoon nap.

We have heard that departure from Israel can be a big deal, with lots of queuing at security check points so I've booked a VIP express departure service that will escort me through the process without having to queue up. It's the same service I had provided to me on arrival and I think it will save me an hour or so of queuing when I leave.

Tonight a smaller group of us (many have left the tour already) went together for dinner (didn't I just eat lunch??). The weather and outside temperature helped us decide to eat at the hotel's dining room. We have to pack our suitcases again tonight because we're off, tomorrow morning to the warmer climate of Eilat for two days. It'll be nice if the Syrians don't send any missiles over the border (which they did earlier this week)!