Not Tickled About Being Pickled - Wading in the Dead Sea and the Jordan River

In the weeks proceeding our trip, I was obsessed with making banchan--Korean side dishes such as kimchi.  I tried to pickle everything I could get my hands on--cucumbers, daikons, cabbages, eggplants, garlic, etc.  I was getting out of control.  The neighbor's dog wisely kept his distance from me.  I dumped every vegetable I had into a big bowl of salt water in preparation to be pickled.  When the process was complete, I found, to my dismay, that everything was inedible.  As I bit into the pickles, I couldn't imagine that anything could be more salty.  Unfortunately, I would be proven wrong today when it would be my turn to be human banchan in the Dead Sea.

We woke up early and hit the gym for a morning run on the treadmill.  I set the machine to the turtlesque speed that I had been doing over the past few months.  A few minutes into the run I thought I was killing it.  A day's rest on the plane must have invigorated me.  My legs had never felt that energetic and relaxed while running at that rate on the treadmill.  Then I realized the reading was in kilometers not miles.  Damn metric system!  In actuality, I was doing far worse than my usual routine.

After the feeble attempt at exercise, we adorned our fleece coats for the short walk to the Dead Sea.  When we got there the attendant told us the beach was closed because the water was too hazardous.  There's no way that I'm traveling halfway around the world and not getting in that water.

Technically, we were just going to float, not swim.

The flag looks white to me.

We pressed on and waded into a calm, shallow area.  People say that nothing lives in the Dead Sea because of the high salt content.  I say that it's because the water is freezing cold.  What were we thinking going in the winter time?  We were tempted to go back and grab our wetsuits from our luggage.  We floated for only 5-10 minutes (in fact, sinking is virtually impossible).  Then the burning started to get bad.  You are supposed to lay on your back in the Dead Sea as the high salt content burns every mucosal surface.  Yes, EVERY mucosal surface.  I dunked my head in just to see how bad it felt.  Yep, it hurt momentarily.  However, the real problem was the pain in the backside which was unrelenting until I left the water.

Ouch! It Burns!

The sea bottom is littered with what I first thought were
rocks, but were actually huge salt accumulations.

This guy stole my wetsuit idea!  I really wasn't exaggerating when I said it was cold.  This guy is in the HEATED pool.

After our quick dip, we ate a late breakfast.  The buffet was well stocked with an eclectic variety of items that were mainly very good.  However, two items were particularly disturbing--beef bacon (yuck) and chicken sausage (even more yuck).  Most of the world kicks our ass when it comes to lunch, dinner, and dessert.  But, North America owns breakfast.   Nothing beats a heaping plate of greasy PORK bacon or PORK sausage to get your day started.  The two hours of stomach cramps that follows is, as they say in Louisiana, lagniappe.

Bashar then drove us 10 minutes away to Bethany Beyond Jordan.  For quite awhile, I have been contemplating a conversion to Christianity.  Maybe it was all those years of Christian private schools, maybe it was the desire to lead a more fulfilling life for my children, or maybe it was because I just wanted to 'Tebow' without suffering the Wrath of God.  Whatever the reason, it was time.  What better place to make it official than the site where Jesus was baptized.

We had arranged in advance for a priest to take us through the ceremony.  As there are few Protestants or even Catholics in Jordan, we got a Greek Orthodox priest, Reverend Father Georges to ordain us into his church.  Great, now we will have to stand up the whole time during service.  He made sure that we understood that we would have to follow the tenets of Christianity from now on.  I assured him that I had no future plans to covet my neighbor's wife (sure she seems like a nice lady, but she's gotta be pushing 70 years of age).

The Baptism pool is an offshoot of the Jordan River filled with water so muddy that it's close to being quicksand.

We were instructed to disrobe completely and wear only a really thin Baptism gown.  It was still no warmer than 50 degrees Fahrenheit outside.  We walked into the frigid water and were led through the Baptism ceremony.  I could feel a sense of warmth and serenity passing through my frozen body.  Was it the cleansing of my sins?  Was it The Holy Spirit coursing through my bones?  Or was it just hypothermia?

I'm pretty sure Jesus was smart enough...

 ...to get baptized during the summer months.

"You may dunk your head in the water now," said the Reverend Father.  "Ummm...Do I really have to?" I whined.

After the ceremony, we said our goodbyes to the Reverend Father.  As we were wiping the mud off of our feet and massaging our legs to get the sensation back, Bashar joked, "You should have converted to Islam instead.  You would have been much warmer".  We left the Baptism site with dirty bodies but clean souls.

We explored the rest of the site which included the ruins of old Byzantine churches that dated back to the 6th or 7th century A.D.  There is not much left except for some old floor tiles and a stone stairwell down to the place in the river where Jesus was thought to have been baptized.

The remnants of the Church of John the Baptist overlook Jesus' baptism site.

This cat shadowed us everywhere.  I suspect 
that he's a Mossad agent making sure
we don't cross the river to the Israeli side.

A mosaic depiction of the ruins.

A modern church arises over the "Jungle of the Jordan." 

We next stopped off at an obligatory touristy souvenir store.  Neither one of us was planning on wasting any money.  We were just going to look around briefly to be polite.  Unfortunately, we have a weakness for colorful and sparkly things.  Soon enough, we were haggling over a couple of items.  Jordan is known for their intricate mosaic tiles that decorate their church floors and beauty products made from Dead Sea mud.  So what did we buy?  A hand-painted ostrich egg.  What Jordan has to do with ostriches?  I don't have a clue.  The egg is pretty cool though, albeit expensive and absolutely useless.  Salespeople 1: Us 0

We departed for the three hour drive to Petra.  The main road was too dangerous because of snow; so we had to take a rocky, gravel-strewn backroad that snaked through the mountains.  Some of the drop offs on the side of the road are several hundreds of feet down, and there are no guardrails.  Also, the endless number of hills and dips in the road made the car bounce up and down like we were riding a @&$#! camel.  I hate @&$#! camels.

The land was desolate with miles and miles of endless sand and rocks.

Nary was there another car or settlement around.  Even in this remote landscape, an occasional Bedouin or a pack of grazing camels or sheep would sometimes appear out of nowhere in the distance.  In this arid desert, water can be scarce.  We stopped at a cistern carved into a mountain that is used to store water.

Entrance to the cistern

You have to be really thirsty to drink this water.

Eventually, we arrived at a place known as 'Little Petra'.  Centuries ago, it was a rest stop for the trade caravans right before they made it to Petra itself.  There wasn't much to the place.  There was a narrow canyon with a couple of rooms and decorations carved into the rocks.  The place was free and it was serene (we had to share it with only a handful of tourists).  It was so quiet that we could hear the muffled steps of our shoes in the sand.  It was a good warm-up for Petra tomorrow.

We then checked into the Movenpick Hotel right across the street from the entrance to Petra.  Someone must have confused our hotel for the Piccadilly Cafe because there were a lot of elderly people in the lobby at 5 PM.

The hotel courtyard from above.

A popular tourist item are bottles with designs made from colored.

We ate dinner at the fancy "romantic" restaurant in the hotel.

The restaurant overlooks the hotel's central courtyard.  It would be great for
people-watching location but all of the elderly folks had already gone to bed.

The hotel advertises it as being the highest-rated restaurant in all of Jordan--and the good food backs up that claim.  However, the elevator music of Lionel Ritchie and Bryan Adams songs were pretty cheesy.  It was even more lame that I knew all their lyrics.

 Assorted bread with compound butters

Amuse bouche of falafel stuffed with lamb

Mediterranean seafood soup

Eggplant stuffed with peppers, artichokes, zucchini, and herbs

Al Iwan-style lamb loin

Despite all of the tempting items on the menu, The Wife inexplicably ordered pasta.

The weather forecast predicted even colder weather the next day.  Therefore, we enjoyed the comforts of our warm hotel room that evening, knowing that we were gonna go from being pickles to popsicles in the morning.