11 October – Dead Sea

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To reach the Dead Sea you need to first travel south to Aqaba, which is a tax free city on the Red Sea. By now I was used to asking directions, it was quite surreal getting the info from owners of cars registered in Palestine, Iraq, Syria and Saudi, all neighbours of Jordan.

Leaving the Red Sea, we head north again for about 200km. There is very little of note on this road, aside from one or two areas that have been cultivated. Dotted along the road are lookout posts manned by the army, I suppose the proximity to the West Bank and Israel has something to do with it.

As we descend the temperature rises until it feels like an oven and the haze created by the evaporating sea comes into view. I must say the Dead Sea is a lot bluer than I had imagined and the Red Sea not as red (only joking).

We had a reservation at the RJCN chalets, but they looked pretty rundown and they said we needed to wait until 3 to check in, so we headed towards the Dead Sea Hotels. We decided to use Lorna’s birthday as an excuse and splurge on the brand new 5 star Jordan Dead Sea Royal Crowne. 

Now I am not one for these fancy, glitzy places, but we really enjoyed the luxury and pampering that you can only get at these types of ‘joints’. They even carried our towels and complimentary water down the beach to our waiting sun recliners.

Swimming in the Dead Sea, or more accurately bobbing like a cork is a rather strange feeling, like bouncing on a bungy cord. Its impossible to fully submerge yourself in the oily water, actually as soon as you lift your legs, you end up floating on the surface. 

We had to try smearing ourselves with the famed Dead Sea mud. We will probably get bilharzia before it cures everything is purported to. 

Like all the Rift valley lakes, the Dead Sea is shrinking. The water level has already dropped by 30 meters and continues to recede by a meter a year, due to the damming of the River Jordan, the huge demand for water by all the massive hotels and the potash industry. They reckon that unless something is done the Dead Sea will dry up within 50 years.

We started our final day in Jordan, eating Norwegian Salmon and fresh croissants and then lazed besides the pool and had a final mud pack, before heading out to the airport to wait ……….. for our 1am flight to Muscat.