Water!

I greeted the sunrise bleary-eyed and groggy at 5 am this morning. Now for those of you who know me well, you know that I am not a morning person, and convincing me to get up before dawn is not an easy thing to do. So I'm sure you're wondering what got me up this morning. Simple, the promise of seeing a large body of water in the middle of the desert (the Dead Sea) and hiking around the hills of En Gedi. We loaded up the bus around 6:45 (only 30 minutes later than we had planned) and drove about 1 and a half hours to the border of Israel and Jordan. I was awake for about 10 minutes of the trip (probably not even that long) before I curled up in the fetal position on the seat and feel asleep.

En Gedi is a beautiful place, in a desert kind of way. At first glace, you would never believe that there could be running water along the trail we started hiking up, but after about .5 miles or so little bits of standing water started popping up in the river bed we were following and folliage started to poke it's way through the tan rocks. About half way up the trail, the creek was acually big enough to splash around in and just enjoy cool water. It took a little convincing to get those of us who stopped there to climb out to continue on the trail, but with the promise of a waterfall at the end, we continued on our way. When we did reach the end, we were met with a small but beautiful waterfall and a decent sized pool of water to relax in with most of the people in our class.

After hiking back down, we loaded back on the bus and drove to the Dead Sea (once again, I slept for the entire drive). Now I didn't do too much at the Dead Sea other than relax under some shade and nap a little trying to cool off. I woke up just in time to hop in the water, float around for a few minutes, climb back out, rinse off, and get back on the bus to head back to Be'er Sheva. Floating in the Dead Sea was a weird feeling. Because of the salt content (something like 33% while the Mediterranean Sea is only 3%) you just float. Even guys made of pretty much solid muscle who usually sink like a rock in water could stay up without any effort whatsoever.

Here's a few pictures from the trip

At the start of the hike none of us actually believed that there could be enough water ahead of us to create a waterfall, a few pools, and a stream that was actually a decent size.


So the first signs of water weren't the most promising...


This is what the majority of the trail looked like.

Parts of the trail even looked like SaddleRock in Santa Barbara. The little taste of home was nice.


The waterfall at the end of the hike.

The waterfall and the pool below. The water was actually cold enough to give us goosebumps--something I had nearly forgotten existed.


Keiko and I floating in the Dead Sea