On our way down to the South, we stopped briefly to visit some Ethiopian Jews who had made Aliyah. The village where they lived was somehow connected to Nashville's Hillel, so we were kinda obligated to go, but I guess it was cool anyway.

From there we headed South to a touristy but somewhat authentic Bedouin camp. It was in the Negev desert, and it really was serious desert. We all slept together in huge tents. At this camp, they had a demonstration of traditional bedouin cooking over a fire in a tent, and we rode camels (and asses). Dinner was good, and we went on a silent hike that night through the desert. Supposed to be very serious and introspective, but I was in a very funny mood, so I kept laughing and making everyone else laugh.

After the hike, we returned to the camp and many of the guys on our bus played a poker tournament. I think maybe eight were in it to start. I ended up winning (it was Jon Toub and I at the end), but I can't remember how much it was. Maybe $30 or $40 or so? Shannon never paid me her part, by the way. Ha.

And here are some more from the Bedouin tent that I didn't take, but I feel they enhance the readers experience.

The next morning, we woke up at 4:00am to go to Masada (which we could see in the distance all of the previous day) and see the sunrise over the Dead Sea from the top. Masada was an ancient fortress on the top of an enormous cliff on the border of the Judean mountains and the Dead Sea valley. It is most famous for when the zealots were camped there and fifteen thousand Roman soldiers and Flavius Silva himself came to lay siege. Eventually the soldiers (using thousands of Jewish war prisoners as slaves) built a ramp up to the top and used a battering ram to break the defenses, and the zealots there committed a mass suicide rather than be captured by the Romans. It's one of the biggest stories in the history of the Jews, so the site is pretty important, maybe more so than anything outside Jerusalem.

So, we got there really early and took an easy ten-minute hike up the nice modern walkway on the Western side. In ancient times, there were no easy paths, but this one was quite easy. We got up there, and watched the sun rise over the mountains in the East, reflecting off the Dead Sea below. It was beautiful and none of the pictures come close to doing it justice because it wasn't light enough to get the features and colors of the land, but the sun itself was too bright to expose the shots longer. So all the shots came out faded and purple-ish.

Around all the sides, Masada was surrounded by deep gorges with other huge cliffs on the opposite sides. One of these gorges creates a really good echo, so our guide took us there and had us all say prayers and sing and then listen to the echo, and then she said ridiculously sentimental stuff about it. "Do you hear that? That's the voice of thousands of generations of Jews answering you back." So then she played her flute that she was terrible at, and had us listen to the echo. So I said, "Listen. It's thousands of generations of Jewish flautists answering you back." It was funny.

On the way down from Masada, we took the ancient "snake path" on the Eastern side (albeit with rails added for safety). The fully arisen sun was directly on us, and the snake path consisted almost entirely of stairs. So, we descended over four hundred meters of winding stairs. It took about forty minutes. Poor Romans had to go up that side.

Here are some Masada pictures taken by other people:

After lunch, we went to a spa on the Dead Sea. I say "on the Dead Sea" loosely; the Dead Sea is shrinking (evaporating) at such a high rate that the resorts and spas built on them twenty years ago, like this one, are now three quarters of a mile away from the shore.

Our spa was very nice. It had indoor sulfur baths, including an intended naked bath for each sex. After going in the normal (clothed bath) I decided I had to take the plunge, and did the sulfur bath full monty. Everyone else in the bath was an old naked man, and every single one of them stared directly at my crotch the entire time I was in there. Unless I was turned away, in which case, they stared at my ass. So that was uncomfortable but rewarding: there are very few images in this world more enduringly hilarious than a ninety year old orthodox Jew wearing nothing but a yamulkah. Anyway, the sulfur baths smelled pretty bad, but they were supposed to be very good for skin (which was the whole point) and indeed, they made my skin feel very soft (though not as soft as the next two baths I took... read on).

After the sulfur bath, I showered briefly to get the smell off, and then went out and did a mud bath. The mud baths at the Dead Sea consist of you covering yourself in mud, as much as you can bear. I covered myself head to toe, hair and face included, though you had to keep your swimsuit on. For some reason, girls look really, really, ridiculously sexy when you see them in person covered in mud. Maybe it's something to do with dark skin but everyone seemed to agree about this point. And the guys got to "help" the girls rub their mud on their hard to reach bits, and vice versa. Fun times, and then we all took pictures. After everyone in my group was all covered (lathered), we walked out to the Dead Sea while the sun dried the mud.

The Dead Sea itself was really awesome. It was so salty! I had no idea it would be that salty. It cannot be exaggerated. You actually float as if your entire body was a floaty. If you get some water in your mouth, it is really salty tasting, like twenty times as much as if you just lick table salt. It's stronger. The whole seafloor is covered in huge rocks made of salt crystals. And if you lick one, it is ridiculously salty (tried it several times). Also, if you have any cuts, they will sting like crazy. All the girls said their vaginas stung as well, and everyone said their assholes stung. Kinda crazy. The whole swim was a mix of pleasantly novel and stinging discomfort. Then we showered briefly and walked back and swam in a normal pool, which felt glorious after sulfure, mud, and salt. My skin was the softest it's ever been by far after that.

I did not bring my camera out anywhere in this spa, so all these are others' pictures.

Then after that, we went and played in some sand dunes, which was AWESOME. The sand in the desert was so much finer and softer than sand on beaches. It was so soft and smooth and wonderful. We would run along a ridge, and then just dive down the dune, or somersault, or whatever. It was so soft that it would cushion the fall. Again, I didn't take any pictures, but a few of these capture the play. Think huge swan dives.

After that, we just walked around the desert for a while.

And that finally concluded our ridiculously long day.