After the ancient city of Damascus, Jordan’s capital seems a little, well normal. Amman is a good base to explore the rest of Jordan but after Syria, the city sights are not that spectacular… still worth a couple of days.
From Amman, we grab a bus to the Dead Sea. The landscape is raw, dry and appears lifeless, like a burnt earth, and bus continues to head down, down, down – and at 422 metres below sea level, the shores of the Dead Sea are the lowest place on the planet… on dry land anyway. After a bit of haggling and a few dinars, we charter a taxi to take us south to a small natural spring - the sea is hyper-saline so a fresh water wash after a dip is a must.
From Amman, we grab a bus to the Dead Sea. The landscape is raw, dry and appears lifeless, like a burnt earth, and bus continues to head down, down, down – and at 422 metres below sea level, the shores of the Dead Sea are the lowest place on the planet… on dry land anyway. After a bit of haggling and a few dinars, we charter a taxi to take us south to a small natural spring - the sea is hyper-saline so a fresh water wash after a dip is a must.
At first, it’s hard to remember that you don’t need to swim – it’s so salty that you literally can’t sink! Just don’t get it in your eyes, it really, really stings. Around the world, mud from the Dead Sea is used for therapeutic purposes, so we grab some from the source and plaster it on.
We’ve travelled down here with 2 Scandinavian girls and before long, the bank is teeming with friendly Jordanian adolescent males showing off and taking photos. Most of them are harmless, but it’s a bit daunting for the ladies, so we move up the bank and away from the throng. I feel a bit sorry for these young lads – unless they have sisters, they don’t get to interact with females of their own age at all. As they strut around, I realise that while we come from vastly different cultural and religious backgrounds, we are not that different.
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