So it was our first excursion day (yeay!) and we were branching out east into the West Bank. It can be a bit confusing that it’s the West Bank when it’s the Eastern most area of Israel, but it’s to do with the Jordan river- the whole area is west of the Jordan river and the Dead Sea. The West Bank is divided into sections with both Palestinian autonomy (known as sections A and B) and those with Israeli control (section C), so we would be passing checkpoints and would need to take our passports and visas with us in case we were stopped. Most tourist buses aren’t stopped but it’s best to be prepared.
Our tour included a morning trip around the desert fortress Masada, a mini hike around the biggest oasis in Israel, Ein Gedi, and finally a dip in the Dead Sea.
Our tour guide today was a Scotsman called Alan, another Jewish immigrant who was born and raised in the UK and then made Aliyah. (the act of Jews immigrating to Israel that I discussed in my first blog actually has a name in Hebrew, it’s called Aliyah and those who do it even get support from the Israeli government, such as financial assistance).
The drive down from Jerusalem to the West Bank was a scenic one. Soon after we left the city there was desert surrounding us everywhere and every now and then we would pass Bedouin camps on the roadside with their array of animals- goats, camels etc. The Bedouin are commonly found around these deserts and generally left alone by the Israelis, although for the Bedouin they don’t care about geographical borders (let alone sections), only tribal borders. I mean, when you live in tribes in the desert it doesn’t really matter what country you’re in.
With Jerusalem at 800m above sea level and us travelling to the lowest place on earth at 420m below sea level (the Dead Sea), the bus ride was so downhill that we got that ear popping sensation as we drove down. Apparently pilgrims would say they’re going up to Jerusalem as they would be ascending both spiritually and physically.
The Masada fortress was our first stop; a fortress built on top of a mountain overlooking the Judean desert (the smallest desert in the world), and the Dead Sea. Visitors can either hike or take a cable car to the top (definitely preferable in this heat). We were a big group of over 20 people so our tour guide gave strict instructions to wait at the entrance to the cable car once we’d bought the tickets. Of course, there’s always that someone who doesn’t listen and ruins it for everybody else, and so we wasted about half an hour looking for two women only to discover that they had ascended to the top without us. Now when you’ve woken up ridiculously early and you’re sweating your ass off in the middle of the desert at 35 degree heat every minute is a struggle, but waiting 30 minutes in those conditions because of two rude and disobedient princesses was unacceptable. What made matters worse is they didn’t even apologise or show a gram of remorse, and they seemed far more concerned about the number of photos they could take of each other over anything else (yes, those kind of women). Both Steffi and I (along with the rest of the group) were pretty pissed off and decided to deal with it the typical British way by dropping in passive aggressive comments and giving them serious death looks to let them know we were really not happy.
At one point along the tour I found myself next to the girls and I heard a couple of words that sounded like french. I ran over to Steffi to immediately inform her of my recent discovery, and we had a good gossip about how typical this was and of course they were going to be french, and God the french are so rude… [scoff, scoff]
5 minutes later however, I found myself next to the girls again, and this time close enough to make out snippets of an actual sentence. At this point it became horrifyingly clear to me that the girls most definitely were not speaking french. In fact they were speaking a language much more familiar to me. Oh shit, they were Serbian.
Great, I would literally never live this down. At this time pure shame prevented me from running over to tell Steffi but I did manage to semi-redeem myself by establishing they were in fact Croatian and not Serbian before sharing with her. Emphasis here is on the semi as it still qualified me for some serious and very well-deserved piss-taking for the rest of the tour. Well, I should’ve known.
As we walked around Masada in the scorching heat Andy told us about the ruins which once used to be the home of King Herod, one of the most hated figures in Israëli history. He was raised as a Jew and then became a King during the Romans and was pronounced a “friend of Rome” or as the Jews liked to put it, a traitor (I’m sure they had many other names for him but for my mother’s sake I’m attempting to keep this blog as PG as possible). This basically meant he had the full support and encouragement of Rome to persecute his own people. This included torture, assassination, and worst of all, extortionately high taxes. The people hated him, but Herod didn’t really give a toss, his priorities were to impress the Romans and the wealthy Jews.
He built his home at Masada to be the most extravagant in the land, where his guests came to dine and party all night long. There were bath houses where you could be massaged and rubbed in olive oil by the servants, a dining room where you could stuff your face, and even a “vomitariam” (I swear I didn’t make it up) where you would literally go to then vom it all out to make space so that you could return to the dining room and continue to eat. Nowadays that kind of behaviour is classified as an eating disorder but I guess in the times of the Romans it was a good night out.
Now when Herod got sick and left the premises, and during the First Jewish Roman War around 70CE, a group of about 1,000 rebel Jews fled to Masada and hid from the Romans. Apparently it took the Romans 3 years to invade Masada (it’s always more difficult when you’re at the bottom of the mountain). While the Jews didn’t have weapons of any kind, they had the fighting spirit (“bring it on!”) and when the Romans catapulted stones at them they would collect them and throw them back down! Take that you dirty Romans. When the Romans finally broke through the barriers however, legend has it that they found 1,000 dead rebel Jews, who had committed mass suicide that evening to avoid surrendering to the evil Romans.
I was thoroughly enjoying Alan’s storytelling around Masada, but it was time to move on and we soon found ourselves in Ein Gedi, an oasis and nature reserve nestled between two canyons in the Judean desert. Now Ein Gedi is a special place with animals and amazing species of plants usually found only in East Africa. I am ashamed to say however that I was slightly underwhelmed. Maybe it was the blistering heat and the gallons of sweat coming off my body as we hiked up, but I felt it wasn’t the most impressive oasis or waterfalls that I’d seen (those are the main highlights). What was impressive is how Stefania, after hiking up steep rocks, crossing streams and crawling through pitch black tunnels for 45 minutes managed to fall in the most spectacular way about 5 meters from the exit on flat and dry land. I’m pretty sure it’s because one of our fellow travellers was asking her about being a lawyer in the UK (he clearly hadn’t got the memo that the first rule of Israel holiday club is you NEVER TALK ABOUT WORK).
So Steffi managed to split apart her knee which was now bleeding everywhere. Good thing we weren’t in the middle of the desert about to travel to the saltiest place on earth…no wait….Just to put things in perspective, your average boring, run of the mill sea (which by the way guys is so passé) has about 3% salt in it. The Dead Sea on the other hand has 33% salt in it. It’s so salty that absolutely nothing can survive in it- no vegetation, no bacteria, nothing (hence the name). In fact, it’s so dead that it won’t even survive itself; it used to be much bigger and it’s slowly drying out every year. But on the upside it has a lot of potassium, sulphites and all the minerals from the surrounding land making it amazing for your skin. There is a multi billion dollar industry of skin care products from the sea, and I was about to cake myself in them for free.
First thing’s first, next to the Dead Sea is the lowest bar on earth; obviously we had to have a lowest beer on earth there. Then the dead sea spa process began. The first step was of course getting in the water and licking a bit of water to see just how salty it really was. I mean not to be funny but if they think this tastes salty they haven’t experienced Serbian cuisine. I’m pretty sure my great grandmother took her chicken soup at 33% salt content (“e sad je taman: ni slano, ni preslano”). Luckily, I wasn’t stupid enough to drink any of the water as I discovered later on you can actually die from that. Dodged a bullet there. Next, the body and face treatment where you take the mud from in and around the water and slabber it all over your body because apparently it’s really good for you. I have to say I was pretty sceptical. In fact as I stood there literally rubbing foul, grey green mud that smelt of expired egg all over my body I thought to myself how funny it would be if this was a scam invented by some smart Israeli who wanted to make a quick shekel.
With the mud caked on my body I could now relax on the beach and let the minerals do their magic. At this point Stefania and I were introduced to my absolute favourite surprise of Israel; its lifeguards. I mean I could literally write a whole blog about them. You may have preconceived ideas about Mitch Buchannon and CJ Parker but forget about it- this is 100 times better than Baywatch. These lifeguards never walk along the beach and very rarely come out to save people (only if completely necessary). What they do spend the majority of their time doing is sitting in their station and yelling out instructions (it’s through a loudspeaker but obviously it’s still necessary to yell) and singling out individuals to hurl abuse at (at the top of their lungs over the loudspeaker for everyone to hear). We were later to discover that the Dead Sea lifeguards were very ‘mild’ as they were dealing more with tourists and so had to be more polite, plus they spoke a lot more English.
At first it was a little difficult to get what they were saying as we couldn’t understand why they kept repeatedly telling people to lie on their back and relax. Ok, nice advice you’re thinking, which you could chose to follow if you actually wanted to relax. But no, these were instructions that had to be obeyed (apparently when you’re not on your back it’s more likely for you to get the water in your eyes and swallow it which can be dangerous).
Obviously tourists there for the first time might not realise the severity of the situation but when not everybody was lying on their backs the lifeguards would get more and more animated and annoyed. It’s almost impossible to do the conversation justice on paper but just imagine, if you can, this being said by a husky, loud and angry sounding Israeli accent over a loudspeaker:
“Lie on your back and rrrelax.”
1 minute later…..
“Rrrroll over onto your back and rrrrrelax”
30 seconds later…..
“LIE ON YOUR BACK AND RRRRELAAAAX!!!” (getting angrier)
10 seconds later….
“HEY YOU!!!…I SEE YOU!!!….LIE ON YOUR BACK AND RRRELAX” (sounding really angry now)
And shortly after, my absolute favourite quote of the whole trip (please make sure to read this being yelled in a very angry sounding Israeli accent):
“YOU! WHAT IS (W)RRRONG WITH YOU??!! LIE ON YOUR BACK!!!”
Other quotes included “you, come away from there now” and “misterrr, I see you, I’m coming”. When I told my friend Goni about it a few days later he told me that the Hebrew speaking lifeguards in Tel Aviv were much worse and would sometimes even yell things like “You, the fat git, get away from there”. At one point in Tel Aviv I even started recording the life guards and then would get Goni to translate for us for comic relief. I’ve included a clip so you can hear what it sounds like in Hebrew which might help you get a taste.
The irony of the matter was that when I got in the water to wash the mud off my skin I didn’t lie back and relax, I actually bent over forwards to scoop up the water to wash mud off my face. I got a tiny weeny bit in my eyes and what ensued was about 15 minutes of temporary blindness and panic that I would never be able to see again. Eventually I climbed out of the water blind and half caked in grey green mud looking like some swamp monster but it took a while for me to regain my sight. When it finally stopped burning I managed to wash off all the mud to admire my incredible new skin.
Stefania meanwhile had been quietly keeping to herself, staying well away from the water. That was until I took a glass of it and unexpectedly threw it on her open wound. The water is supposed to have magical healing powers by the way so it was for her own good, but her piercing scream and the cocktail of expletives coming out of her mouth indicated she probably didn’t see it that way.
I made my way to the bus with my 12 year old skin (apparently you go 20 years younger although I dread to think what happens to the under 20 year olds) and my wounded soldier Steffi who was now being given dirty looks by almost everybody, and was even approached by a random stranger who took her aside and cleaned her with iodine. It had been a long, hot and eventful day. We got back to Jerusalem and after a quick early dinner we headed home.
