The Dead Sea - the lowest place on earth - 420 meters below sea level
After visiting Petra, we spent the last days at the Movenpick resort at the Dead Sea. After being in cool temperatures at the high elevation, the Dead sea was very hot and humid.
An American TV crew was filming a documentary at the hotel’s beach the day we were there. I covered myself in black mud, like the woman in the middle. Mike headed straight for the water, which was surprisingly difficult to stand up in and an interesting experience.
The next day, I had the mandatory mud and salt scrub treatment from the hotel’s spa. This view was from the pool; you can see Israel on the other side.
We encountered a sandstorm and thunder showers of biblical proportions that kept us from visiting the baptism site. Apparently this had never happened in all the time the tour guides had been visiting, until we heathens got there.
This woman’s Instagram game is clearly better than mine.
View from the Movenpick hotel of the Dead Sea. The resort was huge and it took some time to get down to the water.
The hotel had an amazing artist, Amir, at the resort. He created those designs from colored sand in a few minutes. I had my neighbor’s last name, Cunningham, translated to Arabic. Theirs turned out the best.
Free Coke bottles and colored sand = profit for talented artists. Not easy to do well, for sure. Some of the sand was procured by grinding down local rocks. I got stopped multiple times in the airport security in Rome on the way back but haha joke’s on them - no liquids!
Video of driving through a zero-visibility sandstorm, Mike swimming in the Dead Sea and other photos from the Madaba area here (scroll to the end of the photos).