ISRAEL - Part 8 Qumran and the Dead Sea

Between the two sights we were heading to see, there was one I was excited about and one that I wasn't.



Qumran, to me, was going to be amazing. Cliffs and caves in the desert. Realizing my inner-Bedouin and maybe finding some ancient scroll written by Isaiah's brother.

Qumran was cool. But not as cool as what I imagined in my head. For one, I had done too much reading about it, so there was nothing really to learn except to learn that the place is really hot. Worse, the caves were out of bounds. You could only take pictures of them. And the pictures were only good if you had a zoom lens. And the only thing that Ibrahim the tour guide told me of interest was that archaeologists have thoroughly explored every cave seventy miles in both directions. Don't get me wrong - Qumran is worth the visit. The wrongness came from my overblown expectations.



To top it off, Lia and I got in our only fight of the trip. There were these Arabian daggers in the gift shop that were screaming at me to buy them. One for each kid, you know, so it would be even. Lia thought it was a bad idea. "But the kids will love them," I explained. "They'll kill each other," said Lia. "They're blunt," I explained...

We didn't get the daggers. Weaponless, I boarded Islam's bus.

Off to the Dead Sea. Great, floating in buoyant water. Big whoop.

Boy was I wrong. The Dead Sea blew my expectations out of the water (pardon the pun). It was amazing, bizarre, fun, hilarious...something better experienced than described.

Speaking of experience, before we put on our bathing suits, we were instructed not to get our heads wet. Supposedly, if the salt water got in your ears or eyes or mouth it could do bad things to you. How bad could it be? I wondered. It's salt.

I stuck my tongue in the water.

Bad idea. Not that I know what this tastes like, but the Dead Sea tastes exactly like what the bottom of a car tastes like in Chicago in January. I was afraid the part I had submerged was going to shrivel up and fall off. I was sure I had lost forever, in one fatal dip, my sense of taste. That's what I feared.

So much for experience.



Fortunately, feeling came back to my mouth in about fifteen minutes. I celebrated by following the time-honored tradition of covering my body in gooey mud. That was awesome. Like getting fitted for a superhero uniform, not that I know what that feels like either.

 

Check out what it did to my hair!