One of the things I looked forward to the most about Jordan was floating in the Dead Sea. It was something I thought about often when I was younger, but never for a second thought I'd actually do it. Places like Israel and Jordan seemed too far away for me to travel to before I moved to Europe.
Long story short, it's worth even a long flight to experience the extent to which you float when in the Dead Sea. There's nothing like it. You float so well that you can't swim - you can't even get your feet under the water!
Before we get to our experience, a little history. The Dead Sea is fed by the Jordan River, which has been reduced to a trickle because Israel and Jordan divert the water upstream from the Dead Sea to use it for agriculture and homes. The Dead Sea water is also diverted into large compartments and dried to create potash and, duh, dead sea salt (if you eat dead sea salt, knock it off). These two actions - the diversion of the Jordan River waters and the drying out of large amounts of the dead sea - are causing the dead sea to shrink by up to a meter a year. It's disappearing. There has been talk of creating a pipeline to carry water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea for years now but nothing has come of it yet (it's called "red to dead"). So get to the dead sea asap before it dries up completely!! Even hotels that were built alongside the dead sea are no longer right beside it and you have to walk down the beach quite a bit before you get to the water.
Here are a few pictures of the dead sea and the salt deposits on its shore, and us standing nearby. These salt deposits form naturally all along the shore. The resorts remove them so tourists don't hurt themselves on them so we had to drive away from the resort to see them. The fourth picture is a pile of the salt deposits that the lifeguards were removing at our hotel.
The hotel we stayed at was the Crowne Plaza Dead Sea Jordan (not to be confused with the hotel with the same name but in Israel). It was a really nice hotel, but a little large and crowded. It took us awhile to walk around the place! We also just happened to be there on the same weekend as the Jordan Riders Rally, when motorcyclists from all over the middle east gathered to catch up. It was interesting because they all wore shirts with their group's name on them and there were riders there from Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, ... all over the middle east. 600 riders and only 10 of them were women - we met one of said women in the spa one day. She was Canadian but currently lived in Bahrain and was married to an American. It's always interesting, the people you meet when traveling. Below is a picture of the main pool at our hotel and a sign for the rally. The pool wasn't crowded in this picture but this must have been just a lull in the storm.
A few pictures of the beach at our hotel. It's nothing too special. There seem to rarely be waves on the Dead Sea and people don't spend a ton of time sitting near it. You can't spend a lot of time in the water because of its high salinity - it not only is very painful if you have any recent scratches or irritated skin but it will eventually dry out your skin as well. We were also told not to get any in our mouths (it tastes awful) and not to put our heads under the water because it's very painful. So, a lot to remember when swimming there.
You might be thinking in this next picture of the beach, hey, there's another pool and hot tub there! and getting excited about that ... don't. The second pool and hot tub were "adults only" which meant "LOUD MUSIC". It was so loud you couldn't even speak to each other. I know I've said this before in my Jordan blogs but I just don't know how Jordanians enjoy that.
The hills across the sea are Israel, which is neat. It's about 16km across. The picture on the left was the view from our hotel room.
What you're supposed to do, aside from floating around for a bit in the Dead Sea, is to spread mud from the Dead Sea all over your body, let it dry, and then rinse it off. It supposedly is great for your skin. I was a little grossed out by the mud so didn't go all out with it but Martin fully submerged himself in the mud bath that's available on the beach of the hotel.
Some pictures of us floating. We had a lot of fun floating around. It's really effortless. I asked our driver if anybody ever drowns in the Dead Sea and he said that, if you can't swim, you drown, and it does happen ... but you don't have to know how to swim to stay afloat there so I haven't figured it out yet. I don't think you can even get your head under the water very easily. But if you panic and swallow/inhale enough water ... maybe.
And a few sunset pictures from the nights we were there. No clouds so nothing super impressive but it was still nice.
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