Israel - Day 6

Day 6 was a free day on our tour of the Holy Land.  We had several options that included staying around the hotel and walking about Jerusalem freely, going to a museum where the Dead Sea Scrolls were located, go shopping with a group, or you could pay a little extra to drive to a place called Masada and then go swimming in the Dead Sea.  Of course I chose the Dead Sea option!!

We got on our tour bus and headed towards Masada and the Dead Sea.  We saw a guy with a camel and stopped for people that wanted a camel ride but that didn’t get the chance to when some of us did it on the Mount of Olives.

That’s my father-in-law and our preacher’s grandson.

After some camel riding, we headed to Masada.  You’ll have to google Masada.  Some pretty depressing things happened there long long ago.  I didn’t take any pictures because we were experiencing a dust storm and you couldn’t see very far in front of you.  The pictures would have turned out awful.

After leaving Masada, we went to the Dead Sea.  If you don’t know anything about the Dead Sea, I’ll give you a crash course.  It’s called the Dead Sea because there is nothing living in it.  No life can be sustained in its waters because the mineral content is so high, 30%.  Because of this high level of mineral content, people that go into the water can float. 

Definitely not the prettiest day we had because of the dust storm!

This was the spot we went to in order to get the mud to put on ourselves.  The mud is supposedly SOOOOO good for your skin.  It apparently takes years off of you if you leave it on long enough.

The most depressing part about seeing these pictures is that I left my bathing suit there :(  It was the only one piece bathing suit I had and I loved it!!! 

 

Helping each other put mud on!

 

Walking out to do some floating!!

I was shocked about the floating.  It felt SOOOOO weird!

We attempted some synchronized swimming :)

We didn’t stay in there long because it was shockingly cold so we hung out for a few minutes and then called it quits!

There were little sink holes all in the shoreline and if you stepped in one you would sink to your knees so hanging on to a friend was kind of essential in getting out!

There were showers we had to wait on to get the rest of the mud off of us and this picture is of me and the pastor’s grandkids waiting on our turn in the showers.  I will tell you that these Japanese people using the showers were NOT shy.  We may have seen a few body parts that made the Dead Sea trip a little R rated!

And that was Day 6!  Day 7 was AWESOME so I can’t wait to find the time to get to that.