Day 7 Sunday

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Day 7 Sunday 8th

Hi all

Another fantastic day in the holy land. Today we went to the Dead Sea.

Early start in the morning saw us leaving with a packed lunch at 6.50 am. Sounds early but believe me it's not hard to get up early here. The bus trip took us out of Jerusalem and over Mount Scopus - a ten minute drive. What a transformation. Suddenly we are in desert. We had a fantastic guide, named Alan who described how we were going to the lowest place on earth - 400 metres below sea level. 

Here are some houses of shepherds who live in the desert with their sheep ... What do the sheep eat here?

Our first stop was a place called Ein Gedi - a National Park that has a waterfall coming from a spring in the Judean desert mountains. Check out this little fella  - a rock hyrax - boy were they good at jumping over rocks..

Or this wild goat known as an ibex ... The horns of these guys are used as an musical instrument blown on Rosh Hashanah - the Jewish New Year celebrated three days ago...

When we arrived at the beautiful waterfall we sat down for a few minutes and experienced the serenity. One of the last arrivals to sit down I sat on a well shaped rock that everyone else had seemingly left for me. No- one told me that they left it because one metre away behind me was this...

A poisonous viper. Lucky me.

After a quick visit to an ancient synagogue nearby, we then went down to the 

Dead Sea itself. The water has 28 percent salinity - 4 times as much salt as the sea. Dangerous if it got in your eyes like Tony B did - he was ok but temporarily blinded - but the fun part was you could float ... In fact you couldn't help but float. Here is a picture of yours truly doing just that.

Looks easy but believe me in wasn't easy staying balanced, especially when my cool new leather sandals wanted to float even more than the rest of me. I did a couple of neat spins and near face plants a number of times. 41 degrees it said on the handy temperature scoreboard manned by a distracted life guard in his watchtower. It didn't feel that hot. The water was quite warm though.

Next stop was Qumran - the place where they found the Dead Sea Scrolls. Here  I am pretending to be the youth in 1947 who discovered the scrolls when he inadvertently threw a rock down a ravine and he heard something smash. It was one of the clay pots, in which the Essene writers kept their scrolls, recording the Hebrew Scriptures as well as accounts of important events during the first centuries BCE and CE... Important stuff.

Only one more important event for the day to record was the news we received upon return to Ecce Homo was that Carlton beat Richmond in the final back at home. I feel saddened for those at home in Tassie who follow the Tiges religiously such as Luke and my replacement at Croagh Patrick , Joe. Heart felt Commiserations guys

Tea beckons . So ... toddles. 

Tomorrow we are checking out local excavations at the City of David as well as the Temple Mount and some tunnels .... Exciting.