The Dead Sea, Jordan

Ahh the glamour!

The Dead Sea is an extraordinary place and we had rather an adventure driving there.

We left Petra after fixing a puncture at a local tire place, something that is much more complicated when you don't speak the language and can't read any signs. However, every one was very helpful and we had the tire checked and patched before we left town, five dollars well spent!

Not the best start to the day, but it ended well.

Where's the newspaper when you need it?

We drove west,  across the desert and then turned north. We passed unmanned checkpoints and drove through the unglamorous, but aptly named, Potash City before arriving along the shores of the Dead Sea.

The view as we descended.

The road was empty for miles

An abandoned checkpoint

The West Bank from Jordan

On our left we could see the West Bank. The southern end of the Dead Sea is entirely undeveloped and it's only in the northern section, closer to Amman, that you find the large hotels and pricey beach clubs.

We stopped to eat at the O Beach Club and had a great Lebanese lunch at Omara. Another day we came back to "take the waters", paying 15 JOD each to use the facilities. You can see the rather amusing results below! As you can see some other guests were amused too!

Perhaps not looking my best!

The whole place is brand new and fabulous, Miami Beach meets the muslim world, we saw everything from string bikinis to full burkinis on the local clientele.

t feels very strange to float and it's quite disconcerting at first. The salinity is caused by evaporation and there is enormous concern over the environmental degradation of the area, which is this part of the world has geo-political overtones. The buoyancy is counter intuitive and you flip over when you try to swim the breaststroke. Eventually we gave up and just bobbed around for 15 minutes before getting out.