Today was the time to drive up to Haifa via Dead Sea. All bags were packed yesterday, so we had a quick breakfast, checked out and started driving. I am trying something new today: making a driving time lapse. I set up my Go Pro on the windshield of the car and set it up to take photos every minute. Then I'll combine those photos into a single video that will compress the drive of 3 hours into only a minute or so.
The drive to Dead Sea took about 3 hours and we had a stop in a nearby hotel district of Ein Bokek for some lunch (at Aroma again)
. The road was mostly through desert and mountains, luckily the traffic was pretty light. Around Dead Sea region we saw a couple of large factories and giant evaporation ponds. Ein Bokek is a collection of large hotels surrounded by the sea and mountains, mostly filled with tourists. We stopped near Aroma for half an hour, got some sandwiches and continued driving.
Ein Gedi spa was only 20 minutes away, and on the way we saw enormous salt flats left behind by the retreating sea. Dead Sea shrinks a bit every year due to the lack of incoming water and the level of water drops about 1 meter per year. That's the reason the beach that used to be near the spa is now over 1 km away and you have to take a ride in a "shuttle" drawn by a tractor to get to the sea.
The spa is fairly rundown now and not terribly clean, but they have towels, change rooms and showers to make a dip in the Dead Sea more comfortable than using a public beach. We parked near the spa, payed an entrance fee, got towels and keys for lockers and went inside to change. Then we found a shuttle, hopped into a cart and took a short ride to the beach. There was some shade, seats and showers, so we went right in. The water in Dead Sea is ~10 times as salty as ocean's water and it makes you float really wall. The bottom of the sea is covered in thick shell of salt that cut your feet, so you have to wear some kind of rubber boots or flip-flops to get in
. We enjoyed floating around for a while, then went to find some mud (apparently it's good for your skin or something), but the mud was so hot you could barely touch it, so instead we went back and showered off the oily salty water. Eventually the tractor was back and it took us back to the spa. Inside the change rooms there were small pools of sulphur water, incredible smelly. I took a short dip in one, then took a shower and changed.
We got out of the spa around 5 PM, which was the closing time and I drove to Ein Gedi Reserve, but it was already closed. They have a botanical garden inside, a waterfall and some interesting hikes. But it didn't work out, so we drove off to Haifa. We drove over mountains and got to the paid highway 6 that goes to Haifa. On the way there we stopped for some dinner at a rest stop. The kebab restaurant there had signs in Hebrew and English, but they didn't have an English menu, so we ordered "meat and sides" as the helpful stuff translated. On the final stretch of the highway we got into a traffic jam for a little while, so we made it to Haifa a bit late, around 10 PM.
As we arrived, we called Julia's cousin Eugene and he came out to meet us. Then we had to find a parking spot, since the streets in this area are just packed with parked cars and payed parking areas do not seem to work. Finally we got parked, unloaded the car and went inside. Eugene's wife made a huge dinner, but we were pretty full, so we had some soup, took a shower and went to bed.
Dead sea floating
Wednesday, April 20, 2016
Ein Gedi, Dead Sea Region, Israel
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