Dead Sea delights

Before heading off to the Dead Sea we checked out Karak Castle. It's another thousand year old crusader castle standing halfway between Shobak and Jerusalem. Si and I weren't too impressed with the castle but it did have some great views of the surrounding area which is the alleged location of Sodom and Gomorrah!

It was a fantastic drive from Karak, at over 1000m, down to the dead sea which is 400m below sea level, the lowest point on Earth. It's strange to think that all the boats in the world were floating above our heads! As you drive along the Dead Sea Highway you can see the salt crusting on the cliffs below.

Thanks to Si's Mom and Dad being very generous and giving us some money for a treat, we were able to stay at the very lovely Movenpick Resort and Spa. The hotel is very luxurious and set in large gardens which drop down to the sea and include four different pools.

We couldn't wait to get into the sea and try bobbing about. No matter how hard he tries Si can't ever seem to be able to float, however he floated like the best of them in the Dead Sea! It is a very strange sensation indeed, you literally can't sink. The water is up to 31% salt, 9 times that of normal sea water. If you were to get any in your eye or if you have any cuts it would be quite painful. It didn't mention in the guide books that 31% salt can also be rather uncomfortable on the more delicate body parts, so watch out! You can't really swim in the dead sea, if you try and do breast stroke the buoyancy of the water just flips you onto your back. As you can see below we did the time honored reading of the paper whilst bobbing about.

The hotel also supplied a big tub of mud. Dead Sea mud is supposed to be full of all sorts of minerals supposedly good for your health. I don't know about that but it was fun to get muddy and slap some on anyway.

We really tried to make the most of staying somewhere so nice. We sampled all of the pools, had some of the Movenpick's best ice cream, captured all of the free toiletries, soaked up the satellite tv, walked round in the robes and took our first bath in a very long time! We also thought they had left a box of chocolates in the room. Imagine our disappointment to open them and find dates, horrifying! We did however find a pillow menu. Yes, at the Movenpick you can ring housekeeping and choose between 10 different pillow types. Now that's choice for you.

We had a good meal at the resort's Italian restaurant and they served alcohol, but i think i must have the smallest glass of wine i have ever seen. However we made up for it at the buffet breakfast, we ate that much we doubted even the dead sea could keep us afloat! We were very sad to leave the Movenpick and head back to our normal backpacker type accommodation where even toilet paper, towels and sheets are sometimes seen as optional luxury extra items.

The mighty pea

Well we've got our own transport again which is great. This time it's a bright green little number, like a moderately sized pea, only with less power.

Once again our vehicle is so woeful that you need to turn the AC off if you want enough umph to get up the hills. At one point Si thought that I was going to have to get out with the bags and push!

The driving conditions aren't too bad here in Jordan, at least it's a little calmer than Egypt. The biggest dangers are the enormous number of unmarked speed bumps and the high probability of meeting a speeding car on the wrong side of the road.

Today's trip went well though. First we visited Little Petra, very much like it's larger cousin but . . . smaller! It was well worth a look in and best of all we had the place entirely to ourselves.

Next stop was Shobak Castle, a thousand year old desert crusader castle, which we were really disappointed with. It didn't even warrant leaving the car! We carried on up the Kings Highway to our next destination, Karak Castle. The scenery en-route was fantastic, very much like the Grand canyon in some places.

However we did have a bit of a shock when for the first time in 5 weeks some clouds appeared in the clear blue sky, horrifying!

It was too late for the castle by the time we arrived in Karak so we headed to the Kir Heres restaurant for tea. It was rumored in the Lonely Planet to be the only place in town serving alcohol. When we asked if we could have two beers the waiter looked at us as if we were very dubious and said yes but we had to move tables from the front of the restaurant to sit behind a curtain at the back to drink our beer! Not that we are alcoholics or anything but we do enjoy a beer at the end of a hard day's sightseeing. Alcohol is quite hard to come by in Jordan and is only served in a few restaurants and hotels. But now that it's Ramadan even most of these places won't serve it at the moment. We were reading in the Lonely Planet that in Pakistan in the 70's the only way to get a drink was to obtain a medical certificate from a doctor declaring that you were an alcoholic. Only with this certificate were you allowed to buy drink, so it could be worse!