Jordan is a small kingdom. We went “away” for the weekend to the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea is maybe 40 miles away from Amman but splashing in the super salty sea and playing in the pools (good alliteration, huh) made it feel like a vacation.
We started our weekend by visiting the possible site of Jesus’ baptism. Of course, there is no way archaeologists can prove precisely where two men stepped into a river 2000 years ago. The Jordan has definitely moved west, taking away land from the Israelites and giving it to the Sodomites and the Moabs and whoever else lived east of the Promised Land. What archaeologists can find is places where there have been churches in the area before and they can assume that people would put churches in historically important places.
Here’s Duffy at the River Jordan. Yes, that is Israel on the other side. Israel has its own tourist infrastructure related to the Baptism Site (the river has two banks) but the archaeology placing the site is in Jordan is stronger.
Here we are in front of an excavation of a church that might have been located at the Baptism Site.
We spent a lot of time marveling at how close we were to Israel but then reminded ourselves there are 200,000 landmines along the border. So there probably aren’t so many illegal crossings. We wondered if get-tough-on-illegal-immigration presidential hopefuls like Tom Tancredo will propose this solution for US borders. No kidding, the Baptism Site was not open to the public until extensive de-mining was completed following the Jordan-Israel Peace Accords. On that happy note we headed to the Dead Sea (5-star resorts and landmine-free!).
We spent a lot of time marveling at how close we were to Israel but then reminded ourselves there are 200,000 landmines along the border. So there probably aren’t so many illegal crossings. We wondered if get-tough-on-illegal-immigration presidential hopefuls like Tom Tancredo will propose this solution for US borders. No kidding, the Baptism Site was not open to the public until extensive de-mining was completed following the Jordan-Israel Peace Accords. On that happy note we headed to the Dead Sea (5-star resorts and landmine-free!).
We stayed at the very lovely, almost complete
d Kempinski Hotel. We've borrowed their corporate slogan for this entry's title. Witness Dan here savoring his morning coffee beside the horizonless pool as the temperature soars above 100 F. It was only a holiday weekend for Americans, so several of our fellow guests were familiar faces from the office. Other colleagues headed to Tel Aviv, Damascus and Aqaba.
3 comments:
Very cool. Did you swim in the sea? Could you float without any effort? Did you feel salty when you came out?
Actually you don't feel salty you feel greasy and kind of gross. There are helpfully showers located on the beach. But you are definitely floating.
Wow, that was so cool! Thanks for the pictures. Lol, Angie & Richard swam in the Great Salt Lake. They said it was gross, also.
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