Half or full day destination.
Refreshing, even in mid summer, around sunset when brisk wind ads to
the experience. Can be combined with a meal at one of the smart
restaurants of the near by hotels. Bring enough water, sum towels and
a swimming suit. Only suitable for grown-up kids and remain under
close attention, extreme precaution to be taken when in water, eyes
must not get wet- if they do, rinse immediately with plenty of fresh
water. Don’t forget the towels.
The Dead Sea is one of the most unique features on planet Earth.
Between this spot in Jordan and Mount Everest in the Himalayas, lays
the rest of the world. When you submerge yourself to the neck in the
water of the Dead Sea, you would be in the lowest point the face of
Earth – 416 meters below the shores of the Mediterranean.
Each time one swims in this sea a new personal record of lowness is
broken. Return a year later and you have to imagine your last swim as
suspended at an imaginary layer above the current water surface. The
Dead Sea is like a big swimming pool being emptied, one should quickly
enjoy the remaining water, keeping in mind that each swim is unique
and each beach is only in its location- once.
This lake is running away- downward- and leaving us, leaving the
hotels, the roads, and the surrounding hills behind unable to catch up
with it. For thousands of |
years, the Dead Sea has bean dying. With its water getting lesser and
saltier, what is alarming, for the past 50 years, is the speed in
which its level has been dropping. Due to the use of most of River
Jordan’s water or irrigation and drinking, and due to dams depriving
it from other lesser vital tributaries, the Dead sea is now at a dying
rate of about one meter a year. This means if you visit it once a
week, each time your swim will be some 2 cm lower
Historically, water level was as high as the base of the bridge at the
Mujib gorge, minus 390 m. In fact, photos taken as recent as 1930s
show the Mujib gorge visited by boats, if one of these boats would
have tied its ropes at any point of those vanished 1930s shores, today
it would be hanging on the mountainside about one kilometer away from
the sea and some 20 meters above its water.
The Dead Sea wasn’t always dead. About 20 thousand years ago it
covered 160 km of the length of Jordan Valley, forming the “Lisan
Lake” that reached from a point 40 km south of the current Lisan and
all the way to Lake Tiberius. The Dead Sea’s history also seams to
repeat itself, for the current shape- basically limited to the
northern part without the southern part that usually appears on maps–
seams to have occurred before. The 1500-year-old mosaic map of Madaba,
ironically, gives closer resemblance now of the sea’s current shape
than |
most of the “modern “ maps of today. The low level during the
Byzantine (5th century AD) may hint to a long period of drought, maybe
due to a cycle, of hundreds or thousands of years. It also corresponds
with the story of Sodom and Gomorra, which seam to have been flooded
in the filling-up process.
Banks of this lake are moving. In fact, The Jordanian side is
traveling north in relation to banks on the western side. Each year
Jordan, Madaba, and the Dead Sea hotels move few millimeters to the
north, if this journey continues, in 30 million years these hotels
will be facing Nazareth.
In Geological terms the Dead Sea is relatively young. As part of same
geological event of the rift valley and the Red Sea, it is only some
27 million years old. When the Dead Sea was being formed, Dinosaurs
have already been extinct and fossilized for some 35 million years.
This dying lake with the rest of the Jordan valley, gives us a unique
chance to look at a cross-section, a dramatic vertical cut in the
depths of the Jordanian landscape, a cross-section in time that
resembles pages of an open book; a rare manuscript that we must learn
to read, and pass to our children in a legible condition. |
