Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
In the southern theatre there were three men in Desert Corp uniform playing the bag pipes.
It was a little bizarre to hear the notes of 'Over the Seas to Skye' swirling around the ter-
raced seats of an ancient roman theatre.
There were also a group of men dressed up as gladiators preparing to put on a show at
the hippodrome, which was set up for chariot races and the performance of several mock
battles. Unfortunately we didn't stay, as Basil was keen for us to continue on to the Dead
Sea.
Basil was an interesting chap. Apparently he had been a guide for some years, although his
background prior to that was not clear. He claimed to have written a couple of books on
various Jordanian antiquities and he pointed us to several books on sale at Petra.
He said he was observing an additional period of fasting and denial after Ramadan. There
was some suggestion that if you did additional penance, this would put you in good stead
when they were adding up your merit points to determine whether you were good enough
to go to Paradise. It sounded somewhat selfserving and an unkind person might suggest
that he was simply seeking to impress.
The primary source for the Dead Sea is the Jordan River. The Sea is essentially a salt lake
about 420 metres below sea level - the lowest point on the surface of the Earth. It is 330
metres deep and the salinity level is about 30 per cent.
In recent decades, the Dead Sea has been shrinking because of diversion of incoming water
from the Jordan River. To reverse the process, Jordan is proposing to divert brine discharge
from a national desalination project that will produce fresh water from seawater pumped
from Aqaba.
It was hard country thereabouts and aside from the presence of the Sea itself, there seemed
little else of note. Standing on the Jordan shore, you can see Jericho in Israel, a distance of
about 18 kilometres.
Given what I saw as the limited appeal at the site, I was surprised at the number of five star
hotels that ran along the shore
Of course, if your there you have to go for a swim in the Sea. This I did, laying back in the
water, and going through the motions of reading a newspaper. Some people had problems
lying back without toppling over and then getting back to the feet without dunking them-
selves. There was a bunch of young women who, keen to get the most from their visit, were
plastering themselves with mud from the shoreline.
