Day 7 by Jonah

Today is April the 24th, and today we mainly did two things: Masada and the Dead Sea.  Both very famous sights. It was a lot to take in in one day. Never mind the heat of a blistering 39 degrees today, we spent the whole day outside.  After spending time at Masada it was awesome to cool off in the Sea.  It was an early wake this morning in the Bedouin camp of Kfar Hanokdim.  We began the ascent on the Roman Ramp (the easier side) which only took about 15 minutes.  Trying to ignore the already oncoming heat at 10:00 in the morning we reached the summit of Masada: which was not much of a summit compared to the Rockies.  We walked through the remains of the King Herod fort atop Masada, and listened to our guide Dafna explain about King Herod and his palace.  I found the water cistern we visited particularly interesting because it was amazing to me how they could dig such deep, big holes in the ground and cover it in the plaster. The water cistern itself was about 45 feet in height give or take. One thought that came to mind for me was how does one put plaster on the ceiling of a 45 foot tall room 2,000 years ago?   A weird thought, they really were quite amazing.  As the temperature started to reach its full wrath, I was happy to hear that we would begin our decent down the mountain.  This time we would do so on the other side of the mountain: the snake path.  This trail is slightly more complex and longer.  This took us about 20 minutes to descend.   On the way down we encountered an ibex and it did not run away when we came close. It was really cool to see a new animal up close.  We were then on our way to the Dead Sea, I think all of us were more than excited to cool down.  When we arrived we ate a quick lunch and loaded up on the mud.  I really enjoyed dunking myself in the mud. It was really fun. We then took a quick shuttle to the beach. I slowly went into the water.  It stung a bit at first but the floating was a really cool sensation.  I don't have a lot to say about it: I thought it was fun but it was a short visit.  By that point I think most of us were excited for a real hotel room as we made our way on the two hour drive toTel Aviv. We are now at the Sea Net hotel and looking forward to the coming days.