Kerak Castle and the Dead Sea

Monday, June 21st

One thing I really don’t like about hotels is cable. Our kids are more than happy to stare at the TV as long as possible and avoid having any actual local experiences. After a morning spent listening to the Disney channel, we got packed up and headed to the Movenpick on the Dead Sea. It was another 3-4 hour drive and necessitated another stop at a tourist restaurant. One good thing about this place is that I found contemporary glass bracelets similar in diameter/thickness to the ones being excavated at the site of Dhiban where I’m working on the glass. Though these are probably made in China or India, rather than locally, I purchased 8 in hopes of doing a use-life study. While in graduate school at Arizona, I had undertaken a similar project with a different type of glass bangle. During the study, none of the bracelets broke. One problem with the study was that only one bracelet was worn at a time, when multiples were probably more culturally appropriate. Also, they were worn intermittently. I decided to put 2 on each arm, and after some serious hand squeezing managed to do so. I kind of sound like a wind chime, which I’m hoping I’ll get used to!

We also decided to stop at Kerak castle on the way. Jason realized this was the only true ‘castle’ the girls would get to see on their trip and it was kind of on the way. Kerak is a Crusader fortification, and some of the areas outside of it were used in that awful Orlando Bloom film

I’ve never seen the Dead Sea from this side, and guess I’d never gotten a good look at the southern evaporation ponds either. That’s where they evaporate the water so they can mine the salt. Jason pointed out the old shore-lines, and it was pretty depressing. It’s one thing when he says that an area was different 20,000 years ago, it’s another when he can point to a shoreline 20 feet above the current sea level and say ‘that was about 1970’.

We arrived at the Movenpick on the Dead Sea which was even more amazing than the one in Petra. It is set up like a village, and we had been upgraded to the Wadi Rum beach view set of rooms. They had amazing porches looking out over the Dead Sea. While Jason’s parents rested, the rest of us went swimming. One half of the pool had a gently sloping sand bottom, which turned out to be perfect for Eli. I also inquired about the Zara Spa, which is really quite legendary, and made plans to spend part of the morning there.

That evening we ate at one of the many hotels. What is truly surprising is how HOT it still is even at 10 pm. The entire complex is made of stone that pulls in the heat all day. At night the heat comes back out—it feels like when you open the oven and get a blast of dry heat on your face.