What it Feels Like to be a Buoy

Floating Around the Dead Sea

We only went to the Dead Sea because it was on our way back from Masada.  I thought I would scurrying in, pose for a photo, and then scurry out again ready to head home.  I was wrong.  We spent hours at the Dead Sea.  Friends who had been to the Dead Sea before me warned it was impossible to swim.  I am an excellent swimmer and I gaffed at their claims.  They were right; it is impossible to swim.  The water is way too dense to move through it quickly.  I basically just paddled my floating body around like raft until the extreme saltiness of it sent me to the freshwater showers in hope of stopping the itching/burning.

Enjoying the easy buoyancy of the Dead Sea with my friends.

The Dead Sea is ten times as salty as the ocean.  Ocean water is about 3.4% salt.  The Dead Sea is 34% salt.  One of the fun results of this (other than floating absurdly high out of the water) is the formation of halite (the mineral made of NaCl or table salt), which precipitates out of the water everywhere.

Hunting for halite along the Dead Sea shore.

Halite is an awesome mineral because its habit (shape that it forms in) is cubic (like a square in three dimensions).  Halite forms so quickly in the Dead Sea though it makes weird non cubic shapes not typical of halite formation.  I took more than a couple hand samples home with me.

Halite precipitation around a rock.

The Dead Sea is also famous for its black mud that is supposedly amazing for your skin.  We went to a public beach with freshwater showers and changing rooms.  Patches of natural black mud were not apparent.  However, visitors could buy squeeze bags of the stuff to cover themselves in.  We did not splurge on a bag of the mud, but a nice Colombian man offered us the rest of his bag.  So two of us got dirty.

Sporting our stylish Dead Sea mud.  

I cannot attest to the healing properties of the Dead Sea mud.  While it did clear up my acne, I started feeling a cold a couple hours later which led to this post.  A couple other issues of the Dead Sea was the burring and itching in all the wrong places, severe burring if any water gets in your eyes, and the fact that you can't shave for two days beforehand if you don't want the worst razor burn of your life.  Having said that I would totally go again.  Next week perhaps?