2nd Day - The lowest place on earth, Mesada and Abu Gosh
Woke up from the sound and feeling of 5 flies hovering around my head just to realize that it's 6am and that evreyone else around me where suffering from flies. It's funny to watch people trying to sleep while using their hands to hush the flies away. I watched the sky and saw the sun is going to be up soon. So I took my camera and sat next to the water waiting for the sunrise over the Red Mountains of Jordan. The dead sea is actually the border between Israel and Jordan (at that area) and on both sides of the sea there are red mountains surrounding the sea, creating a beautiful crater filled with salty water. The place itself is at minus 270 meters!!! making it the lowest place on earth. The problem is that it doesn't get enough water and so in the current conditions it's getting drier and lower, making this beautiful place an exitent place (unless they'll find a way to shift some water into it from the red sea in the south).
After sunset, I made some tea for my friends and we had a small breakfast and off to the water we went. For my Japanese friend it was her first time, and it was very funny to see her walking into the water, not knowing what to expect and then suddenly feeling herself floating. The first time she went into the water she got scared, causing some water to splash on her face, which is the worst thing you can get, as the water is so salty it burns the eyes. But then on her second try (after wiping her face with a towel) she got relaxed and enjoyed the floating. It was only 8am but the sun was already very hot (it gets to around 40 degrees celsius by 12am). We decided it was time to enjoy the mud so we took a walk on the coast to find a mud hole from which we drew some black mud and put it on our bodies.
When it got really hot we had a cold shower and drove to Mesada. The story of Mesada is an amazing story of a great war against the Romans, more than 2000 years ago. Look at a separate review about Mesada.
After Mesada, it was noon already, bloody hot outside, and we decided to go home and stop on the way in a very famous arab village outside of Jerusalem called Abu-Gosh in which there are some of the most amazing Humus restaurants.
When out bellies got full, we went back to T.A. for R&R and for a drink ;)
Mesada is the name of a fort located on a small mountain next to the dead sea. The actual height of the mountain is only 200 meters, but because it's next to the dead sea, it appears like almost 500 meters high.The mountain itself is around 16km south of En Gedi (where we spent the night and floated on the sea) and just north of Sedom mountain.
Mesada is a part of the Unesco World Heritage list since 2001, due to its important role in the history of Israel and humankind as it symbolizes the eternal human fight between slavery and subdued to freedom.
The story is an amazing story - Israel was occupied by the romans around the year 0 (the era of Jesus). In the year 66 AC there was a big rebellion in Israel against the Romans, and Mesada which was a Roman Fort was captured by a group of militant jews. In 70 AC Jerusalem was destroyed and the last of the jews fled to Mesada which became the last free area in Israel. Mesada represented to all the occupied jews in Israel the last stand for freedom.
The romans started a siege on Mesada. The number of people inside the fort were around 2000 people, including elder, children and women. Around the fort the Romans put a task force of 8000 soldiers who tried to break the walls and occupy the fort. The siege started around 73 AC and lasted a few months. In the end the Romans built a tower to help them break the walls of the fort and storm the fort. When the jews realised they are doomed (there were only 960 people left in the fort at that time), they decided to commit mass suicide and die as free people than to be conqured and die as slaves.
The story of that night is an amazing story. They wrote down the names of all the men on stones and then picked up 10 stones. Each men went and kill his family, then lay on the ground with their bodies hugged in his hand and wait for the selected men to come and kill him. After the 10 finished killing all the rest of the people, they did a loterry between themselves and picked up one person who killed the last 9 and then commited suicide. In that way all 960 people died in that night. Died free. When the Romans broke into the fort the next day they found all the bodies spread around the place, and they adored the bravery and willingness of the dead people to fight and die free.
The story of what happend was documented by a famous writer from that time that found 2 women and 5 kids who were hiding in the wells on the mountain and escaped the mass suicide.
Up until today the name Mesada in Israel symbols the fight for freedom and the willingness to never let down and never be occupied again by another country and live under other regime.
The place itself is a beautiful one, a desert mountain, with amazing archeological digs on top of it, including ancient synagoges, storage rooms, fort walls, mosaics on the walls and floor and more.
You can climb the mountain by walk, it takes something like 45 minutes through a trail called "the snake trail", but this is really not recommended in the middle of the day in the summer. The 2nd option is to use the cable car which takes only 3 minutes.
On the mountain itself it takes around 1 hour to troll around, see all the areas. It's very organized with support for many languages.
Recommended!
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