Jerusalem

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Snake path climb at dawn. That phrase struck a chord deep within me. When I knew I was going to be visiting Masada, I knew that was the way I wanted to do it.

The reality of the climb was bit less prosaic. The climb to the top should take about an hour according to the literature. Masada lies about ninety minutes by car south of Jerusalem where we stayed for our Honeymoon. Figure on forty minutes to get ready to go south.

The ugly wake-up time math had us getting up at 2:30 for our romantic snake path climb. Let’s be serious, 2:30am isn’t a wake-up time, it is more of a go to bed after partying time.

Regardless, there we were in the dark of the morning in the YMCA lobby convincing the security the guard to open up the parking lot so we could get our rental car. Our guide, Alexandra showed up promptly, too, despite the fact she almost bowed out of the trip. Earlier she had a nasty chest cold that left her feeling weak. She warned us again not to get our hopes for a dramatic sunrise as those did not happen very frequently.

As we pulled into the dark parking lot at Masada, avoiding the stray dog, I spotted the moon just rising over the massif. The snake path didn’t open until 4:30, so I had some time to set up the tripod and shoot the bright light of the moon coming through the wispy clouds.

The broad gradual climb of the Snake Path quickly devolved into a never ending series of steps. In the beginning, I thought our guide, Alexandra was going to kill us with her quick pace but her cold caught up to her and her pace diminished. I on the other hand increased my pace when I realized that if I wanted to be in position for the sunrise, I had better climb faster.

The sun only comes up once a day, so be ready when it does is an adage I hear a lot. I didn’t come all this way to screw that up.

Eventually, the hellish stairs ended and I found myself standing amidst the ruins of Herod’s city. The moon still hovered above the western horizon, posing nicely behind a ruined wall. I had some time so I took a few shots.

The sky overhead slowly gave way to blue as I set up my GoPro to catch a time-lapse sunrise. Cindi and Alexandra joined me in one of the buildings near the eastern edge of Masada to shoot the object we came to shoot.

Well, our fight with the sands from the Sahara continued as dust and fog blocked our view. You know things are bad when your guide remarks she doesn’t think the sun is up, yet. You tell her according to the clock it has been up for 25 minutes. The sun when we could see it, was a sickly yellow orb barely visible through the murk.

There would be no spectacular views of the Dead Sea or the Judean hills that day. Then again, the close up things on Masada made the climb worth it.

Detailed metal models showed how the buildings would have looked back in Herod’s time. Black lines on the buildings showed the demarcation between original finds and recreation. Alexandra spent plenty of time trying to snare our attention with facts and figures of the inhabitants while Cindi and I photographed every little rock.

We were awed at the public bath house. We made the steep climb down to see Herod’s Northern Palace. From there, we were able to see the caves that were the cisterns for the city.

Herod was famous for taking inhospitable places and shaping them to his needs. If the place was flat, he would build a mountain. If the place had no water he would build a palace there and bring water to it. There was a great interactive model that showed how the water was brought from the hills to fill Masada’s cisterns.

Near the main gate, Alexandra read to us from Flavius Josephus, a noted historian from the time of the Jewish revolt in 66AD. The passage told how the Romans finally made it into the city after a long siege only to find all the inhabitants dead by their own hands.

We headed to the less populated southern side of Masada to climb into one of the upper level cisterns. We waited on the steep stone stairs while a group of young adults had a meeting down on the sandy floor. A shaft of light from a hole in the wall illuminated years of graffiti in the cistern.

Alexandra made special note of section of the wall that showed a message from a Jewish Group from 1943. At the same time the holocaust occurred in Germany, Jews were here planning the birth of Israel.

Before departing, Cindi did the traditional thing of yelling ‘Masada’ off the southern edge of the plateau to hear it echo back to us.

Long lines of training soldiers climbing the stairs passed us going up as we descended. About every fourth soldier also carried his loaded M-16 on his climb. It was nice to see quite a few of the young men having to stop for rest breaks. Probably one of the reasons they needed these rest breaks was the fact they smoked cigarettes when they stopped.

Our next stop was the Oasis of Ein Gedi. We weren’t ten steps into the park, already talking about our hopes to see some Nubian Ibex, when a small group of them crossed the path in front of us.

The hike to the David Falls was quite easy after the hike to Masada. The trails follows the course of the river up the narrow canyon. Ein Gedi means Goat Spring in both Arabic and Hebrew. It is mentioned several times in the bible, particularly as the place were King David hides from King Saul. David has a chance to kill Saul unawares in a cave while Saul is relieving himself but cuts Saul’s cloak instead.

One of our group took off his shirt and shoes and ventured into the cold pool below a short water fall. Awkward topless photographs of him waterlogged are even now ruining the inter-webs.

On the way out of the park, we saw the other predominant mammal in Ein Gedi, the Rock Hyrax. Despite looking like a large rodent, the Hyrax’s closest relative is actually the elephant. When the tourists saw what I was photographing in the bushes, a mass of iPads appeared and started pursuit of the shy creature.

We stopped for lunch at the Ein Gedi spa for a cafeteria style lunch which turned out to be quite tasty. Because of the shrinking of the Dead Sea due to diversions in the River Jordan, the Ein Gedi spa now lies distant from the edge of the sea. People there take a bus from the facilities to the actual shore.

Our destination for our Dead Sea immersion was further up the road at Mineral Springs. Mineral Springs was closer to the water but there was still a hike after changing into our swim suits to the beach.

As we walked the path, you could still see the abandoned facilities from previous shorelines.

Maybe to other cultures or people, dipping into the water of the Dead Sea is a glorious experience. For me, it was like stepping into cool sludge. Cindi, gamely coated her arms and legs with the black Dead Sea Mud, but she looked as unhappy about this process as I felt.

She went in first, making tortured faces as she slowly lowered into the water. And I use the term water loosely. It was very oily from the minerals in it. Dirt like oil slicks floated atop the surface. If it weren’t for the Dead Sea Experience, I would never have gone in upon seeing it. Cindi after rinsing off the dead sea muck, couldn’t get out of the water fast enough.

To be fair, all the people around us seem to be enjoying themselves, except for the woman who had cut her foot and was limping away as fast she could from the giant bath of cut finder. I even saw a woman try and swim in the water as if she were in a regular pool. This is a great way to get an eye full of the caustic contents of the sea.

Our final stop was Qumrun. Qumrun is the spot where the goat herder found the dead sea scrolls in the cliffs. It is also the site of the Essene community where mostly likely the scrolls were written.

Going to Qumrun was the completion of our Dead Sea Scroll journey. On the previous Friday, we had gone to the Israel Museum and seen the actual scrolls. On Monday, we had visited the shop of Kando who had purchased the scrolls from the Goat Herder. An original Dead Sea Scroll jar was still on display in the Kando heirs shop. And now we were looking up at where the scrolls were found.

An archeological dig is taking place at Qumrun and pathways take you through the old city. Qumrun was home to the Essene sect of Judaism. They were fanatical about using their Mikva’s or ritual bath. Most every house had one and if that wasn’t enough their were public Mikvas as well.

That’s why it makes sense that John the Baptist might have lived here. The Essene’s took in orphans and John’s father had been killed by the Romans. Plus, there is all that bathing that John later made famous.

The ruins are more impressive for what they mean than what they actually are. By this time of our trip through the city, Cindi and I had seen a lot of ruins on our tour so it takes a lot to get us interested. I know I was more impressed by the stories than seeing another low crumbling wall of stone. It was also just possible Jesus might have lived with this group of Essenes as well. But John would be more of a certainty.

We celebrated our last night in Jerusalem by going across the street to the King David Hotel and splurging on dinner. I’m glad I went there the last night. The views from the Garden Dining room towards the old city were phenomenal. If I had come earlier on our trip, I would have been compelled to eat their every night just so I could watch Jerusalem while I dined.

I had the diet busting Belgian Waffles for desert which came complete with many many toppings. Yet, another reason to go here last rather eat that many calories every day.

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The idea for this leg of the trip was stupid. Basically we are in one country, full of history and we are leaving it for another country. My idea was to skip this side trip entirely when I looked into the particulars of actually getting to Petra. There would be borders to cross, visas to get and a lot of transportation transfers.

But Cindi seemed to have her heart set on the trip, no matter the roadblocks. Eventually, I found a trip that did it in one day, one very long day. And then I found the same trip for even cheaper, still expensive but not sell a kidney to afford it expensive. I gave in and made the arrangements.

And the arrangements I made were sketchy. I received from Fun Travel Israel an email that said it was my voucher good for two trips to Petra. It was almost a cryptic handed note passed in a darkened alley to meet your guide on this date to be taken to your destination. Tell no one.

The one thing I did know for sure was that I was getting up again at the crack of dawn to start the trip. We checked out of the hotel at 3am, again summoning the guard to get our Schlomo Sixt rental car out of the lot. We drove an hour to Tel Aviv to drop our bags off at the Embassy Hotel before finding the Airport.

Naturally our hotel was hidden off a side street from where the actual address said it would be. The clerk at the Hotel was not happy to have the loud American asking to put his bag in storage at that ungodly hour. I thought later she might just be cranky with everyone.

We found the Sde Dov airport quite easily. We arrived twenty minutes before it opened. We took that time to drive around Tel Aviv and get lost finding our way back to the airport. Curse you one way streets and conflicting signs pointing their way to the airport. Some signs pointed to Sde Dov, others pointed to Ben Gurion with no indication to which one they pointed.

I’ve been in living rooms larger than the Sde Dov airport. At this point, I had nothing that resembled a ticket on a flight, just a voucher saying report to this airport. With a sigh of relief, there was a reservation in our name for a flight to Eilat.

Imagine my surprise when they bussed us out to the tarmac and loaded us on a plane that had propellers. It took a lot of head scratching for me to remember the last time, I had been on a propeller plane. One of the nice features of the plane, were all the ads on the overhead storage compartments.

The Eilat airport was marginally bigger than the Sde Dov airport. But you would think our guide to Petra would stand right out. But no. No sign of a Fun Time Israel guide awaited us. Christian, a swiss traveler, was in a similar predicament.

Eventually, after our worries levels increased, a small van with Fun Time on the side pulled to the curb. Our guide offered apologies. The stop before ours was tragically slow as people kept going back into their hotel for forgotten items.

Our next stop was the Yitzhak Rabin border crossing where we got to spend a delightful hour hanging around in no-man’s land. Right before heading into no man’s land, our airport driver handed me a folded envelope. I was told to hang on to it until somebody at the border crossing asked me for it. When the time came, I was supposed to know what that meant. Didn’t I mention this was sketchy? Now, they have me carrying the bribes for the border crossing. It all just seemed a bit off.

I handed the envelope to Ramse and he took that into the security room with our passports. And we waited and we waited.

On the other side of the border from Eilat is Aqaba, Jordan. Every time I hear that name I get an echo of Peter O’Toole saying the same name during ‘Lawrence of Arabia’. Our bus did not live up to the hype again. Our beautifully appointed coach was probably just that about 5 years and thousands of tourists ago. My seat wouldn’t remain in it’s full and upright position, gradually creeping back to fully prone every ten minutes.

We made two stops on our way to Petra; once at a gift shop to get snacks and once for lunch. I wonder why we stopped at a gift shop? The lunch was a passable buffet that had some really good rice. Thankfully, we stopped for lunch before going to Petra although this now put us nine hours into our trip without having seen any building carved out of red rock.

We finally made it to our destination at 1:30. This had better be good or I was going to be a wee bit cranky. Again, our tour description lied and we were not give our free horse ride down to the Siq. Many of the horse wranglers implored us to take rides as we followed Ramse the guide.

Ramse told us to stay with him for the first hour and a half of the tour. After that we would be free to explore on our own. I quickly grew tired of Ramse’s spiel as we walked through the narrow canyon to Petra proper. Plus, the lure of ever greater photo opportunities caused me to listen to him less and less until finally I abandoned the group entirely to head to the treasury. Plus, the sun was setting. If you are in a steep walled canyon, there is only a limited time to catch the light in the canyon. Off I went.

As I gazed at all the magnificent rock carved buildings around, I forgot about the difficulties in actually getting to this spot. Bedouins with camels were everywhere. I kept flashing on the final scene of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade as I at last stood before the Treasury Building.

I was right to hurry but I missed the sun overhead just the same. Still, I was glad I was there.

Ramse admonished us to be back at the bus by 4:30 because by 4:31, there wouldn’t be a bus and we could get a cab to Aqaba.

Petra is huge and you should takes days to explore it fully. We did the best we could in the few hours we were there. As we took pictures, we were constantly approached to take camel or donkey rides. I snapped pictures of a bedouin woman in exchange for buying trinkets at her shop. I use the term shop loosely to describe her blankets and low shelves spread under a tent.

The sun illuminated other rock carved building towards the end of town. Cindi paid five bucks to sit on a camel for me to take her picture. I’m going to say it was entirely her idea. We would have been there well into the night if not for the pressure to get back to our coach wasn’t upon us.

We left the far end of town with plenty of time to get back to the bus, but the dramatic sights along the way caused us to constantly stop and take more photos. We arrived back at the bus with only enough time to blow five bucks on a stale candy bar for sustenance.

On the trip back, we were supposed to stop at the Wadi Mussa and a trip through Aqaba. Neither of these things happened as it was pitch black and every one of us was exhausted. Again my bus seat reclined into the passenger’s lap behind us. I switched seats with Cindi.

The border crossing on the way back only took us long enough to walk through and show our passports to the guards. I don’t know why it took so long going the other way.

We boarded our propeller plane and flew back to Tel Aviv. After several wrong turns, I again located our hotel. Thankfully, our bags had been placed in our not very big room at the Embassy Hotel. Because of wonderful scheduling, we would only be in the room for about five hours before our next journey.