It All Goes South From Here

Dearest Rachel –

One last morning in Ginosar, and an early one at that; we’re leaving at a quarter to eight (which doesn’t sound like much of a difference from the last couple of days, except that it doesn’t give us time to get back to the room after eating breakfast. Oh well) for the Dead Sea and other points south.  Actually, Daniel’s been up since… I don’t really know, maybe three or four? It only stands to reason; he crashed out in front of his computer before nine last night. At least this way, I don’t have to wake him and help him put himself together, as he did that for himself while I was still sleeping.

Since we’re going to the Dead Sea, Yael warns us that we need to be careful about open wounds; she advises against shaving this morning. That’s all well and good, and it’s not like I have that much to shave these days, but I can’t bear having a neckbeard, so I scraped that off in the shower regardless.  I doubt I’ll be able to get into the Sea deep enough where that poses a problem.

We’ve also been advised that there won’t be a chance to stop for lunch today, so we should eat a very hearty breakfast – maybe, if the hotel permits it, to pack something extra as a snack along the way. I’m sure there’s plenty of people on our tour for whom that advice is well taken – and it would have been a good idea for me not too long ago – but two meals a day for us is just another day ending in ‘Y’ these days. I do think that we’re going to be fine; I’ll let you know if the situation changes.

In the meantime, as we wait for the restaurant to open for breakfast, we finish packing our stuff, and Daniel goes back to the videos that he fell asleep watching last night, while I sit on the balcony and dictate some of this. It’s the first time I’ve had an extended period of time to just be contemplative on this trip, I think.

I forget that because of Shabbat; there will be no kindling of fire today.  One of our elevators is doing an automatic ‘milk run,’ which I was well aware of.  What I didn’t consider was that the coffee machine wouldn’t be working today, because the buttons on it are exactly like that of the elevator.  You wouldn’t have missed it, yourself, but it caught me off guard.  Thankfully, it’s not like I’m addicted to the stuff; I can live without it.

On our way out after breakfast, we pass through the lobby and turn in our cards. I’m not sure how many of us are doing that, but I don’t want to be bringing them home as a souvenir, however inadvertently. Outside the hotel, we load our suitcases onto the bus, while Daniel says goodbye to Loud Boy (or is it that Loud Boy is saying goodbye to us?)

Shabbat or not, we have traveling to do today, and places to visit and see.  Not in Tiberius, of course; its demographics tends Orthodox, and as such, the town is almost entirely closed down.  Granted, we’d gone through the town three or four times yesterday; with so many chances to make our way through, if we didn’t stop then, we wouldn’t be doing so now.

Instead, our first stop is at another archaeological site, that of Bet She’an.  Yael touts this as an old Roman city, but the name doesn’t sound Roman at all, which confuses me. It so happens that the city is much older than Rome, and in fact, even predates the Israelite kingdom; after the battle of Mount Gilboa, the bodies of King Saul and his sons were hung from the city walls here.But what remains of the city are the buildings from the time of the Roman occupation of Judea, and that’s what she refers to as far as the archaeology is concerned.

Now, from a Christian perspective, there isn’t much here that’s referenced in the New Testament.  Jesus didn’t spend a lot of time in the Decapolis (of which this happens to be the only one to the west of the Jordan River); that was left to His disciples after His ascension.

On our way out, we passed through the gift shop and snack bar. This should amuse you: we overheard Nicole saying, in what certainly sounded like an awed tone, “they have café latte in a can here!”  Daniel and I look at us each other with flabbergasted expressions; has she not been to Mitsuwa?  I think we may need to introduce her to the place when we get home.

Yael had mentioned that the ancient hippodrome was outside of the archaeological dig site (“if they dug everything up, where would they put the current inhabitants?” she asks, quite reasonably), but that we would probably pass it on our way out of town. For all that I looked in either direction, I couldn’t see it. Then again, she’s in the other bus with the other half of the group, so she’s not here to point it out as we go by it.

We drive for what seems like a couple of hours through the West Bank (oddly enough, without passing through any checkpoints that I can recall.  And I don’t think I was sleeping at any point in the trip), passing Jericho on our right and the Jordan river to the left.  

Just outside of Jericho we get caught in such a rain that the driver has to replace his wiper – and he’d mentioned the other day that this was a new bus he’d purchased a few months back for one and a half million shekels.  Wiper blades don’t wear out that fast, do they?

Be that as it may, we arrive at Qumran, and despite the rain going on around us, the place is actually open.  You might remember a time when we couldn’t visit here in the past, because of the rains in Jerusalem, which might have precipitated (if you’ll pardon the expression) flash flooding in the area.  So the place isn’t always available to explore.  But today we got lucky, after a fashion, by getting rain in the desert that didn’t interfere with our stop.

Less lucky, however, is our stop at Ein Gedi; due to the rains, both now and previously, they’re apparently that much more susceptible to flooding, so the place we entered on previous trips is closed off to us. All we get is a ten-minute access to an overlook by the local field school.  It’s a different angle that we’ve never taken before, but it is less than we’ve normally had.

I don’t know what it is about these extended bus rides, but they do exert a somnolent effect on Daniel and me.  While we don’t quite nod off this time around, we’re both a little sleepy as we pull into the man-made oasis that our hotel, as well as several others, are built in. Before the sun goes down, we’ll need to get ourselves out and into the Dead Sea.

And all this before the sun even goes down, honey… but that’s perhaps a story for another time, assuming I have the time (and bandwidth, quite literally) to put it together. For now, though, I’d appreciate it if you could keep an eye on us, and wish us luck, as we’re still going to need it.