March 6 Emilia’s trip to Israel

By: Emilia Frost

Today we left early at 7:40 am to go to some sort of water tunnels. It was a waterway from the springs in Bethany to Jerusalem because back in the day when they built those tunnels there was no water in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is too high up in the mountains to dig wells. The only water they could get was rain water

We hopped on the bus and left to go to Masada. Masada was a fortress and “winter retreat” for King Herod. On the way there it started getting less and less green. It looked more like how I expected Israel to look, a big hot, dry desert. When we got to Masada, there was a cable car that we rode in up to a plateau. At the top, there was a bunch of old ruins. We went inside an old bath house that was made up of 4 rooms. A room where you get undressed. Then the next room is the hottest room, then the warm room, and finally the cold room. After we were done with touring the ruins we had an option to either go back down on the cable car or hike down a trail called The Snake Trail. Before that, our tour guide told us that 4 years ago, there was a woman hiking on that same trail and she was in the back of the group. When the group got down they didn’t see her there. They looked for her for 2 hours and went back up the trail to find that she was dead. She tripped on her way down.  About 10 people in our tour group including my family and I decided to go on the trail and the other 26 went on the cable car. The whole trail was probably a mile long and it was a really rocky but a beautiful trail and I collected a bunch of volcanic rocks. 

The next stop was called Eingedi. We saw all sorts of wildlife while we were walking to a small waterfall. Once we got there we were allowed to dip our feet in but my brother thought it was a good idea to go under the waterfall. We walked back up to the bus to go to lunch. 

After lunch we saw more ruins at Qumran. At the Qumran ruins we learned that a group of male scribes lived there. They would bathe 2 times a day to purify themselves. They also had to hide a few thousand scrolls in different caves because the Romans were coming to kill them and the scribes didn’t want the Romans finding their scrolls. These caves are where the Dead Sea scrolls were found.

Lastly we got to go swimming in the Dead Sea. It’s called the Dead Sea because none of the water comes out of the sea. The river Jordan is the only major river providing water to the Dead Sea, but the water in the Dead Sea stays.  So this sea is really dangerous and gross, and no plants grow around it. It is 33% salt and there is LOTS of mud. There are people rubbing the mud all over themselves or even using it as face masks. They do that because it makes you “younger.” The Dead Sea is dangerous because if you drink it or get it in your eyes then it can make you sick. Floating on this sea is also really easy because of all the salt. 

Lastly, at the end of the day our bus driver stopped at a little fruit stand on the side of the road in a town called Jericho. We got a fruit called a Pomelo. We got 3 of them and when we got to the hotel room I drew faces on them. :)