Dead Sea, Jordan

My extra day in Petra was filled with a car ride to the Dead Sea with my new friend, Hamsa, from the hotel Saab’ha. We jetted off in a 1981 mustard Mercedes through a spectacular valley called Wadi Ariba (Wadi meaning valley). *I’m either going to have to pick up a thesaurus or someone is going to have to start inventing new adjectives for me to describe all the beauty that I am seeing; spectacular, amazing, magnificent, etc. *
The road winded down the mountains into a flat desert plain with Israel to the left and Saudi Arabia to the right. This is where you can really see the Bedouin way of living in tents scattered throughout the land, existing on simplicity and determination in a rugged terrain.
All of a sudden the desert ceases and on one side there are mountains and on the other the Dead Sea; the road resembling a Middle Eastern Pacific Coast Highway. We arrived at the swimming point for locals and I waded in the clear water, with a one piece bathing suit on, itching, literally from the salt, to get my “look, I’m floating in the Dead Sea” picture taken among Jordanian Muslim school girls getting wet, fully clothed in jeans, robes and veils. Luckily there were a few Germans in Speedos around to take away some of the awkwardness.