Masada and the Dead Sea
To the surprise of all, we successfully awoke at 4:15am with minimal grumbling and no stragglers from our small beds in the Ein Gedi Field School (a school for environmental conservation/appreciation, where the previous night two 15 year old Israelis told me they'd been to Las Vegas and that consequently America was better [they also said Kobe Bryant was better than Derrick Rose, so their judgment is dubious]), and we made our way past the ibexes, down to the bus, and drove a dark road to Mount Masada. We would ascend the mountain, watch the sunrise and be enlightened. Many of us had never climbed a mountain, though most of us had seen a sunrise. Respective states of enlightenment were debatable.
For the first time on the trip we arrived at our destination early so we formed a stretch circle at the bottom of the mountain and prepped our muscles for what proved to be a strenuous hike. The mountain was indeed mountainous and our battle was an uphill one. Mount Masada is rocky and dry with ledges and cliffs but fortunately no one fell or rolled down to a violent demise. ("Hey, at least you'd die in Israel, right?" has been said a few times during the week, no big deal.) Along the way there were steps and some hand railings, which was nice. About halfway, Zachary decided to call a friend to distract from the pain in his legs. Some of us found this odd, to call a friend while climbing a mountain before dawn, but we've all learned a lot about each other this week, so maybe it wasn't so surprising.
With a not insignificant amount of huffing/puffing we made it to the top and individually celebrated with fist pumps and high fives and desperate gasps for air and I'm pretty sure no one collapsed. As if by deliberate design, there was a glorious flag of Israel overlooking what would have been maybe the greatest view I've ever seen had it not been for a couple of other ones we'd already seen earlier in the week. In front of us was a range of mountains, from behind which the sun would rise, and to the left was oh, just the Kingdom of Jordan, no big deal. A truly incredible sight, though: a desert that, millions of years ago, was ocean, and now instead of waves of saltwater, great dunes of sand and the occasional canyon. Heading toward Jordan was a high mist, so that the horizon faded, and land became indistinguishable from sky. I'm sure you will see many attempts at panoramic photos of this, but trust me when I tell you they won't do it justice.
We settled down atop the plateau and watched the slow rise of the sun. Some of us sang songs ("The Circle of Life" from the Lion King stands out), all of us took photos ("Get me while I jump in the air!"), and some of us sat silently and considered what lay in front of us.
After the sun came up and we all ooh'd and ahh'd, a huge group of Israeli soldiers jogged onto the scene cheering and chanting. Yair tells me that they had just completed their training, finishing with a week-long hike (!) and enthusiastic expressions of relief atop the mountain. We watched.
Tsach told us stories of ancient Jews battling the Romans, ultimately deciding to take their own lives and those of their people, rather than suffer capture. Then, we sang Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah", as a group of Israeli children watched and applauded.
And so we conquered Mount Masada. Walking down was no easy task, but with the Dead Sea awaiting us and a little musical encouragement from our medic, Eliran, we descended and ate breakfast (sandwiches).
The Dead Sea! We're really special, so our wonderful trip organizers planned for us to stop at a store with fancy Dead Sea lotion and minerals (thank you to Samantha for giving me a professional treatment with the tester bottles), and then use the store's private beach. We applied some really disgusting mud to our bodies and then stepped into the chilly Dead Sea. Oh, also, it was beautiful there. Just assume everywhere we go is beautiful, because it is.
The Dead Sea is basically one huge floatation device that's also wet and has rocks in it. I loved how some of us were worried about getting in ("Okay I'm gonna float! I'm gonna do it!"), and then once you lift your feet off the bottom you just...float. And there's no option. Floating is mandatory in the Dead Sea. We all giggled like children and then held hands in a circle with our feet above the surface for a photo. Satisfaction had by all.
Soft skin and some locker-room showers later, we headed to Jerusalem for lunch at a market. Some of us ate at a cafe whose name I can't remember because it was in Hebrew, where most of us had soups and I had meatballs. The meatballs were terrific. We split up and walked the market. The market is busy. I saw a young person move an old person out of the way with a stiff arm. Tristan shared a doughy cinnamon confection with me (I think it was a cinnamon rugelah) and it was seriously delicious. I had a coffee with cardamom in it, which is a spice they apparently put in black coffee here. The coffee, by the way, is generally not filtered here; it's very finely ground and stays in the cup. Wait a minute before you drink to let it settle at the bottom.
From there we walked to our Jerusalem hotel, at which point we took the longest break of the trip and crashed in our rooms for almost three hours. Having just had coffee, I decided to empty my luggage in a state of mania and get some clear separation on dirty vs clean which seemed long overdue. I'm running out of socks.
After dinner we heard from a young representative of Masa, an organization that helps young Jews return to Israel for internship and volunteer work. He told a funny story about his becoming an Israeli -- he is an American who joined the IDF after being laid off from his marketing job in New York. At the end of his first night in the force, he and a buddy waited for a bus home, and after a few buses drove past because they were full, he told us that the moment he knew he was an Israeli was when after two hours of waiting, he finally pushed aside an old lady so he could board and go home. Waiting in lines or giving up spots is not standard operating here in Israel (Noam confirms this, as does the man who cut me in line at the pizza stand without trying to hide it or even act casual).
A filmmaker named Yishai Goldflam talked to us about Israeli film culture and showed us two short student films he worked on. One discussed the difficulties of being in a relationship with one person religious and one secular, and we learned what an "Eruv" is. (It's a line formed with string around an area, sometimes as wide as a whole city, to mark an entire domain; by making the domain so big, religious Jews can carry things on Shabbat.) The other film explored the difficult moral decisions soldiers have to make which cannot be anticipated. Both were powerful and provocative and generated discussion.
So yesterday was just another fantastic day for bus 291. "Yesterday" doesn't really describe it, actually, as I'm pretty sure it contained more than 24 hours. The whole trip, when I think about it, has seemed to exist outside the confines of what we know as time and days and minutes. We've done so much, slept so little, and made so many discoveries, that I'm not so sure our standard units of measurement will suffice. Kilos or pounds, shekels or dollars; either way, a time like no other.
Steve
