Saturday, May 1, 2010

Israel, Last Post! : Dead Sea and Masada

Our last day in Israel, we drove from Jerusalem back down south to the Egyptian border at Eilat. On the way, we stopped at the Dead Sea which looked both beautiful and other-worldly. On the southern end of the sea, we drove past a plant which processes the salt....that's a huge wall of salt outside David's window.






























Next stop was Masada, a mountain fortress where Herod built one of his palaces. About a century later, in 66 AD, the Jewish resistance captured the stronghold and held it as the last bastion of resistance against the Romans. The Romans used captured Jews to build a ramp over a gorge and up the mountainside and, after several months, finally succeeded in breaching the wall. Once inside the walls, as the story goes, the Romans found the residents dead; they had systematically killed themselves with each father killing his immediate family and then each man killed by a group of ten, who then executed themselves. With the destruction of Masada , the Israeli state ceased to exist for the next 1900 years. Masada is a powerful symbol of Jewish identity and we read that new Army recruits swear their allegiance with the oath "Masada shall never fall again!"

Masada:


You can climb up but we didn't have time so took the cable car.














From up on top, we could look down and see the remnants of the Roman encampment as they lay siege on the fortress.


And, from on top looking down, here's a photo of the assault ramp the Romans built....almost 400 ft. high. I found it amazing that it's still there!


That night we crossed back over to the Egyptian side of the border, after some delay and Visa confusion at the border I might add, but it all worked out alright. Very nice border patrol but weird Visa regulations. We stayed the night in the resort town of Taba Heights....everything looked very nice but we were too spent to really take advantage of it all. :) It was a wonderful trip to Israel and we couldn't ask for better travel partners in Art and Suzy, but I think I can safely say that we were exhausted....traveled out....looking forward to getting back home by this point. This was the view from our balcony:

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