Mudslinging
Today is the last day of our trip to the Levant. We have an early morning flight tomorrow from Amman Jordan through Heathrow to San Diego. It’s been a great trip, but like all trips, as it winds down, it feels like a long trip and both Kim and I are ready to go home. We have thoroughly enjoyed traveling with Mike and Melisa and we’ve shared some very good times, and some good laughs. For the most part, the trip gets an A rating with exceptions being our overnight last night at the Sun City Camp in Wadi Rum, fur to the lack of heat in our Martian dome, which made it a less than wonderful stay, And then perhaps there was the issue about the food on the Sonesta Saint George, as we cruised down the majestic Nile. We can’t remember a trip where we have enjoyed what we’ve come to see as much as this trip. Cairo, the Nile, the magnificent temples of southern Egypt in Luxor, Edfu Aswan and Abu Simbel, as well as the hidden gem of Petra and the magnificent grandeur of Wadi Rum, have all made this trip as meaningful as any we have been on. It ranks high on our list of all time recommended trips for anyone who’s looking for an interesting place to go.
Today was a relatively uneventful day after we checked out of wadi rum, and had our driver Samer take us to the Kempinski Ishtar Dead Sea Hotel just outside of Amman obviously on the Dead Sea. Summer is a very proud Jordanian, and he declared that the Kempinski Hotel in Ishtar is the number one rated hotel in all the Middle East. That was a red flag to Mike the hotel bill, who immediately Googled best hotels in the Middle East. To Sameer as credit, the Ken Penske did rate as number nine in one of the service so it clearly is a luxury hotel of some note. When we arrived, it was clear that this was the best hotel we would stay at during this trip. While we were checking in the room clerk, in a feigned conspiratorial manner, offered to give us a double upgrade to one of the villas down by the sea. He whispered to us that he would do this at no charge. Being the cynical guys that we are Mike and I suspect that this was either because they were not full occupancy, which certainly seems like the case and/or the people at Kensington have gotten to them and ask that they show us some special treatment given our displeasure with last night stay at the Sun City camp. Either way we took the upgrade with pleasure and went to find what we would call a perfectly nice spacious room down closer to the sea in the swimming pools than the rooms we were, presumably going to get up in the main hotel. It was all good and after I wasn’t pool terrace lunch, we don our bathing suits and headed off to the famous Dead Sea therapeutic plunge.
The Dead Sea at the spot is at -400 m in altitude, making it lowest spot on the face of the Earth. The high salinity of the Dead Sea makes it a void of any life even bacterial life. Therefore it is considered very therapeutic, especially for the skin and after soaking in the salt water, one is supposed to take the black mud of the sea bottom and rub it all over one’s body. Let it dry in the sun for 10 minutes then wash it off. It is supposed to be very good for the skin so most of the people who take a dip in the Dead Sea end up with a mud pack as a bonus. Keeping through the form, Kim and Melissa went for the full mod pack well Mike and I took her obligatory dip in the Dead Sea so as to be able to say that we had done it and then got out and waited for Kim and Melissa to finish packing drying soaking again and rinsing. this is a drill that takes place on both the Israeli and the Jordanian side of the Dead Sea. We have done the same thing on the Israeli side before I have done it once before on the Jordanian side and now Kim has done it on both sides so we have done the Dead Sea literally from all sides now.
At this point, we’ve all been whining and dining parens without the wine) for over two weeks now, and are ready to get back into harness and our normal lives in normal eating patterns so we are starting by having a light dinner tonight in anticipation of an early departure for the airport tomorrow and a very, very long day flying back to San Diego. What a wonderful world we live in and what a great life we get to live seeing the world enjoying being with her friends and yet still having a lovely home to get back to and look forward to. As you can see how it took for me to get over the sun city camp was to do a little mudslinging and then get on with enjoying the end of the trip.