Today we headed off by bus and drove south east from Jerusalem. Here there’s very little rainfall and it’s called the Judean Wilderness. High, very high, rugged, scraggy, rocky, stony mountains. Barren landscapes. A desolate-looking wilderness. No sign of greenery anywhere. And the road goes downhill all the way to the Dead Sea, the lowest point on our planet. (The Dead Sea, by the way, is shrinking by one metre every year.)

First stop was Masada. A fortress high on top of one of the mountains that overlooked the Dead Sea. And on the other side are the mountains of Moab where Ruth (in Bible) came from. Here at Masada, Herod the Great built a huge luxurious fortress palace. And they’ve done lots of archaeology work here. But it’s probably most famous for the heroic last stand of the Jewish Revolt against the Romans. Where 1,000 Jewish rebels held out against the Romans until the Romans successfully broke in, only to find that the Jewish rebels had committed suicide rather than become slaves of Rome.

So it seems such a sad place. A desperate place. Probably the only “happy” person would have been Herod when he lived there. But he can’t have been a really happy person because he knew everybody hated him. And he had to continually plot and murder to keep his throne. He even killed his wife and some of his sons. (Herod lived there before the Jewish rebels.)

Masada sits high, high, high up on the mountain top. But we go up – and down again – by a smooth cable car. Down – way, way down – far below – you can see some hardy people decide to walk up the narrow snaking path to the top. The path takes you about an hour and half to walk. Being with a tour we had to take the cable car. And we were there in matter of minutes.

Then we drove a bit further north with the blue Dead Sea on our right to a little oasis called En Gedi. As we drove there in the bus, Paul our tour guide read from the Bible some narrative stories of events that have happened at En Gedi. Amazing stories in a wild landscape. David and Saul, Joshua, Ezekiel.

Here, in a v-shaped valley between two high brown rugged mountains a spring gushes out of the mountain, falling into a waterfall and a narrow stream along which green trees and rushes grow. It’s a popular tourist spot, lots of people enjoying splashing in the cool flowing water.

If you look very very carefully in the photo above – at the foot of the tree is an animal called a “coney” in the Bible. A bit like a bigger quokka without a tail. David wrote about them in Psalm 104. They live in the En Gedi area. It moved too quickly for me to get a better photo.

We climbed to the top to see the water gush out of the springs. The stark contrast between the barrenness of the wilderness and the refreshing, coolness of En Gedi. A beautiful spot.

Then driving north to the northern edge of the Dead Sea to the settlement ruins of Qumran. Where in 1947 the famous Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in caves. Here at Qumran are the ruins of a community group of a Jewish sect called the Essenes who seemed to have written these scrolls centuries before Jesus. Some of these scrolls were Old Testament books. But lots of other ancient stuff too.

We could see the holes in the mountains of the caves. But didn’t have time to hike up to them. We were able to explore the ruins of their community. The Romans came through and wiped the Qumran community out. The Judean wilderness is a magnificent, wild and terrible place.

Then a short bus ride to a Dead Sea “beach”. Complete with kiosks, change rooms, beach umbrellas and lots of beach goers. Changed into our bathers. But this is the first Israel experience that didn’t live up to my expectations.

The bottom of the Dead Sea is thick, gooey, slimey, black mud that sucks at your feet as you try to walk into the water. There’s boulders that you can’t see because of the muddy water. And so you trip over them. Deep holes that you can’t see and so you stumble over. The water does buoy you up. You’re supposed to stay on your back as you shouldn’t get the water on your face or eyes. But I kept feeling like I was going to roll over.

So I’m glad to be able to say that I’ve swum in the Dead Sea. I can’t say that I “enjoyed” it. It was an interesting experience. But I doubt that I’d choose to do it again!