Dead Sea adventure

Marhaba,

Truda - " I was walking down the street and heard a guy say something,
and Abed started laughing hysterically." Abed "Yeah, someone called
Truda a standing camel." Me "Thats pretty rude, isn't it?" Truda
"No, Abed said it was a compliment, they were trying to say I was
pretty." Abed "Not just pretty, they were trying to say you have an
amazing shape, like a coca cola bottle."

Dead Sea Adventure

This last weekend I decided to get away from the 17 people I live with
and go to the Dead Sea. I wanted to go super low budget, so I packed
the blankets from my bed, some leftover food, a swimming suit, and my
trusty infomercial towel. I arrived at the mini-bus station on the
other side of Huwarra checkpoint early in the morning. I found the
bus to Jericho, and asked the driver how long he thought it would take
to fill up. "Not long, inshallah." Everything here is inshallah, God
willing. I talked to people at the bus station until I ran out of
arabic, and then sat in the bus and read Robinson Crusoe. One of the
last kids to get on the bus was a kid from one of my classes at the
UNRWA school. I didn't recognize him until he yelled "teacher mike!"
He sat next to me and we chatted for a bit. Five minutes after
leaving Huwarra the bus driver stopped at a store in a nearby village.
It seems in addition to transporting people he runs a small rice and
sugar delivery business.

The next checkpoint was only a few miles down the road. People here
often measure distances in checkpoints. Nablus in 4 checkpoints from
Jerusalem. Jericho is 7 checkpoints away from Nablus. At every
checkpoint the bus driver and soldiers have a discussion, then we all
have to hand over our IDs. Sometimes we are told to get out while
soldiers search the bus. When that happens, usually a few people are
detained at the checkpoint. I have no idea what happens to them after
that point.
As we drove south east through the hills, there were numerous Israeli
settlements dotting the Palestinian hills. The Arabic word for
settlement is mustowta, which roughly translates to colony, a much
more appropriate designation in my opinion. After about 45 minutes we
were driving along hills overlooking the Jordan valley, which divides
Palestine from Jordan. We descended the monstrous sand dunes towards
Jericho, the oldest continually inhabited city on the planet. It is
believed that people have been living in Jericho for 10,000 years.
Jericho stands in stark contrast to its surroundings because of the
natural springs that nourish countless exotic trees. A list of the
conquers and residents of this town reads like the who's who of
ancient history. A block from the mini-bus station is the 2500 year
old sycamore tree that Zacchaeus the tax collector allegedly climbed
to get a better look at Jesus. After taking a gander at the tree I
caught a taxi to the checkpoint outside of Jericho. The taxi driver
assured me that I could catch a bus the rest of the way to the dead
sea.

I met two Belgian girls at the bus stop with their thumbs out. After
talking for a bit they told me that they had been there for 3 hours
and no bus had come. Shortly thereafter a car full of Israelis came
by and picked them up. The Belgian girls tried to invite me into the
car but the guys inside made it clear that I wasn't welcome. Here's a
zone c travel tip that I learned the hard way. Most Palestinian
transportation doesn't run on friday because it's a religious holiday.
On saturday, the Jewish holiday, most of their transportation stops
running as well. To you prospective middle eastern travelers, don't
travel in Palestinian territory controlled by the Israelis on
weekends.
Maps indicate that the top 25 km of the dead sea, and the territory
surrounding it, are part of Palestine. In reality, Palestinians
aren't allowed to go to the Dead Sea, or the territory surrounding it,
because it's been confiscated by Israel. This fact on a larger scale
is part of what frustrates Palestinians. All the roads in the West
Bank are full of checkpoints, making most journeys take much longer
than they should. The West Bank is also full of roads and
infrastructure that are reserved exclusively for illegal Israeli
settlers. Throughout the West Bank there are shitty Palestinian roads
running underneath newly paved Israeli roads that link the settlements
together. The notion of apartheid could not be more clear. The
settlements use the Palestinian's already small water supply.
Palestinian roads that used to lead to Palestinian villages are now
exclusively for illegal settlers, who evicted the villagers from their
homes at gunpoint. In other cases, the government planned, built and
stocked the illegal settlements with people as part of their "facts on
the ground policy." The roads Palestinians can travel on take
absurdly long detours. It would be like driving from arizona to
southern california via wyoming.

Anyways, after waiting at this bus stop for 45 minutes, I went to buy
an extra bottle of water from a nearby gas station. I could see the
Dead Sea and figured "it can't be that far..." That afternoon I made
a number of questionable assumptions. Sometimes it hard to believe I
have a college education. After walking down the road for a couple of
hours I had another bright idea. The road made sort of a right angle
on it's path to the sea, and I figured if I walked directly towards my
destination, this little expedition would end a lot faster. My short
cut went through a desert, the name of which I don't know, but for
these purposes we'll call it the "big ass hot mountainous desert from
hell." I walked through this desert for a couple hours before I saw
any sign of civilization. Terrain that looked flat, was not. The
dead sea, which looked so close, had disappeared from view shortly
after I left the road. I began to think about all the warnings not to
leave designated trails around the Dead Sea because of the copious
mine fields that have never been cleared. On the bus I had just
finished reading the part of Robinson Crusoe where he is looking back
on life after being stuck on the island for a 25 years. He was living
the high life in Brazil, but was convinced by a friend to embark on a
journey to Papua Guinea to fetch some slaves. Their ship crashed in a
storm and he was the sole survivor. Robinson had lived on the island
alone for a long time, and he started to think that the trivial amount
he saved on slaves wasn't worth the risk. He concluded that the
danger averse component of decision making comes with age. It only
took me 5 hours to realize that walking through this god forsaken
desert was not worth the $4 I saved by not taking a taxi.

After slogging up another sand dune I saw a faint trail. I followed
the "trail" for some time until it led down into a dry creek bed with
a few trees. As I fought my way through some brush I saw a bunch of
camels. They started to run at the sight of me

maa salama,
Mike