East Bank & John the Baptist

---

Geo: 31.7767, 35.5939

Off to see the Dead Sea.. as we descended down the hill from Karak I noticed the Altitude reading on the GPs was going minus.. well bugger me the Dead Sea is below sea level and not by a little bit either.. 330mtrs below sea level.. The strange thing is that means all the little fishes in the sea were above us as we slept on the side of the road.

We did not swim in the Dead Sea primarily because it was cold, the salt levels are the highest in the world and a wash-off shower was not available to us… We were unable to find a place to camp as there is no camp ground in the area… Funny thing happened I (Darren) decided to head off road to see if we could find a place near the Dead Sea, now for those of you reading this with a map in hand will notice that at the top of the Dead Sea there is a border between the West Bank and Jordan… I ignored this little fact in my hast to find the best camp site around.. we approached a funny looking building with a chap standing in a look out thingy.. I noticed that there was other funny building scattered around with look outs in them also… Lisa being the more astute among us (I call it less adventurous) said… Darren that chap is pointing a gun at us I think we need to turn around….

Alas she was right.. we had approached the Military Zone.. a quick U Turn was completed and the Shorty shot us to the safety of Jordan.

---

Photos

View of the West bank
You hear about it on TV.. never thought we would be looking at it!

John the Baptise Baptism Spring
Yep this is the spot, no not the spot for JC just the other pilgrims

Jesus's Spot
This is the spot, yep it really is. These steps and stuff were uncovered in 1994 after Israel and Jordan relaxed a little. The Pope has even visited and recons it is all good. The funny thing is the bible describes exactly what they found. Nice one

Standing on the East bank
Yep, Lisa is on the East bank of the Jordan river and just over there is the West Bank, not the flags.