The Dead Sea

[Min Bannister]

Apparently you can't burn at the Dead Sea becasue it is a few hundred feet below sea level. Something filters out the harmful rays.

 

[MrRING]

For Dead Sea, a Slow and Seemingly Inexorable Death By John Ward Anderson, Washington Post Foreign Service

EIN GEDI, When the Ein Gedi Spa opened in 1986 to pamper visitors with massages, mud wraps and therapeutic swims, customers walked just a few steps from the main building to take their salty dip in the Dead Sea. Nineteen years later, the water level has dropped so drastically that the shoreline is three-quarters of a mile away. A red tractor hauls customers to the spa's beach and back in covered wagons. "The sea is just running out, and we keep running after it," said Boaz Ron, 44, manager of the resort. "In another 50 years, it could run out another kilometer."

It may sound redundant, but the Dead Sea, one of the world's cultural and ecological treasures, is dying. In the last 50 years, the water level has dropped more than 80 feet and the sea has shrunk by more than a third, largely because the Jordan River has gone dry. In the next two decades, the sea is expected to fall at least 60 more feet, and experts say nothing will stop it. The decline has been particularly rapid since the 1970s, when the water began dropping three feet a year. That created a complex domino effect that is slowly destroying some of Israel's most cherished plant and wildlife reserves along the Dead Sea's shores, a key resting stop along the annual migration route for 500 million birds that fly between Europe and Africa. The receding waters have left huge mud flats with hundreds of sinkholes that threaten to collapse roads and buildings and have forced a development freeze on Israel's side of the sea, which lies on the border with Jordan.

"I'm looking at the reality, and nothing will change in the next 20 to 40 years -- the sinkholes will continue opening even more, the infrastructure will be destroyed from stream erosion, the water level will drop and affect the ecosystem," said Galit Cohen, head of environmental policy at Israel's Environmental Ministry. "The forecast for the future is very bad."

The main problem, experts agree, is that most of the water that once flowed into the sea -- the saltiest large body of water in the world and, at 1,371 feet below sea level, the lowest point on Earth -- is being diverted for drinking water and agriculture, so there is not enough to offset the high evaporation rate. In addition, Israeli and Jordanian industries on the south end of the sea are letting 180 million gallons of the mineral-rich water evaporate every day -- about 66 billion gallons a year -- to extract chemicals.

"The situation of the Dead Sea is something that happened because there's a water shortage and it's needed for other uses," Cohen said. "You can say, 'Don't think of anything else. Let the Dead Sea have the water,' but no one will listen. They'll say, 'So we won't have water in Tel Aviv or the Negev or where?' " The best hope for a solution, some believe, is to pump salt water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea via a proposed 120-mile Red-Dead Canal, a $5 billion project that the Jordanian government is pursuing with international donors. The World Bank will help fund a $20 million study of the idea.

But Israeli experts say similar proposals -- including a Med-Dead canal to pump water from the Mediterranean -- have been around for more than 30 years and are unlikely to work. According to Amos Bein of the Geological Survey of Israel, chemical and biological reactions produced by mixing Dead Sea water with seawater could change the blue color of the Dead Sea to white or red or create deadly gases. In the end, he said, the sea will continue falling about three feet a year for the next 150 years or so, until the water becomes so supersaturated with salt that evaporation effectively stops. At that point, according to Bein, the surface of the Dead Sea will be one-third smaller and about 434 feet lower than today.

"It's possible to see the half-full part of the glass," he said. "The Dead Sea will never dry up." The Dead Sea covers about 250 square miles in a deep valley bordered by Israel, Jordan and the West Bank. But to understand why the sea is dying, begin about 60 miles north, at a spot just below the Sea of Galilee that today is the northernmost source of water for the lower Jordan River -- an open drain that pumps out 720,000 gallons of raw sewage a day.

White foam flutters in small pools around rocks. Chunks of concrete, strips of plastic piping, bicycle tires and other litter clutter the shore. The stench of human waste fills the air. If the scene is not cautionary enough, a sign warns: "Danger! Don't enter or drink the water."

"This is the end of the Jordan River as far as clean water is concerned," Gidon Bromberg, head of the Tel Aviv office of Friends of the Earth Middle East, said as he walked around the site. "From here down to the Dead Sea, the Jordan River has been turned into a sewage canal -- little more."

The Jordan -- best known as the river where Christians believe Jesus was baptized -- used to be the main source of water for the Dead Sea, delivering about 1.3 billion cubic meters of water every year, or about three-quarters of all the water that flowed into the sea. Today, virtually every major spring and tributary that once flowed into the Jordan has been dammed or diverted for drinking water and crop irrigation by Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. The Jordan now delivers less than 100 million cubic meters of water a year to the Dead Sea, and as much as half of that is raw sewage, according to Bromberg and other environmentalists.

Months go by in the summer when parts of the river are dry. At Jesus's baptismal site, five miles north of where the Jordan trickles into the Dead Sea, pilgrims fill souvenir bottles with greenish-brown water. "The irony is that today the Jordan is being kept alive by sewage," Bromberg said.

As the level of the Dead Sea falls, it affects everything around it. Underground pools of fresh water are retreating, pulling water away from plants in major wildlife areas bordering the Dead Sea. The fresh water is hitting pockets of salt deep underground and dissolving it, causing the earth above to collapse into giant sinkholes, which recently forced the closure of an army camp and a trailer park. As the shoreline shifts, rain runoff digs deep gorges in the newly exposed landscape and wipes out roads and any other infrastructure in its path.

"The real solution is that we need to be smarter and use our water in a wiser way," said Ariella Gotlieb, a biologist with Israel's parks authority who works at the Ein Gedi Nature Reserve, an oasis of dense tropical plants, hyenas, ibex, wolves and more than 200 species of birds. The reserve is one of several plant and wildlife sanctuaries threatened by changes in the local ecosystem.

Gotlieb and others said the traditional Zionist dream to "make the desert bloom" has to be updated to reflect the scarcity of resources in a more densely populated country. She pointed to the reserve's neighbor, Kibbutz Ein Gedi, and said it was no longer appropriate for residents there to use natural spring water to tend fruit groves and a botanical garden with more than 800 species of exotic plants in the middle of the desert. Of the 3 million cubic meters of water that flow from Ein Gedi's four springs, not a drop reaches the Dead Sea anymore, she said. "The Dead Sea is receding because the Jordan River is dead -- it has no relation to the botanical gardens," responded Meir Ron, a founder of the 550-resident kibbutz. He said the problem was a classic battle between man and nature.

"When I was born in Haifa in 1935, there were 600,000 people in Israel, and now there are more than 6 million," he said. "What can we do?"

From Masada, the mountaintop citadel that was fortified by Herod the Great and became a Jewish cultural icon and a symbol of the struggles of modern Israel, the view is of mud flats stretching for miles into Jordan. "Herod built Masada overlooking the Dead Sea, but he'd turn in his grave if he could see what we've done to it," said Bromberg, the Friends of the Earth environmentalist. "You don't have to be Jesus to walk across the Dead Sea anymore."

Below Masada, the southern edge of the sea is about 15 miles north of where it used to be. From here, pumps siphon water into a six-mile canal that carries it through the mud flats to a large complex of evaporation ponds. Though marketed by Israeli hotels as the "southern basin" of the Dead Sea, the area is operated entirely by the Dead Sea Works chemical company to harvest minerals from the water. Without the pumps, the basin would soon go dry.

The evaporation process leaves a seven-inch residue of salt that settles to the bottom of the main pond every year, creating the exact opposite problem that the northern Dead Sea is facing. As the bottom rises, the water level does too, and posh Israeli hotels along the shore are building huge sand dikes in a losing fight against the floodwater. The Sheraton hotel has had to rebuild and raise its dike three times to hold back the adjacent pond, which is now well above the hotel's swimming pool and ground floor, according to Udi Sicherman, chairman of the Dead Sea Hotel Association. The solution, he said, is a $200 million proposal to build a huge wall inside the ponds, creating a massive lagoon in front of the hotels where the water level could be controlled.

The Dead Sea Works, one of the world's leading producers of potash for fertilizer, operates an 18-mile-long maze of evaporation ponds. Discolored water that threatens to flood roads is held back by a network of dirt berms. The company's plant is a massive industrial complex surrounded by vast ponds and mountains of chemicals.

Environmentalists say that the Dead Sea Works evaporation ponds are responsible for 25 to 30 percent of the annual drop in the Dead Sea and that the company, which just had its state concession extended to 2030, is reaping a financial bonanza from the increased concentration of minerals in the water. "They are the only ones making good money. They want the water to decline," said the Environmental Ministry's Cohen.

Menachem Zinn, chief operating officer for Dead Sea Works, said the main cause of the sea's shrinkage was diversion of water from the Jordan River and other sources, not the company's evaporation ponds. He said the Dead Sea Works and industries that serve it employ about 35,000 people. The company recently completed a $70 million project to upgrade its ecological standards, he said.

"We try to keep the environment the best we can and at the same time make 3.5 million tons of potash and give so many families the ability to live from it," he said. At the Ein Gedi Spa, where Boaz Ron is watching the Dead Sea and his business dry up together, the answer is simple.

"You have to put a limit on things. If you can't put the water in, you have to stop taking it out," he said. "You need to reach a balance with nature, or the Dead Sea will become the Dry Sea."

Source
Link is dead. The MIA webpage (quoted in full above) can be accessed via the Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/2005052...ad_sea__a_slow_and_seemingly_inexorable_death

edited by Quixote: created hyperlink to stop page break

 

[rynner2]

Jordan to refill shrinking Dead Sea with salt water
Jordan is to refill the shrinking Dead Sea with salt water despite concerns from environmentalists about the threat to its unique eco-system.
By Richard Spencer in Amman
Published: 6:00AM BST 10 Oct 2009

Water levels in the lowest and saltiest body of water on the planet are falling by more than four feet a year, giving rise to quips that the Dead Sea is dying.

The government in Amman has said it is planning to extract more than 10 billion cubic feet a year from the Red Sea 110 miles to the south, feed most of it into a desalination plant to create drinking water, and send the salty waste-water left over to the Dead Sea by tunnel.

Similar plans are already the subject of a two-year feasibility study agreed by the Jordanians, Israelis and Palestinians in a rare example of cross-border Middle East co-operation.

But the Jordanians have decided they cannot wait any longer. "Jordan will start with the first phase with the help of donor countries and private investors," its minister for water, General Maysoun Zu'bi, said this week.

But environmentalists said the two years allotted to the feasibility study were already too short for a proper assessment of the risks posed to the Dead Sea's unique ecology.

Environmentalists are concerned that the mixing of two different types of salt-water might have serious ecological consequences, including a build-up of algae.

There are allied plans to build up the Dead Sea's roads and hotels for tourism. There are also fears that increased salinity in the Red Sea might damage fish and coral.

"We know the plan's attractive to the Jordanian government because it will bring so much money circulating in the economy," said Munqeth Mehyar, director of Friends of the Earth in the Jordanian capital, Amman. "But the price is too high."

The study for the so-called "Red-Dead Water Conveyance Project", funded by seven donor nations and commissioned by the World Bank, is examining the economic and environmental impact of building the world's biggest desalination plant, running on hydroelectric power.

As well as replenishing water levels in the Dead Sea it would fulfil Jordan's estimated need for drinking water for half a century and supplement supplies for the Israelis and Palestinians, who live on its other side.

The Sea, already the lowest point on earth's land-mass, has dropped by 98 feet in 20 years, and its surface area has shrunk by a third. A recent study showed that the rate of disappearance was increasing as more water was extracted from its feeder source, the River Jordan, by all three authorities for drinking, agriculture and industry.

The Jordanians claim that their own plan, at present more modest, does not contradict the larger proposals being studied.

They have called it the Jordan National Red Sea Water Development Project and say it can "benefit from" the feasibility study. It will start next year, at a cost of an estimated USD2 billion, compared with the USD11 billion cost of the full scheme.

But Gen Zu'bi admitted that it could be considered "the first phase of the Red-Dead project".

The decision to go ahead in advance of the study's findings are said to have upset the Palestinians, though General Zu'bi denied this.

Jean-Pierre Chabal, vice-president of Coyne et Bellier, the French firm carrying out the study, said it was "paradoxical" that it might conclude that the scheme was unworkable after the project had effectively already begun.

"They say they want to use the study but also to go faster than the study," he said. "It is not clear to us how this can be, and I don't think it is clear to the World Bank either."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthn ... water.html

 

[rynner2]

Long and interesting article about the geology of the Dead Sea:

Cores reveal when Dead Sea 'died'
By Jonathan Amos, Science correspondent, BBC News, San Francisco

Sediments drilled from beneath the Dead Sea reveal that this most remarkable of water bodies all but disappeared 120,000 years ago.
It is a discovery of high concern say scientists because it demonstrates just how dry the Middle East can become during Earth's warm phases.

In such ancient times, few if any humans were living around the Dead Sea.
Today, its feed waters are intercepted by large populations and the lake level is declining rapidly.
"The reason the Dead Sea is going down is because virtually all of the fresh water flowing into it is being taken by the countries around it," said Steve Goldstein, a geochemist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, US.

"But we now know that in a previous warm period, the water that people are using today and are relying upon stopped flowing all by itself. That has important implications for people today because global climate models are predicting that this region in particular is going to become more arid in the future," he told BBC News.

Prof Goldstein has been presenting the results of the drilling work here at the 2011 American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting, the largest annual gathering of Earth scientists.

The Dead Sea is an extraordinary place. The surface of the inland waterway sits at the lowest land point on the planet, more than 400m below sea level.

[...]

"Lake dry-down happened 120,000 years ago without any human intervention," said Prof Emi Ito, from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. "We're helping the lake level go down much sooner; and there are political implications of this lake drying down because water is what causes a lot of wars and I'll just leave it at that."

Prof Zvi Ben-Avraham, of the Minerva Dead Sea Research Centre, Tel Aviv University, added: "The drilling actually... it gives us perspective. Look what went on in 200,000 years; look how the area can be dry and look at the way it can be recovered. We have to get ready for the future."

Past research has shown very clearly how the size of the Dead Sea has fluctuated with the coming and going of ice ages.

During the interglacials (warm periods), the lake shrank; and during glacials (cold phases), the lake grew. And it was in the midst of the last ice age some 25,000 years ago that the Dead Sea reached its maximum extent, with the then water surface standing an astonishing 260m above where it is today.

This giant palaeo-lake, referred to by scientists as Lake Lisan, would have inundated the whole Dead Sea valley, even encompassing the Sea of Galilee to the north.

[...]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15938294

 

[rynner2]

Can the Dead Sea be brought back to life?
The Dead Sea has lost a third of its surface area. Finally a rescue plan is being drawn up, financed by the EU.
By Geoffrey Lean
8:55PM BST 11 May 2012

If you keep a sharp eye open as you drive the world’s lowest road, along the Israeli side of the Dead Sea, you may spot a short black line painted on a cliff face some feet above your head. It was made a century ago by British geographers, floating on a boat on the sea’s surface, to mark its level at the time.

But if you then turn, as I did this week, to look for the present-day sea, you’ll only spot it far beneath you, at the bottom of another cliff. For its level has since fallen by more than 80 feet, mainly over the past few decades.

At the same time the sea, famously the saltiest on Earth, has lost a third of its surface area. Indeed, the maps and atlases that show it as a single stretch of water are long out of date. It has shrunk so much that it has separated into two distinct lakes, connected by a canal to prevent the southernmost one from drying up altogether. And the waters are continuing to drop by more than three feet a year.

The dying of the Dead Sea is a huge, under-reported, environmental disaster. It was once described by a water minister of Jordan, on the opposite shore, as worse than the better-known catastrophe of the desiccation of Central Asia’s Aral Sea, because it is happening faster and threatens greater danger to the region’s economy and ecosystems, as well as the world’s cultural and religious heritage. Yet this weekend sees the beginning of an attempt to save it.

Certainly the Dead Sea is extraordinary, indeed unique. Glittering turquoise blue, more than 1,300 feet below sea level, amid dramatic golden mountains, it is a place of stark, breathtaking beauty. Some 10 times saltier than the world’s oceans, it is lifeless – apart from its own species of bacteria – but is at the heart of a complex ecosystem of nearly 600 species, many endangered, and some found only there. And around it, of course, Sodom and Gomorrah rose and fell, Moses glimpsed the promised land, Masada was besieged, the Dead Sea Scrolls were hidden, and Jesus was baptised.

Since Cleopatra, countless hordes have bathed in its waters and plastered themselves with its mud in search of healing. Yet resorts built on its shores are now up to half a mile from the sea, their empty lifeguard towers and folded beach umbrellas left high and dry. In almost biblical retribution, more than 2,000 deep pits have yawned open on the western shore alone, dangerous “sink holes” created by the falling waters.

The sea is under attack from both ends. To the north, the once mighty Jordan, on which it depends for replenishment, has shrunk to a polluted trickle, carrying only one fiftieth of the water it did 70 years ago: after gushing spectacularly out of the side of Mt Hermon far to the north, the river is almost entirely depleted by domestic and agricultural use. And to the south, big industrial concerns deliberately evaporate the sea’s waters to gain valuable minerals.

The crisis has long been recognised – the 1994 Israel-Jordan peace treaty bound both nations to restore the river, holy to half of humanity – but international squabbling has often got in the way. A decade ago, the two countries agreed to bring water by pipeline from the Gulf of Aqaba, but a crucial World Bank feasibility study due at the end of last year has still not been published, reputedly because the Israelis, Jordanians and Palestinians cannot agree.

It might not be the best plan anyway. Both environmentalists and the industrialists fear that importing water could change the chemistry and ecology of the sea, making it harder to extract minerals, reducing its therapeutic qualities and causing toxic substances to form. And it does nothing to revive the River Jordan.

Friends of the Earth groups in Israel, Jordan and Palestine have long argued for an alternative plan, based on persuading the industries to adopt new technologies that do not evaporate water, and replenishing the Jordan through increasing conservation (for example, even though Israel leads the world in water-efficient agriculture, it discourages recycling rainwater in homes). But earlier this year the Israeli cabinet rejected a bill from its environment minister that would have facilitated this approach.

Now the environmentalists have another chance. This weekend they are launching a $4 million project, financed by the EU, to draw up a plan for the region, and also encourage its differing peoples to co-operate by making it a Unesco Biosphere Reserve.

And if that fails? Well, there is always the alternative, once voiced by another environmentalist. “If we cry enough, perhaps we can refill the sea with our tears.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/926030 ... -life.html

 

[rynner2]

Dead Sea drying: A new low-point for Earth
By Kevin Connolly BBC Middle East correspondent

The Dead Sea, the salty lake located at the lowest point on Earth, is gradually shrinking under the heat of the Middle Eastern sun. For those who live on its shores it's a slow-motion crisis - but finding extra water to sustain the sea will be a huge challenge.

If there's one thing everyone knows about the Dead Sea it is that you can't sink in it.
It is eight or nine times saltier than the oceans of the world - so dense and mineral rich that it doesn't even feel like normal water, more like olive oil mixed with sand.
For decades no holiday in the Holy Land or Jordan has been complete without a photograph of the bather sitting bolt upright on the surface, usually reading a newspaper to emphasise the extraordinary properties of the water.

But the Dead Sea is also a unique ecosystem and a sensitive barometer of the state of the environment in a part of the world where an arid climate and the need to irrigate farms combine to create a permanent shortage of water.

You may have read that the Dead Sea is dying. You can see why the idea appeals to headline writers but it isn't quite true.
As the level drops, the density and saltiness are rising and will eventually reach a point where the rate of evaporation will reach a kind of equilibrium. So it might get a lot smaller, but it won't disappear entirely.
It is however shrinking at an alarming rate - the surface level is dropping more than a metre (3ft) a year.

When you consider that the surface of the Dead Sea is the lowest point on the planet - currently 420m (1,380ft) below sea level - that means that the planet's lowest point is being recalibrated on an annual basis.
It is deep enough that journeying along the road that winds down to the shore causes your ears to pop as they do on an aircraft coming in to land.

The landscapes of the Dead Sea have an extraordinary, almost lunar quality to them - imagine the Grand Canyon with Lake Como nestling in its depths. And the people of the ancient world understood that there was something unique in the place, even if they couldn't be quite sure what it was.
...

And the health benefits appear to be real enough. The intense barometric pressure so far below sea level may produce atmospheric conditions beneficial for asthmatics - I am a sufferer and I noticed a degree of difference.
And people with the painful skin disease psoriasis also seem to find relief in the combination of mineral-rich water, soothing mud and intense sunlight. In some countries, health agencies and charities pay for people with the condition to come on therapeutic trips.

So even though the Dead Sea is shrinking and changing, it still has an economic value. Tourists can choose to visit resorts in either Jordan or Israel and both countries also export cosmetic products manufactured in the area.
Part of the shoreline is in the Palestinian West Bank under Israeli occupation so it's possible that in future Palestinians too will reap the economic benefits of the sea's unique properties.

But there's no doubt that the decline in the water level has been spectacular.
During the World War One, British engineers scratched initials on a rock to mark the level of the water. A century on, those scratch-marks are high on a bone-dry rock.
To reach the current water level you must climb down the rocks, cross a busy main road, make your way through a thicket of marshy plants and trek across a yawning mud flat. It's about 2km (1.25 miles) in all.

A few kilometres along the coastline, in the tourist resort of Ein Gedi, the retreating of the water has created a huge problem.
When the main building, with its restaurant, shower block and souvenir shop, was built towards the end of the 1980s, the waves lapped up against the walls.
Now the resort has had to buy a special train in which tourists are towed down to the water's edge by a tractor (another 2km journey).
For Nir Vanger, who runs the business side of Ein Gedi's tourist operations, it's an unnerving rate of change.
"The sea was right here when I was 18 years old, so it's not like we're talking about 500 or a 1000 years ago," he says. "The Dead Sea was here and now it's 2km away, and with the tractor and the gasoline and the staff it costs us $500,000 a year to chase the sea.

"I grew up here on the Dead Sea - all my life is here, and unfortunately in the last few years that's a bit of a sad life because you see your home landscape going and disappearing, and you know that what you leave for your children and grandchildren won't be what you grew up with.
"When we built a new house my wife asked me if I wanted a view of the sea and I said we should build it with a view of the mountains because they stay where they are and the sea keeps moving.'

etc...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-36477284

 

[GingerTabby]

Dead Sea sinkholes could become tourist attractions:

http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-mi...ea-could-sinkholes-eerie-beauty-draw-tourists

 

[EnolaGaia]

Photographer Spencer Tunick - known for his photos of naked crowds in natural and urban settings - has recently snapped pics of white-painted volunteers at the Dead Sea, in the interest of raising awareness of the sea's gradual disappearance and promoting the establishment of a museum there.

Artist stages mass nude photos to highlight disappearing Dead Sea

With desert peaks stabbing the sky and a thin blue ribbon of Dead Sea shimmering in the distance, the ghostly figures of around 200 men and women -- painted head to toe in white -- began appearing from behind an outcrop.

Each and every one of them was naked. Which could only mean one thing: World-renowned New York artist Spencer Tunick was back to photograph his latest installation.

"I'm here to raise awareness of the receding waters of the Dead Sea," he said at a hotel terrace in the southern Israeli town of Arad, "and to bring attention to the ecological disaster that is happening." Tunick noted that Mineral Beach, where he shot a series of images 10 years ago, has since been obliterated by sinkholes and a shrinking Dead Sea -- a place he refers to as "the Eighth Wonder of the World." ...

FULL STORY: https://www.cnn.com/style/article/spencer-tunick-dead-sea-nude-photographs/index.html

 

[Floyd]

You can be in Jerusalem in winter, maybe around 8c, (possibly even with snow on the ground), drive for about an hour and a half for 50 miles down to Ein Gedi and be quite comfortable in T-shirt and shorts in 20c warmth. (It's actually only 25 miles as the crow flies.)

 

[Victory]

Apparently you can't burn at the Dead Sea becasue it is a few hundred feet below sea level. Something filters out the harmful rays.

That's as may be, but I urge caution.

I went in the Dead Sea, had fun floating, but after about three minutes the water flowed into and along my urethra.

It stang like heck!

I ran out, up a metal ramp at the side, which was very hot, into the nearby shower, only to find out it was sulpherous water which stang my eyes.

In somewhat of a mess, about a minute later I made it to a fresh water shower, and as discretely as possible opened the front of my trunks and directed the water in the direction of my burning appendage.

It's an amazing landscape, and also a buzz to see the caves where the Dead Sea scrolls were found.
Then you pop back to Jerusalem for a shwarma.

 

[maximus otter]

I went in the Dead Sea, had fun floating, but after about three minutes the water flowed into and along my urethra.

It stang like heck!

I ran out, up a metal ramp at the side, which was very hot, into the nearby shower, only to find out it was sulpherous water which stang my eyes…burning appendage.

How’s the job with the Israeli Tourist Board going?

maximus otter

 

[Ogdred Weary]

That's as may be, but I urge caution.

I went in the Dead Sea, had fun floating, but after about three minutes the water flowed into and along my urethra.

It stang like heck!

I ran out, up a metal ramp at the side, which was very hot, into the nearby shower, only to find out it was sulpherous water which stang my eyes.

In somewhat of a mess, about a minute later I made it to a fresh water shower, and as discretely as possible opened the front of my trunks and directed the water in the direction of my burning appendage.

It's an amazing landscape, and also a buzz to see the caves where the Dead Sea scrolls were found.
Then you pop back to Jerusalem for a shwarma.

So, the lesson is, if you are swimming in the dead sea, wear "protection."

 

[escargot]

So, the lesson is, if you are swimming in the dead sea, wear "protection."

A folded-up bread bag and a thick elastic band.

Like when you lose your petrol cap.

 

[Ogdred Weary]

A folded-up bread bag and a thick elastic band.

I have suggested this to ladies in the past and got a slap.

 

[escargot]

I have suggested this to ladies in the past and got a slap.

Remember in Grease, where the bloke sing Greased Lightning? They wave Cling-Film around as a reference to teenagers using it as contraception.

I've read that in the stage version the importance of this essential romantic accessory is more heavily emphasised, making the point that the young people in question were cleverly taking precautions.

Edit - I've just realised that I don't know any words to Greased Lightning apart from the title.
When I hum it to myself my puzzled brain has made up lyrics along the lines of Well I'm a-goin' goin' goin' I'm a-goin' with mah trousers on

Make of that what you will.

 

[Floyd]

Remember in Grease, where the bloke sing Greased Lightning? They wave Cling-Film around as a reference to teenagers using it as contraception.

I've read that in the stage version the importance of this essential romantic accessory is more heavily emphasised, making the point that the young people in question were cleverly taking precautions.

Edit - I've just realised that I don't know any words to Greased Lightning apart from the title.
When I hum it to myself my puzzled brain has made up lyrics along the lines of Well I'm a-goin' goin' goin' I'm a-goin' with mah trousers on

Make of that what you will.

I know ''the chicks will cream''.

 

[Ogdred Weary]

Well I'm a-goin' goin' goin' I'm a-goin' with mah trousers on

Make of that what you will.

Incontinence is a terrible issue.

 

[escargot]

Incontinence is a terrible issue.

Cling-Film helps there.

 

[Frideswide]

Like when you lose your petrol cap.

I've told you before.. Stop Living Mt Life! :rolling:

 

[Floyd]

Found this old photo from mid 1990s of the road from Jerusalem down to the Dead Sea. I can still feel the heat and dryness.

I'd written on the back ''just after this was taken Emma sliced her foot on broken glass''. Lovely girl. From your neck of the woods @ramonmercado.

 

[ramonmercado]

Found this old photo from mid 1990s of the road from Jerusalem down to the Dead Sea. I can still feel the heat and dryness.

I'd written on the back ''just after this was taken Emma sliced her foot on broken glass''. Lovely girl. From your neck of the woods @ramonmercado.
View attachment 62465

I hope she made a speedy recovery!

 

[Floyd]

I hope she made a speedy recovery!

I spoke to her (via email) last year. She married an Israeli guy, they lived in Israel for a few years and then they moved to the Dublin area.