Smelling the Roses...: The Dead Sea

{This is a guest post by Elsa Bearden.}

When you don't travel with a tour group, you have to figure out transportation on your own. After looking at rates online, it looked like we'd spend more than we wanted to for a taxi ride to the Dead Sea. In the end, we decided to take the bus, figuring out the routes via Google Maps (which was pretty accurate) the night before.

We first had to walk about 20 minutes to the central bus station in Jerusalem. It was pretty clear upon arriving that not many tourists braved the crowded, bustling bus station. As we pulled away, a quick glance around the bus revealed mostly working and religious men and women, going about their day. Maybe four others (besides our little group) were vacationing.

The city soon disappeared behind us and tall mountains and desert lay before us. About 40 minutes later, we saw water - the Dead Sea! Our bus driver called for our stop, Kalia Beach. (This was the closest beach to our apartment, and we wanted to come back and still have time to visit the Old City in the afternoon.) We looked around, but didn't see any cars or tourists swarming the beach. In fact, there was really nothing around this particular bus stop at all. Hesitantly, I grabbed my bag, preparing to get up when, our bus driver pulled away from the bus stop, never having come to a complete stop! It wasn't until after our bus trips to and from the Dead Sea that we realized you needed to jump up quickly to let the driver know you were getting off; otherwise, he'd keep right on going!

Unsure of ourselves, we reclined back in our seats thinking that perhaps he meant the next stop was for Kalia Beach. Nope. It came and went with no one getting on or off. A glance to our left out of the bus revealed the Dead Sea, much larger than I thought it was, but with no beaches. Where were all of the crazy tourists floating with their newspapers? We decided to go on to Ein Gedi, a place a friend had recommended to us.

As we continued travelling, it felt as if we were getting further and further from civilization. Soon the other tourists on the bus with us were getting anxious as well. Where were the beaches? The bus driver wasn't too helpful which could have been due to the language barrier. Abby finally made an executive decision and said that we were getting off when we got to the Ein Gedi Spa stop. It was a good decision!

As it turns out, the private beach at the spa couldn't be seen from the road; we had to ride a tractor train (for what could have been a 10 minute walk) to actually get to the water. We think this is why we didn't see anything at our Kalia Beach stop. There was a fee for the spa, but we were just happy that we found a place where we could float! And that's exactly what we did.