I would have met the bus at the hotel down the street, and the bus would have been on time. The tour guide would not have called me "Reuben" because he got my first name mixed up with the Jewish version of my last name, and then kept calling me that because he thought it was funny. The perfect eight- or nine-person group would have ridden in peace the two or so hours it took to drive to Masada, and we wouldn't have stopped at any kitschy snack bars along the way. No one would have been allowed to talk on the bus unless he or she had something interesting or useful or kind to say, and the tour guide would not have been allowed to talk at all until we arrived, or tell tedious Jewish jokes through his annoying microphone.
No one, but no one, would have given me a fluorescent green sticker to wear when we arrived at Masada. No one would have snapped at me for taking off the sticker and sticking it to my bag. No fellow tour member (an adult) would have run up to tell the guide, "That girl keeps taking off her sticker!"At the Masada site, the movie would have been optional, or at least included a post-movie discussion. This discussion would have included some fun critical analysis of the movie's amazing title, "The Truth about Masada." Then we would have had some free time to explore the site on our own, read some of the posted materials, and take photographs. The perfect tour would have been centered entirely around Masada, and included discussion of the place of the site and the story in Israeli and Jewish collective memory. The perfect tour would have devoted several hours to Masada, and not hastened off to a spa as the main attraction of the day.
In fact, the perfect tour would have left early in the morning to climb up the cliffs at sunrise and spend the morning touring the site. Such tours exist, but they are difficult to locate and seem sketchy on the telephone. The perfect tour would be one not too many people know about, hosted by charming and trustworthy people, and come highly recommended by cool locals. It would arrive early for this sunrise climb, and avoid the crowded cable-car experience. After some hours at Masada, maybe all the members of the perfect (small) tour group would like each other enough to share a meal and conversation, and then return to Jerusalem, relaxed and edified.
The real Masada tour was, as only my parents can understand, as maddening as Pompeii. The guide had a personality similar to Lorenzo, our Pompeii guide: slightly misogynist, always cracking unsucessful jokes, and preoccupied with the goings-on of his cell phone. This guide (I didn't catch his name, and didn't care to since he was calling me Reuben all the time) was very interested in herding us around (especially counting us, again and again), and when we were in the bus, he was interested in telling us about things we would see in just a second ... just a second ... wait a minute ... here it comes ... did you see it? The mark on the wall to the right? In the meantime, we careened by whatever it was he wanted to show us.
Inside Masada, he took us to a tiny stone seating area and told us this was the first synagogue. Then he asked, "Does anyone know where the word 'synagogue' comes from?" I thought, hey, this is fun. I do! So I said, "It comes from the Greek roots of 'sun', which means 'together', and 'ago', which means to lead or bring." He looked at me blankly. "No. It means meeting house" (to be accurate, the word means simply "meeting"). At which point I should have just let it go, but I didn't. So I tried to clarify, "Oh, no, I thought you just meant the roots of the word, and that's 'sun' and 'ago', and I think it's interesting how 'leading together' came to mean ..." The guide looked away from me and started talking again: "Ok, so 'meeting house', and this is the first meeting house ..." (I must have looked crestfallen, because four different tour members came up to me later and asked me to finish what I was saying about the Greek.)
Earlier, the two guys behind me in the bus were having a loud and animated conversation about the state of political science studies in the universities where they teach. Both had thick southern accents. The younger of the two was dismayed with the new emphasis on "Peace Studies" and "Conflict Resolution." "No one wants to talk about war anymore," he said. "I want to focus on symmetric warfare, how to win these things, and now everyone just wants to talk about conflict resolution and peace studies." (He spoke those last two as if they were sissy words.) Ironically, the two are in Israel participating in some kind of anti-terrorism fellowship program with the Israeli government. The older guy wore tight bicycle shorts and a tight tank top over his artificially tan self, and he was skipping the Masada portion of the tour in order to spend the entire day at the spa.
Somehow, when I read that this tour would go to Masada and Ein Gedi (a spa on the Dead Sea), I assumed that Masada would be the main event and Ein Gedi would be an interesting afterthought. It seems, though, that many of the tour members were envisioning things in quite the opposite way. Nearly everyone had packed a beach bag with a bathing suit, and all I brought with me were my two cameras, an apple, and some water. When we arrived at Ein Gedi after the disappointing Masada tour, the guide announced that we would be staying for two hours, and we could go to the beach at the Dead Sea, swim in the pool or soak in the baths at the spa (twice the duration of our Masada visit), or take advantage of the mud baths available outside. By this time, I had finally met a really lovely couple on this tour, two professors from St. Paul, Minnesota. While they weren't itching to get to the spa, they did know in advance that they should bring swimsuits, so if I wanted to hang out with them (and swim in the Dead Sea, which seemed sort of intriguing), I would need to do something about my lack of a bathing suit. Fortunately, the gift shop had a few offerings, but only one that fit, an absurd blue polka-dot bikini which you can see in the pictures below. It was so hot, though (38 C/100 F), that I was willing to pay $60 for the bathing suit and go hang out with my new friends at the "beach."
Which is not really a beach, just two grimy ramps that lead from a rocky (and hot to bare feet!) shore down to the water. The Dead Sea is called the Dead Sea because nothing can live in it, no animals, no fish, not even bacteria. The reason for this is that the salt concentration in the water (35%) is ten times the level of regular seawater. This high salinity causes a strange and unexpected bouancy in the water, and it knocked me off my feet a few times before I got used to it. It is apparently very dangerous to drink the water of the Dead Sea or to get it in your eyes. Regarding the latter, I don't know about the health effects, but it hurts like hell. Even with the tacky tourists all around, it was pretty extraordinary just to float there in the Dead Sea, the mountains of Jordan rising up along the opposite shore, not being summoned by a tour guide, green fluorescent sticker long forgotten.
Once the group reconvened, we set out for our journey back to Jerusalem and beyond (some of the group members had met the bus that morning in Tel Aviv). Or so we thought. The the guide announce that we were lucky enough to "have time" to stop at the factory of the famous Dead Sea cosmetics company, Ahava. My two friends and I were both exhausted and wished we could just head back, but we tried to be good sports. First we went in to the factory store and were ushered to a screening room for a "movie" (read, "commercial"). Somehow I ended up sitting with the two good ol' boy anti-terrorist guys on either side of me. During this film about skin care, a nearly naked woman appeared on the screen rubbing salt on herself, walking by the Dead Sea, slathering mud all over her legs, or some kind of nonsense at least every thirty seconds. And every time she showed up, one of the guys had to lean across me and make a sexually suggestive comment or joke about her. After the movie, we sat through about twenty minutes of product descriptions during which the guys, joined by their even-less-funny British cohort continued to make jokes. This made the whole thing last even longer.
Finally, people had made their purchases and we were ready to go. By that time, I was feeling really sticky and grimy, my hair was drying out into stiff sticks, and the taste of salt seemed like it would never go away. I was not at all inspired in that moment to buy products that would simulate that sensation at home. I just wanted to take a shower.
About an hour later, the bus dropped me off at the gas station near my hotel, and in a few minutes I was never so happy to be sitting alone, reading a book, and eating a blissfully drab meal from the hotel kitchen.
It was not the perfect tour. It was exhausting and expensive ($70 for the tour, $60 for the ridiculous swimsuit) and I didn't get to climb Masada after all. I suppose that's the one drawback to traveling alone as a woman, especially here. It probably would have been ok for me to go into the Old City at 3 a.m. and hook up with the group that was going to climb the mountain, but I just didn't feel quite right about it, and I don't know anyone here who can recommend one of those groups to me with confidence. There aren't many. Or, I could have just hired a taxi (for much less than I paid for this bus tour) to take me out there, and then wandered around on my own, reading and taking pictures and watching other tour groups with their unfortunately hued stickers. Maybe next trip. At least I stood at the top of Masada today. At least I finally got to go there after all these years, even if it was in a cheesy lime-green bus with a cheesy tour guide and a group of mostly vapid and jaded tourists. I am so glad that I met my new Minnesota friends Leigh and Ellen; we have a lot in common, and so maybe we will stay in touch.
The Israeli military rallying cry is, "Masada will never fall again!" The whole "never again" with Masada part was starting to sound pretty good to me by late this afternoon. But I do think I'd like to go back, though, maybe on another trip, maybe if I'm traveling with someone and we can climb the mountain together at sunrise, or even if I can find a way to do it alone.
To read an excerpt from Josephus's account of the fall of Masada, click here.
This sign was in front of our tacky rest-stop and snack bar. The lowest place in the world, palm trees, and a camel. In fact there were rides available in just in front of me on a very haggard looking camel. An entire tour group from Angola was energetically taking turns.
Our group. That's our guide in the red shirt. That's my friend Ellen in the white shirt and straw hat.
The Dead Sea, view from Masada.
At Masada.
This black line snakes around through all the ruins. It is meant to indicate that everything below the line is original to the place, and everything above the line has been reconstructed.
In the "first" synagogue. Note the black line in the background.
Ruins at Masada.
The Dead Sea from Masada
With Ellen, swimming (standing) in the Dead Sea.
Ellen's legs are swept out from under her. The high salinity results in water of much greater density, and it is actually easier to float than to stand upright in this water.
Mud bathers walking back up to the resort from the Sea.
A mud bather arrives to rinse off in the Dead Sea.
