Day 8 Part 2

Anticipation builds as we drive up the long road to Masada.  There it is, right in front of us.  My eyes eagerly try to take it all in.  There isn't a lot to see from the floor of the Dead Sea Valley.  I assume there will be more on top.  Part of the situation is that I really don't know what to look for or what I am looking at.  That will change before long.

The parking area is beautiful, lots of palm trees and wide paved areas that allow our big fat buses to navigate easily, not always the case in the places we have been.  

The visitor's center at the base of Masada is beautiful, shiny and modern.  

The view of the cable cars that ascend to the top of this mountain, butte, whatever it is, is amazing.  

There is a skinny little trail that "snakes" it's way up the side of Masada is called "The Serpent's Trail" I assume for the way it switchbacks it's way up.

I ponder going up by that means momentarily.  I quickly decide not to for a few reasons.  First, I don't want to spend most of my time getting there only to have to turn around and go back down.  Second, it is hot today and I don't want to melt into a greasy spot half way up the mountain and just ascending all the stairs to get into the visitor's center tells me that it will be a long trip.  The trail gets the full brunt of the sun on the east side and there is nothing to hint of shade.  Third, I am just so excited to get to the top and see what I can see.

I am a little disappointed to not see the siege ramp the Romans built to conquer Masada.  Apparently time and the elements have worn it away through the centuries.  Hard to believe what must have been a massive construction project just gone without apparently a trace.  

As nice as the visitor's center is, I don't look around too much as I want to get in line for the first cable car headed up, which I do.  Others are using the restrooms and looking around, so I am the first of our group to get into a car and soon I am on my way up.  By the way, Indiana Jolie has begun a new fascination with taking pictures of the commodes we are encountering.  See if you would know which "button" to push.

The view as I ascend in the cable car is amazing.  Immediately you can see little rock formations at even intervals all around the mountain that we learn are the remains of the Roman camps that were posted to eliminate the Jews from escaping.  There is one right at the place where you board the cable cars.  It must have been handy for the Romans who were besieging Masada to have the Visitors Center so close.

 The view of the surrounding area is fascinating as it reminds me of the South Dakota "Badlands" with it's ruggedness and broken landscape.  It almost looks like a city that is in ruins.  

The Dead Sea is also amazing to see at this vantage.  The narrow part is so narrow that the Dead Sea is almost two separate bodies of water because of the vast amount of water the Sea is losing every year.  We also see south into the haze where the tip of Israel touches the Red Sea.  Every bit of it is fascinating.

It does not take the cable car very long to get to the top and I am soon getting out and waiting for the rest of our group.  I walk the catwalk to the entrance of Masada which is accessed through a stone gateway.  

Inside the gateway is some welcome shade and two benches, one on either side of the opening.  Filling the benches are some shirtless, sweaty, red, exhausted young men who took the Serpent Trail up the side of the mountain.  I decide it was the better part of wisdom to take the cable car.  I reach for my bottle of water in my satchel to reassure myself that I will not die of thirst while we are looking around, a thought that occurs to me as I see these young men looking very dehydrated.

It is not long and the second cable car arrives full of people from our group.  We are all excited and noisy in our conversations taking in the views, snapping pictures and anticipating what is next.  

We are invited to enter Masada.  It is interesting, not like I thought it would be.  We enter about mid mountain top.  There is a HUGE amount of land up here!  Most of it is plain and vacant.  

To the north there are many ruins and Indiana Jolie and I cannot wait to take more pictures of rocks as there are many here.  There are not nearly as many rocks in Jerusalem which is confusing to us as we do not know what to take pictures of.  Here we are in our element.  Oh yes, many rocks. And we will photograph them all.

To the south, there is a large wide vacant area which we are asked to gather in.  Those who got there early have taken all the shade and sitting area.  I am left to sit in the sun which is making its presence known.  

For the first time on the trip I decide to unzip the legs off my adventuring pants to make them into shorts.  My blazingly white legs blinds my wife and makes people everywhere put on their sunglasses.  

It feels amazingly better...for about a minute and then I am just hot again and worrying about sunburn as I did not sunscreen my legs that morning.  I turn on my little blue receiver and put on my ear bud so I can listen to the lecture.

Dr. Marc Turnage is lecturing on the history of Masada.  It is so very interesting.  I will probably get some of it wrong and no doubt leave a lot out so I encourage any readers to "google" Masada for some much better information.  

The quick and probably inaccurate version of it all is, that Masada was Herod's idea.  It was his winter retreat.  Herod was as much a genius as he was ruthless.  He found ways to gather water in abundance to fill his saunas and pools to sustain him and is entourage during their stays here.  In one of the most arid places on the planet, Herod could luxuriate in hot water pools and saunas at will.  He built a three level winter palace on the north end of Masada that is simply amazing.  To supply this palace with water, he carved trenches around the slopes of Masada to catch the run off of rain which ran all along the sides of the mountain into tunnel openings that led inside the mountain depositing the water in cisterns which supplied the water needs of Herod.  They have little working scale models of this that demonstrate the effectiveness of this invention right there.  

You can pour a ladle of water against the side of this scale model of Masada and sure enough the water flows down the side, into the trench and into these little holes that take the water inside.  

Everywhere you see something that Herod built, you will find ways of collecting water for his pools and saunas.  He loved his water.  On our first day of touring at Ceasarea we visited the aquaduct that transported water from 8 miles away to fill his pools with fresh water at his seaside summer palace.  

Dr. Turnage disputes the legend that the Jewish resistance who occupied Masada long after Herod died in the second century committed suicide.  This is interesting to me as I had always heard it as an established fact.  He disputes this due to the religious nature of these resistance fighter Jews.  It is interesting.  

I am getting impatient to actually see what we came to see and I fidget a bit, my backside is also quite uncomfortable sitting on a rock this long.  I think I explained on the day we visited the Mount of the Beattiudes that all the rocks in Israel lack a smooth place to sit on.  It is true.  No matter the location or the size of the rock, there is always a pointy projection that makes your sitting time short as the cost/benefit analysis of sitting versus standing tilts towards standing soon after attempting to sit on these Israel rocks.  It is unexplainable how so many rocks can lack a smooth place to sit, they simply defy you to be comfortable.

Ah, but enough about my aching you-know-what.  We are going to start our tour of Herod's winter palace!