Day 4: Jordan, Dead Sea and Wadi Mujib

We began today with a visit to the Jordan River and the baptism site of Jesus. The Jordan has shrunk significantly in the past 2000 years (it used to be 1 km wide but is now no more than 15 feet across at one of its widest places). The site of the baptism is about .5 of a kilometer away from from the actual river site of the original baptist. An interesting characteristic of the site is that there have been several layers of churches excavated from this site with the baptismal fonts all focused on one specific area. The first church was one built in the late Roman period with alread several allusions to John the Baptist baptizing in this exact location. So the evidence, bot biblically and extra-biblically support this site as the actual site of Jesus' baptism. It was powerful to stand in this area, to say the least. After this, we continued to the site of the actual Jordan today. When we got there, just 15 feet away, sat Israel. It was almost eery standing at the Jordan, next to an armed Jordanian military personel, looking at the Israeli flag across the river. We were allowed to go as far as standing in the actual river, which I did with a friend on the trip. I will try to post that pictures later (it is really later here, and we have an early day tomorrow).

Our next stop was to the Dead Sea. It was equally incredible and a more relaxing experience. We paid our entry fee to the public beach, and we were soon running down the salienated and sandy beach toward the water. We got in and immediately began to float. And when I say float, I mean float. I could not even get my legs below the surface to kick--the salt content of the water made us that bouyant. It was also extremely hot. We assumed it was the son, but one of our dig leaders told us it was because we were at the lowest point of land on earth which meaned we were closer to Hell. We all got a good laugh.

After this adventure, we had no idea what lied ahead of us that day. We knew we were hiking, but we could not have comprehended where. We went to the Wadi Mujib nature reserve and went on the Siq trail. This is a trail through creek flowing through a canyon. There was no land, only water and a lot of rocks. We spent a majority of the time hiking in water from our ankles to our waste over trecherous rocks and fallen boulders. After an hour of our precarious hike we reached the end of our trek and were greeted with an incredible water fall that was billowing over a group of fallen rocks in the canyon. The water fall must have been at least 125-150 ft in height. We had great fun trying to run through the powerful torrents as they spilled in to the canyon only to be pushed below the waters surface and shot down stream. After spending close to an hour playing in the waterfall, we began our trek back.

Needless to say, it was an amazing day, and I still cannot quite comprehend the magnitude and importance of the sites that we visited today. I will post pictures soon hopefully (but it may be a few days).

Brad