Afloat on the briny blue

Today was Dead Sea day. Two of us, Julien, the guy I met in Damascus, and I, got up early and headed for Jerusalem's gargantuan bus station to catch the 421 to the lowest point on earth. It's the start of the weekend and the place was full of Israeli soldiers lugging their rucksacks and M16 rifles from hot dog stand to falafel counter as they waited for buses to take them home to their families. There's a way they wear their uniforms in a calculatedly scruffy way that gives them a cool, almost hippy look and it's easy to see how teenagers here can't wait to join up to be one of the gang. It's presumably less cool when you find yourself in Hebron patrolling the streets and keeping an eye out for snipers. And, of course, there's nothing hippy about the all-to-real guns.

When the bus came there was an unholy scramble to get aboard. Three American tourists had apparently politely queued for an earlier bus, only to find that it had filled up before they could get on board. So this time they were all elbows and shouting and pushing to the front almost before the doors had opened. It was pretty clear that there wouldn't be enough space for all of us, so Julien and I joined the ruckus only to be almost stymied at the last minute by a mother carrying a baby. Once she had secured a footing on the first step (hard to argue when there's a baby involved) she beckoned over six more members of her family to go in first which caused a barrage of loud complaints from the people behind her. We eventually got a seat but the aisle was packed with people standing.

The bus takes about an hour to get to Kalia, at the northern tip of the Dead Sea, passing through just one checkpoint on the way. (The whole area between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea is under Israeli control, even though it is technically the West Bank.) But then we made something of a strategic error. For travellers, the Torah, Mishna, Gemara and Talmud combined is of course the Lonely Planet and under Dead Sea, almost in big letters, it warns you to ask the driver to let you off at Kalia Beach rather than Kalia itself - which of course we didn't. So when we did finally get off the bus - our seats immediately grabbed by the nearest two people in the aisle - we found ourselves on a lonely stretch of road with the Dead Sea about 500 metres away and nothing but those plastic-sheeting greenhouse structures in between. Kalia Beach and its promised bars, restaurants and places to stay was, we thought, going to be a couple of kilometres in one direction or the other. We just didn't know which.

We decided to head towards the shore and see if we could see where we needed to be and we were about half way there when a group of agricutural labourers started shouting and waving at us. It was already very hot, the ground was made of hard-caked mud and stones and, uselessly, we were wearing flip-flops, so, looking like the dumbest couple of tourists in the the world, we headed towards them to ask directions.

As we approached we couldn't work out if they were Israeli or Palestinian and that kind of thing makes a difference in the West Bank, especially if, as I was, one of you is wearing a yarmulke. So, as soon as we were within talking distance, we fired off a volley of Arabic, Hebrew and English greetings, all sort of mish-mashed together, to reassure them that we were friends. ("Salam aleikum" worked wondered in Damascus, so it seemed a good bet here.) That seemed to do the trick and, when we asked where the beach was, they were polite enough only to laugh after they had given us directions. We were nearly 10km too far south.

There were no buses and hitchhiking turned out not to be the done thing (who's pick up a hitchhiker in a potential conflict zone?) so we ended up making an impromptu hike along the asphalt of Highway 90 back the way we had come. We had water but flip-flops weren't the ideal footwear for this kind of this, so the Bainkini and Siesta Beach Resort, when it finally came into sight, was like reaching Eldorado.

It was 40 shekels (£6) to get in to the resort and it is worth every penny. The whole place is done out in some sort of shabby Moroccan chic and you can sit in lovely gardens drinking mint tea and looking out over the water towards Jordan. But of course it's the Dead Sea itself that's the real attraction and so we found a spot on the beach and waded in.

ven if you have been to the Dead Sea before (I went in off the Jordan coast in 2000 ish), the bouyancy is wonderfully unexpected. It is a bit like being on a watery bouncy castle and it's totally impossible to stay upright. And, as it turns out, it's almost impossible to keep the stinging salt water out of your eyes, which sent us hurrying out again to the Bainkini's fresh water showers.

Once we had sorted that one out (head nicely above the water, wear sunglasses and take a bottle of fresh water in with you for those emergency rinsing moments) we were sorted and the day spun out alternately gently floating in (on?) the sea and catching the sun on the scraggy shore. (For golden sands you need to look elsewhere.) And, yes, we did cover ourselves with the lovely mineral-rich mud and now my skin is as soft as a baby's.

There was, apparently, maybe and possibly, a bus from the (correct) bus stop back to Jerusalem at 5pm. Or was it 4? No one seemed to know. So, in good time, we found ourselves walking another half hour along asphalt (flip-flops by now doing a sterling job) towards a garage/cafe where our bus had stopped on the way in and where, hopefully, someone would be able to tell us. Of course, no one could and there was a bit of concern that we would get stuck as Israeli buses stop for shabat. We sat down at one of the little tables on the forecourt and got talking to three Israeli guys who, wonderfully, offered us a lift back to town. And even better, the driver was a policeman, which meant we breezed through the checkpoint in air conditioned 4x4 luxury.

Now shabat is starting and the city has all but closed down. I am going again to my friends Gwen and Robin's house for a shabat dinner but I have bunked off shul for tonight (I did go every day this week) and am sitting here with a beer on the balcony as the sun sets over the rooftops. It's still delightful and I feel totally at home. And, even if you don't quite make it to shul, shabat in Jerusalem is something very special indeed.