voy

Some pictures from the last few days…

Jaffa:

Breakfast at Dr Shakshuka, his ceiling covered in hanging metal kettles:

The Dead Sea:

Hiking in the Ein Gedi Nature Reserve:

From these hiking trails that led us up and into a fertile ravine, we could turn and see the Dead Sea shimmering below. In the bible story of Sodom and Gomorrah, when God allows Lot and his family to leave before he destroys the two cities, he makes Lot promise that no one in his family will turn and look back at their home as they flee. Similar to Orpheus’ folly in the Greek myth, in which he is forbidden to look back at his lover Eurydice as they leave the underworld, Lot’s wife gives in to the temptation to take one last glimpse…and is turned into a pilar of salt. Sodom and Gomorrah were supposedly located near the River Jordan, or the Dead Sea, and each time I turned to look behind me at the great body of water, I imagined turning into a crusty pile of salt myself! We passed a sign on the highway that simply said “Lot’s Wife” with an arrow pointing off into the hills, presumably indicating the legendary spot where she was frozen. Poor thing. It’s hard to resist that voyeuristic urge to take one last look…