You’re Such A Salty Dead Sea!

The Dead Sea is devoid of life. The water’s high salinity ensures life can’t survive. What this high percentage of salt does accomplish, it allows overweight adults like me to float like a round balloon in a swimming pool.

The Contrast

Sweimeh, an agricultural town situated on the northeastern coast of the Dead Sea and opposite the Israeli West Bank, is an International renowned tourist destination. The Dead Sea is the focal point. This area highlights a contrast between international resorts and undeveloped infrastructure. Outside the resorts, trash, random wooden fruit stands, a spattering of housing and restaurants line the streets.

Is This Hotel Dead?

After a late wakeup and no visits to Jordanian supermarkets, cries of “I’m hungry!” propelled us out the door. The closest supermarket, hidden in the basement of the closet mall was closed until the afternoon. We continued south on the King’s Highway, one that became more sparsely populated. Until a random hotel perched appeared over the hill. As a growing revolt built in the seats behind the pilot and copilot, we pulled the Captiva over at Porto Dead Sea. The hotel guard, lingering in the security booth as long as possible to avoid the rapidly warming day, stepped out in a well worn green t-shirt and tattered jeans. “Is there was an open restaurant here?”

“Sa,” was his response. Only a hundred meters away, five cars sat parked out in front of the hotel entrance.

He lifted the metal gate. We cautiously parked, not sure if any meaning was lost in translation and still not sure if in fact this was a functioning hotel. With an uneasy and growing fight or flight mentality, we followed him into a lobby devoid of a receptionist, people, or wall hangings. The bare white walls focused their attention to fading in the strong Middle Eastern sun. The guard then lead us to an elevator, just around a corner revealing unfinished sections of the premise. The elevator descended eight stories down, well below sea level. Before us sat an expansive pool area with two large pools, hundreds of unoccupied tables, two employees ambling around, and soon after our removal, four hotel guests.

“Can we order breakfast?”


“Yes. What room are you in?”

“We just came for breakfast. We aren’t staying here.”

Wrong answer. A perplexed followed. The idea seemed so foreign that someone would simply stop to just eat breakfast. Maybe in his mind he thought, “Who in their right mind stops at an unfinished hotel looking for food.

“We would like to order one supreme breakfast,” said Nadine.

“You order four,” he said in broken English.

“But we only want one.”

“Ok, you order two.”

This negotiation tactic didn’t make sense.

“But we only want one. And hummus. And an omelette. Oh wait, and one coffee.”

Something must have been lost in translation.

In the meantime, two other European families appeared from the depths of this mysterious hotel and promptly ordered breakfast. Not like these random visitors, they provided a room number. All I heard was the number 500 and something. If I had caught the entire number, I might have provided that number for breakfast.

Food appeared in a reasonable amount of time . . . for the hotel guests. Not ours.

I inquired about the delay.

“Come out soon.”

A bit later, one plate. A little bit later, another plate. Plate after plate of food came out, far exceeding what we expected and maybe more than the two other families ate, combined. Maybe if we had ordered four, it would have been less food.

Even Fat People Float

After that breakfast, I’d challenge the Dead Sea’s buoyancy. To experience weightlessness in the salty sea is the allure of the Dead Sea. Beach access on hotel property was a significant expense. Before arriving to Jordan, we never selected a spot to visit the Dead Sea.

Satiated with full bellies, we slyly began exploring parts of the Porto Arabia Hotel pool deck. Hidden at the back was a path. The mix of sand and dirt descending down to the beach and four sun-baked red umbrellas.

Next to these umbrellas sat a few lounge chairs, four white plastic chairs, and a lifeguard in blue shorts and a white sun shirt. His job as a lifeguard seemed a bit redundant. As I would soon find out, it would take monumental effort to drown in these salty waters.

Since we were already here in our swimming gear, why not check out the Dead Sea. As the pool deck became a bit more busy, a couple more families appeared. Nadine, Sophie, and I slipped down to the salty beach. Raqeem, the lifeguard on duty, warned us several times not “to get water in your eyes. Very pain.”

Over the next thirty minutes, we reverted to a sillier version of ourselves. We rolled like a log, “read” a magazine, and just floated. This took place while the Porto Arabia Hotel staff watched my three youngest kids on the pool deck. Heck, we paid for our room, oh wait, no we didn’t. So thank you Porto Dead Sea staff.

Out of the water, Raqeem slapped Dead mud all over my body. Just like Picasso throwing paint on a very pale canvas, except this canvas constantly made salt jokes.

Once he finished, he informed us to let the mud dry for ten minutes. Seated in white plastic chairs, the one I always silently fear will break under my weight with the slightest movement and impale me in the back. In the meantime, Raqeem hammered hardened chunks of salt off the shore with a pole. Placing them in a big blue bucket, he began crushing it into a fine paste. After ten minutes, bobbing up and down, the Dead Sea weakened the caked mud allowing us to easily rub it off our bodies. The entire time not accidentally submerging our faces in the water.

Out of the water on back in the dangerous plastic white chairs, he began scrubbing years of dead skin with Dead Sea salt. Sophie commented that I looked years younger, not “a day over 58 years old with a mischievous grin.”

Our skin did feel softer, soft enough to make a smooth escape.

The Escape

As slyly as possible, our group of noisy misfits glided back up to the pool desk, threw clothes on over wet bodies, grabbed two boxes of leftover breakfast for the road. We skirted out the same hallway, climbed eight stories in the same hidden elevator that we feared hours earlier, and exited the same lobby. This time, there was someone lingering behind the off-white desk and two men smoking and chatting on the white couches, as the White family slipped out into the Dead Sea sun.