After the usual very early start, we first visited the traditional site of Jesus’ baptism by his cousin, John. Called Qasr al-Yahud, it’s much more attractive to me than the (more beautiful but likely inauthentic) alternative site at Yardenit, to the north.
Then we went to the spectacular desert mesa of Masada, where the last hold-outs in the First Jewish Revolt ultimately committed suicide rather than be taken as Roman slaves.
After that, lunch and a mini-lecture at Qumran, the headquarters of the Dead Sea sect and the place, roughly, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found.
And then most of the group went floating in the Dead Sea itself.
Posted from Jericho, Palestine
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