Saturday was a pretty special day as it started at a baptism site on the Jordan River. I decided to get baptised as a recommitment of my faith in Jesus - it was not only a special time for me but for about 8 or so others from my tour. In addition, 2 of the people were getting baptised on their birthdays!
We then moved on to Qumran where the Essenes are thought to have created the scrolls and then hidden them in the nearby caves.
The excavations included some huge cisterns & purification pools which were filled when it rained heavily in Jerusalem and the water also ended up gushing out of the hills above Qumran.
Sunday saw us at Masada, the second most visited site in Israel. It's amazingly built on the top of a mountain - how they did it originally, I have no idea. Nowadays there's a modern cable car!
They didn't have a source of water but Herod created huge storehouses and cisterns so that they could withstand a siege for up to 7 years.
There were many fascinating features like an incredible system to provide a sauna but the loveliest thing was to see that some of the frescoes remained in some of the houses which gave us some sense of the splendor they lived in.
We then moved on to Ein Gedi, the oasis where David tried to hide from King Saul. The caves he hid in still exist but, of course, we don't know exactly which cave it was. Incredibly in the desert, there was a small waterfall fed by a spring.
The final thing we did today was to go to what's called Abraham's Tent - it's a tourist place where a guy explains about things that Abraham did, why and where. It was quite entertaining given that Abraham was a Messianic Jew from Melbourne! He also told us about local herbs and local cooking and we got to go on a short camel ride! Did you know that only the double-humped camels spit?
I'm off to breakfast now and leaving for home tonight so I'll do a final post when I get home!
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