{"id":4450,"date":"2014-02-02T07:30:33","date_gmt":"2014-02-02T07:30:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/janetgover.com\/?p=4450"},"modified":"2014-02-02T07:30:33","modified_gmt":"2014-02-02T07:30:33","slug":"how-low-can-you-get","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/?p=4450","title":{"rendered":"How low can you get?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
The water seems so very blue – and those mountains in the distance are in Jordan<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

The answer to that is very low \u2013 when you are in Israel.<\/p>\n

I got down to 427 metres (that\u2019s 1,401 ft) BELOW sea level \u2013 the lowest place on the planet where you can still breathe\u2026<\/p>\n

I\u2019m talking about the Dead Sea of course \u2013 what an astounding place it is\u2026<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a huge body of really really salty water \u2013 I mean REALLY salty water.<\/p>\n

To be honest \u2013 it\u2019s not that nice to swim in. It\u2019s so salty and it\u2019s sort of oily. And if you didn\u2019t wash it off when you got out, I imagine your skin would feel really tacky \u2013 not to mention what it would do to your hair.<\/p>\n

\"It's<\/a>
It’s a very strange beach resort – but people come from around the world to swim – or rather float – here.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But despite that \u2013 it is supposed to be good for you. Everyone from King Herod the Great (more about him next week) onwards has come here to take the waters. Some of my Israeli colleagues say they do it two or three times every year. I don\u2019t know if it really is good for the health \u2013 but it certainly is beautiful\u2026<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The minerals make the most beautiful crystal forms anywhere where the tide exposes the wet rocks to air. And it’s blindingly white.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And it\u2019s a great place for people watching\u2026<\/p>\n

\"Inhibitions<\/a>
Inhibitions are abandoned – as people go grubby in public. The mud pack is supposed to be good for the skin.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

There is a lot of history around the Dead Sea \u2013 which leads me to a sad reality.<\/p>\n

It sounds like a line from a b-grade movie \u2013 but the Dead Sea is dying. It really is. It\u2019s fed by the Jordan River \u2013 and by run off from those fabulous mountains. But a great deal of water is taken from the Jordan upstream for human use by the countries that border the river. And much of the mountain rainwater runoff is now dammed and used to grow dates and other crops.<\/p>\n

Then there are the factories drawing minerals from the Dead Sea itself \u2013 increasing the already high rate of evaporation. What used to be one great body of water is now cut in half \u2013 and shrinking rapidly, with one end turned into mineral factory ponds.<\/p>\n

What a sad sight.<\/p>\n

\"These<\/a>
These NASA photos show how much it has changed.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There are plans for ditches and pipelines to bring new water supplies from the nearby Red Sea or the Mediterranean. But it seems to me those plans are as much about providing water for human purposes \u2013 not just to rescue the Dead Sea.\u00a0 And in other places such drastic rescue attempts have sometimes proved to be environmental disasters themselves.<\/p>\n

I guess there isn\u2019t an easy answer\u2026 but at least people are trying to find a solution.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  The answer to that is very low \u2013 when you are in Israel. I got down to 427 metres (that\u2019s 1,401 ft) BELOW sea level \u2013 the lowest place on the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-travels"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7g6jm-19M","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4450\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janetgover.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}