Our day today started at 5:30 AM. The sun rises at 6:15 and we had to pack up and get ready to go to Masada. The sunrise was completely gorgeous, it rose between two mountain peaks out in the desert. Most of our camp got up early enough to see it. Breakfast was also really great, and we got to watch the sun even more. We left the camp at around 7 and headed for Masada. This was probably one of my favorite sites we have seen. There is so much history there it is absolutely amazing. It was built by Herod and the name literally means "fortress". The palace is up on top of the mountain, therefore we had to climb the mountain. It was a pretty steep climb but didn't last more than about 20 minutes. I was really surprised to see how much of the ruins are left. You can still easily tell what all of the buildings were and everything. The view from the palace is incredible; it faces out towards the Sea. It only had one weak side, which is the side that we climbed up. That is where the Romans built a ramp and overtook the fortress. There are three levels of the palace on the mountain. Herod made sure that it was built according to all of the latest standards. I really enjoyed seeing the bathhouses and how they worked. There is still a bath house in pretty good condition located in the ruins. I find it incredible that people were so far advanced so many thousands of years ago. The bath house had columns about a foot and a half tall all over its floor. The columns were there because they used to hold up another layer of the floor. The bottom layer would be filled with all of the hot, dry, desert air, while the top layer would have the water for the baths. They could make steam baths by putting cold water on the floor. The bathhouse was also extremely large....the palace would have been so amazing to see when it was in prime condition. Masada is also the place where so many Jews committed suicide when the Romans took over.
After we finished learning about Masada, we took a cable car down to the buses. We switched our luggage from our bus to a Jeep Truck that would take us on a safari ride through the desert. The truck had no windows or doors, just seats and bars to hold luggage in place. We rode for an hour or two, stopping to take pictures at the tops of mountains. Then we ate lunch in an abandoned casino building from the 40's. Our afternoon ended with the truck driving us to a natural spring to dip our feet in before going back to school. The day was a lot of fun, and also extremely educational!
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