Going up in the world

Morning over the Dead Sea, as seen from the balcony of our hotel room.

There are two ways to get up to the fortress of Masada, by cable car or by walking the serpentine path. Richard was all for the latter, but some of us were glad we only had time to take the 10 minute cable car ride.

Hi there, Helen, Denise and Elizabeth!

Month after month 900 Jewish zealots are said to have held out here, atop the mountain, while 10,000 Romans and Jewish prisoners built a huge ramp up the western side, eventually breaching the walls of the fortress in April of 73AD.

The Romans found everyone dead from a mass suicide.

(above) Our guide with the three men in our group, Boak, Peter and Richard, in the synagogue.

(below) Looking down into one of the huge cisterns built to hold water diverted from the flash floods in the desert.