Day 260. 2pm No trip to the region is complete without a soak in the Dead Sea, a salt lake boarding western Jordan & eastern Israel. Its surface shore is 422 metres below sea level, making it the lowest dry-land elevation on the Earth's surface. At 378m deep it's also the deepest hyper-saline lake in the world & one of the world's saltiest bodies of water; it's, with 33.7% salinity, 8.6 times as salty as the ocean & it's this harsh environment that prevents animals from flourishing, hence the name. The sea has attracted visitors from around the Mediterranean basin for thousands of years & of course it has a biblical past too; it was a place of refuge for King David. The Dead Sea, Jordan. April 29th 2008
