EIN BOKEK, Israel — Years ago in my student backpacking days, I visited Masada and the Dead Sea on a budget.
Magnesium-rich mud provides relief for skin ailments.
I stayed in an un-airconditioned youth hostel, which does not exist anymore, and I recall making a room selection based on the absence of scorpions under the bed. I climbed the snake path that wound its way up to the Herodian fortress, and I floated in the Dead Sea – proving that even a sinker like myself could bob around on the surface given the water’s 33 per cent saline content (the oceans have three per cent). I even recall barely concealing a condescending chuckle when I saw two otherworldly figures, caked in mud, waddle down to the Salt Sea to take the therapeutic waters.
That was then. My salad days behind me, during a recent visit to the same corner of the Dead Sea as a guest of the Israel Government Tourism Office, it was – gasp! – me who resembled that freakish mud-caked apparition I witnessed back in my younger days. During a late February visit to the Dead Sea, I signed up for the mud-pack treatment at the Daniel Dead Sea Resort & Spa, one of several high-end hotels that together make up a Palm Springs-like community along the western shore of the Dead Sea, at 1,200 feet below sea level, the lowest point on the surface of the earth.
With a bewildering variety of treatments available to choose from, I selected the mud wrap with seaweed – the latter to draw out the nasty energies we keep inside us, according to the attendant who booked my appointment. I could have selected a reflexology treatment, a medical pedicure, hot-stone treatment, aromatherapy, milk bath, hot-seaweed wrap or an anti-stress body-peeling treatment, among other options. Klaudio was the Argentine oleh who provided the treatment.
The hotel was a real smorgasbord of international talent. The kippah-clad doorman/security guy was originally from Mumbai, India; one of the front-desk people was a young black girl whose parents were originally from Chicago. Almost all of them ride the buses from Arad or Dimona to work each day.
Visitors come from all around the world to the Dead Sea for treatments, mostly in the spring and fall, Klaudio said. The area’s mineral-rich mud, loaded with magnesium, is renowned for its healing properties, particularly for skin diseases such as psoriasis. Guests spend weeks, even months, at the spa, and some countries subsidize the visits as a legitimate medical expense.
After providing me with a boy bikini that folded to the size of a peanut, Klaudio retired to heat the mud. He returned with a metal bucket that could have held paving mix, but instead was full of the gooey concoction that has made the region famous. He first applied the mud to my back, and after an initial jolt from the heat, it quickly became pleasantly warm. As I lay back, he ladled more mud on my chest, stomach and legs and shmeared it around.
After covering me from neck to toe in mud, he placed big globs of the stuff under my palms and then wrapped me in plastic that left me looking, I imagine, like a chocolatey Vietnamese salad roll.
After turning down the light and adjusting the volume of the electronic relaxation music, Klaudio left, with the advice to relax.
The mud felt surprisingly pleasant on my skin, the music was soothing, and I nodded in and out of consciousness.
At the end of the treatment, I showered in the treatment room – anywhere else would leave a muddy mess everywhere – donned a new tiny boy bikini and bathrobe and headed to another room for a 30-minute Swedish massage. (I’d have gone for the full hour, but I wasn’t sure my boss would accept it as a legitimate expense.)
Aaahh. Feel the tension of being on an all-expense-paid junket fade to the background.
Ooooh. Let go of those difficult decisions of whether to choose fish or meat tonight.
Yeaaah. See those nasty energies the attendant warned me about evaporate at the tip of the massage therapist’s expert fingers.
Yes, a massage can do wonders for tired muscles and knots.
The spa treatment over, guests can continue to relax in one of the Daniel’s many pools. One is filled with warm water from the Dead Sea. Another smaller pool features bath-temperature water with a strong waterfall in one corner, a third is a good-sized whirlpool. There’s also a sulphur pool, apparently good for those suffering joint ailments, as well as a cold water pool.
Nearby are a Turkish bath, wet steamroom and a dry sauna, and showers to rinse off.
As if the man-made treatments aren’t beneficial enough, according to the U.S. National Psoriasis Foundation, high levels of bromine in the air at the Dead Sea “seem to add to a patient’s sense of well-being.”
True enough. But will my boss sign off on the mud pack and massage treatment expenses? Oh, the tension, the knots in my shoulders. Better head back to the Daniel for one more treatment before I go.
