7 june 2010, hot, hot, hot

A sweltering 38c today (way over 100f), in the shade, in the evening. Too hot to stay in the pool, certainly for the kids, so stayed in the shade, visiting masada in the afternoon, and bumping into various from the kids' school - it's that sort of holiday. Reading "the master and margharita" a rather heavy russian tome, bequeathed from my last trip here, and enjoying it, with a cocktail or 4, when the kids are in bed, when the hot wind is not blowing the eyelids to sleep. Staying on what was once a kibbutz (ein gedi), and off tommorow to the heart of the desert to meet camels and beduin and for a nightime walk. Drinking a litre of water an hour and the most unpretentious but delicious food. And lots of it - the dining room is air-conditioned. High - or low - light was the dead sea. Did the mud-thing at the lowest point ON EARTH, and getting lower, by about a metre a year, as tragically the dead sea slowly disappears before our eyes due to excessive use of the jordan river upstream. They can't build the jettys fast enough.