The 'Dead Sea'

I'll be honest, this is actually an email I sent to someone else, but I thought it was an interesting tale (well not so much tale, but a good day), so you can all read it too...and this is all my random thoughts and long drawnout way of telling about my day.


So today we went to the Ukrainian version of the Dead Sea..it's a part of the Black Sea that was cut off many years ago...like hundreds of years...and exists very saltily on it's own. It was by Ludmilla’s house…Natasha’s friend with the baby who we visited last week. So we took a taxi…which really means we hitch hiked and paid some random guy…to the sea. I think they call it like Limon something…I’ll have to get Volodya to spell it later. It was cool. There weren’t that many people there…at least where we went…because we were meeting Natasha, their other friend. (There are 2 Natashas….Volodya’s wife and their friend). So Allie, Natasha (V’s wife), and I went out about 50 feet or so…and the water was still barely up to our knees. It was super salty. And there was a layer of salt across the ground so every step in the water, your foot cracked through the layer. (Turns out this actually cut me (and everyone else) up a bit and I have a bunch of little cuts on my legs). Then under the hard salt was really thick black mud. Sometimes there would be deep spots of it and my leg sunk in up to my knee in mud! When we got out as far as we wanted (still only knee deep), we plunged our hands into the mud and began coating ourselves with it. Natasha said it was good for the skin…so I covered my legs, stomach, lower back, and cheeks with it. It was actually really cool…figuratively and literally. The mud was cooler than the water and it felt awesome to squeeze in my fingers. It coated on really easily and I looked like an African…perhaps. But it definitely was the blackest mud I’ve ever seen. Then we went to the beach and took he pictures then went back into the water, this time with both Natashas. We rubbed the mud off then just lay in the water. It was nice at first…but if any water got in your eye, it was like fire. The water was so salty it burned for a really long time. And when I rinsed my face off, I got water on my lips…so I tasted it and it was awful. Super salty and dried my lips out. The salt just wouldn’t go away. But we stayed in the water for a while…time means nothing here so I don’t know actually how long…and put more mud on while lying, and floating, and trying not to get anything in our eyes or mouth. Still, even though we went out further, the water was hardly more than knee deep. A big splash came up and got me in the eye…so I headed back eventually to rinse it out. And we’d been out there a while so I was satisfied with my experience out there.

Everyone followed after a little while and we rinsed out faces and feet and ate some little baked things. Then after a while longer we walked to Ludmilla’s house. We had to walk up like 200 steps to get there because she lives on the top of a hill overlooking the lake. (The lake, btw, was like 1 mile by 2 miles…maybe). So we finally got to Ludmillas. When we got there, the salt had dried on our bodies…and we were caked in salt. Like, it frosted my arm hairs and provided a second skin all over my body. I ran my fingers through my hair and giant chunks of salt were under my nails. It was sort of cool but gross. So we took showers at Ludmilla’s to rinse off the salt. Then we had tea (which they call Chai…I asked them if they had Chai tea here….it’d be interesting to see what they call that…but they didn’t think they did). We visited for a while, then walked a bit down the hill and ‘taxied’ home. And here I am. I washed my hair and it’s so much better now…salt free. But my skin is super smooth and lovely. When I rinsed out my hair and bathing suit, I looked down and the bath tub had a big ring of salt and mud around the drain. It was gross! But such is the life of swimming in a very salty sea.