We were staying at a hostel at the foot of Masada, the supposedly impenetrable fortress that Herod the Great built to protect himself in case of a revolt (you know, for things like killing babies, so he had good reason to be scared). The fortress was used by the Jewish extremist “daggermen” called the Sicarii. The Romans camped out around the mountain, which had a stockpile of food and water to last for years, and constructed a giant ramp and finally seized the city, only to find that the Jews had murdered each other/committed suicide to avoid being taken by the Romans. Our exploration of this was fascinating and we watched the movie when we returned home and were surprised to see they had used many of the actual locations we had just visited. Have you seen it? Joel and some of the other guys on the team ran down the mountain.
We also shot a sequence at En Gedi, a surreal oasis in the middle of the desert, and the site of a David and Saul stake out; Qumran, site of the Dead Sea Scrolls; and an abandoned Jordanian hotel/military outpost that had a 360 degree wall mural based on a Middle Ages map, a very cool siting and our guide’s first time to see it, as well! Another long, but eventful and fun day.