Then I caught the bus to the En Gedi spa. To begin with I plunged into a hot, smelly, steaming pool of green water. I'm not sure what it was meant to do for my skin but I almost bit my tongue off trying not to scream! Earlier on my holiday I had cut my thumb while trying to juggle a huge hoola-hoop which had a screw sticking out of it and dipping it into this water was probably the most painful thing I've ever done. It was like someone pressing a hot poker against my hand. I'm not sure exactly which chemical it was that hurt so much...

Then I took the mini train to the beach where I floated in the Dead Sea for half an hour or so. Floating on my back in the Dead Sea was a long time ambition of mine and I really wanted to get a photo of me laying back and reading a book. The thing was it was still quite early in the morning and the wind was making the water quite choppy. That and I forgot to take a book down to the beach to read.

I had a real mud bath. Again, I'm not sure what this is meant to do to you but it was so much fun! There was a small group of people and it soon turned into a mud fight where you were really trying to get hit. Washing it off wasn't so pleasnt though, the hot water was very salty and again it stung like hell.

I had a few dips in some other pools and swam around a normal swimming pool a while, then showered and headed to the bus hotel, I needed to check out by 11.30. After checking out of my room I still had 3 or 4 hours until the last bus back to Tel Aviv so I decided to spend it by the guesthouse pool.

I was in the middle of the dessert and was planning to spend a few hours outside so I thought I'd be responsible and buy some sun tan lotion. I'd been getting a nice tan so far during the holiday and I didn't want to get burnt at this stage. After applying it thinkly and laying and reading and juggling for half an hour I felt myself starting to burn. I swam for a while and applied more lotion but again I soon felt the sun burning my back. After a few hours it seemed no matter how much I was applying it still wasn't making much difference. It was then, to my horror, I worked out that I had bought after sun lotion, not sun block.

Hey, the label was in Hebrew, I plead ignorance.

After crisping myself in the desert sun I got on the bus and slept most of the way back to Tel Aviv. I had my leg somehow twisted under me when I woke though, and that leg only woke up 5 minutes after I had left the bus in a rather ungraceful fashion, stumbling as I put weight on the leg and ripping my toe open. I didn't even feel the pain at the time it was so numb.

Once outside the Tel Aviv bus station I called up Gil but couidn't get in contact with him so I had to make other plans for places to stay. After calling various other jugglers to find a floor to sleep on that evening I was told to head down to the Dolphinarium. I wasn't being told to sleep with dolphins, on the beach behind the building each Friday night is a huge gathering of jugglers, fire swingers, poi swingers, drummers and generally every other kind of crusty activity. Once I arrived I found various people who knew me from the convention and was offered various floors, including Nielr, a teacher from a circus school in Tel Aviv.

After much juggling we travelled by a taxi with a stoned driver to his house. From there the plan was to go to a friends house, eat, then go to a nightclub, juggle or perform in some way, promote Nielr's new circus show, then head back home. The best bit about his plan was that I got to ride on the back of Nielr's motor bike, with our kit in the side car, at high speed around Tel Aviv at night.

Unfortunately once we got to the friends house and I sat down on a comfy chair outside in the warm night air I did what I do best. I fell asleep. I was woken up for dinner and wine, which lasted a long time, and in the end we never did make it to the nightclub. I think I even fell asleep while riding the motorbike back to Nielr's flat.

Going home.