Black Mud Ritual and Salt Room

We dig the mud ourselves from a deposit about a kilometre south of the deck, sieve it and warm it. Mud in a jar has usually been sitting in a warehouse in Amman for two years. You get coated head to foot, then you sit in the shade for twenty minutes while it dries. Not in the sun: sun-baked mud cracks and pulls and does nothing extra for your skin, whatever the photographs suggest. Rinse, float for a maximum of twenty minutes, rinse again in fresh water, then thirty minutes in our dry salt room with a book. Mint tea at the end. The honest part. Do not shave or wax within forty-eight hours; the water finds every nick and it burns for a good ten minutes. Getting it in your eyes is genuinely painful, so we hand out squeeze bottles of fresh water and we mean for you to use them. No diving, no splashing, nobody swims face down. The shoreline retreats about a metre a year, so the walk to the water crosses dried marl that is uneven and hot underfoot. Wear sandals you don't mind ruining.