Road Trip: Mitspe Ramon

-*When we arrived in the dark, rain-soaked town of Mitspe Ramon my first impression was how cold it had become.  Sure, the Dead Sea had been a windy, stormy mess but we had dressed down to short-sleeve T-shirts and light-weight hiking pants and shorts.  Here it was cold enough to want my fleece or a down jacket.  Without really feeling it we had driven from 1200 ft below sea level to ~3000 ft above sea level in around 2 hours.  Mitspe really was a tower in the high desert and unlike anything we had seen.

We followed the guidebook (Lonely Planet) to their recommendation for a "home-cooked" dinner at Haksa. The restaurant was located in an industrial warehouse just off the highway and so unassuming that we drove right past it twice.  A bored woman sat at an outside table smoking a cigarette and the only way we knew that this was the place was blue lettering on the warehouse spelling out "Haksa" (חקזח) in Hebrew.  We were no longer on the beaten tourist track.  The woman outside followed us in and happened to be the waitress.  She informed us that there were four dishes available, 3 chicken and one beef, and we ordered one of each.  We also got a huge bowl of hummus and the tastiest pitas I've had in Israel.  The food was fantastic, so if you are ever in Mitspe Ramon make sure to look them up.

We retired to our hotel suite in the Ramon Hotel which was really large enough to sleep 7 and fit 10.  It was amazingly spacious. Since we were traveling as two couples it made sense to reserve a two-bedroom suite, but I had no idea that it would be large enough to fit two families comfortably.  The rooms were nice but a hot shower set off the smoke detector twice!  Our attentive hotel staff called us on the phone with each alarm just to make sure we weren't smoking.  The funny thing was that there were two guys smoking in the stairwell and subsequently the whole apartment smelled of smoke, but that didn't set off the detector!  Oh well.  The hotel was nice and breakfast was very generous.  They included scrambled eggs and quiche with their buffet.  We ate heartily since we did not know where or when our next meal would happen.

The thing we had come to see, Maktesh Ramon מכתש רמון, was just one block from the hotel.  "Maktesh" translates to "crater" but the geological phenomenon is exclusive to Israel.  The maktesh is essentially a sink hole that has been carved out like a canyon, but with the bottom lowering at a constant rate such that there is a flat plain across the bottom.  Various volcanoes had erupted here in the past, creating the unique black stone hills.  Wikipedia has an interesting article on it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makhtesh_Ramon

We set off to find a trail map and more information about the crater at the visitor's center, but that was closed for renovation.  A small sign in English instructed us to get our information from a small wildlife zoo in the parking lot.  We found a very nice woman at the deserted zoo who sold us a trail map and advised us to check out the Carpentry Shop formation by hiking down the cliff and along the crater basin.  When we asked when the visitor's center would reopen she said "two years from now."  Imagine if they completely closed the visitor's center at any somewhat major US National Park for two years!  You'd have a riot. 

We took her advice and headed down the trail and off the cliff.  The trailhead was unexpectedly well signposted.  In fact, they signpost trailheads in Israel better than they do city streets.  Each trail has a color which is indicated on the sign, as well as the trail's destination in English and Hebrew.  We were following the green trail to the Carpentry.  Then, as you go along the trail, you follow a series of painted white-green-white stripes which let you know that you are on the right path.  If you come to a junction with a red trail and you want to follow that, there will be a signpost at the junction and a series of white-red-white stripes to follow.  This is an amazing system which is much better than what we have in the US.  For starters, we believe in "pristine" wilderness so the idea of painting rocks or trees is anathema.  Occasionally people will pile stones up in cairns to mark a path but it is assumed that next year's snows will just knock those down.  Once you have started on a trail the only way to know that you're on still on it is to check a compass + map or a GPS.  The trail won't be marked again until you come to a junction.  It's much easier to follow a series of paint marks which always reassure you that you're still on the green trail and you won't get too easily lost.

Note the green stripe's right angle--that indicates "turn right"

The Maktesh was really stunning up close.  Our trail wound around three "black hills of death" as we called them and across several brightly colored stone outcroppings of yellow ochre and purple manganese.  The purple rocks crushed into pigment in my hands and I used some to paint one of the rocks.  Near the Carpentry the rocks under foot became standstone which was just beautiful.  The Carpentry itself is the only place in the world where standstone hardened into octagonal crystals and it looked like a less permanent version of Devil's Postpile where the rock is granite.  Many of the rocks had broken off and were laying in a heap all around the formation either through erosion or less natural causes.  Still, it was very interesting.

Emptiness on a grand scale

As it looked like it was threatening rain, we double-timed it back to the car, reaching the top again around 3:00.  Since it was Friday afternoon all the restaurants had closed in anticipation of the Sabbath.  Reluctantly we tore into a stash of "emergency" pretzels and drove all the way back to Haifa.

On the outskirts of Beersheba I saw a shanty town full of Bedouins where men were grazing camels, goats and horses alongside the highway.  It reminded me of the Navajo reservation we drove through last April in northern Arizona.  The normally nomadic Bedouins have had their nomadism restricted partially in the name of environmentalism.  In the 1950's Israel passed the Black Goat Law to prevent erosion by restricting the grazing of Bedouin black goats.  Goats were also fingered as the culprit for the destruction of natural spaces and in 1979 Sharon established nature reserves in the Negev and Green Patrols to ensure that the Bedouins could not graze the goats in the National Parks.  ~85% of the Negev is used by the IDF (Israeli military) for war games and target practice with another 5-10% under National Park control.  Even in the desert, available land in Israel is scarce.

Road Trip: Dead Sea

As we left Jerusalem and the setting sun behind us we headed down the mountains into an alien world.  There were street lamps along the highway enough to briefly show us the Sea Level sign as we whizzed past, still dropping like a stone.  In the distance orange street lights crawled up a black mountain but as those went into Jordan, we had to turn away and go south into the unlit desert.  We found our turn off just south of Qumran where the Dead Sea scrolls had been discovered.  Due to the lack of available cheap hotel rooms in En Gedi and a general sense of crazy adventure, I had selected a simple room in Metzoke Dragot at the top of a cliff at ~1000ft above the Dead Sea.  Kenny drove the twisting switchbacking road in the dark while I diligently watched for the camels that the road signs warned us could be dangerously close (think deer warnings in the US).  We arrived at the top of the cliff in front of a yellow gated compound in the middle of a gale.  The wind was howling.  A note fluttering on the gate told me to call Lilian to open the gate.  Fortunately I had a local cell phone that got 2 bars of coverage if I held it right.  The call went through and minutes later the gate rumbled open.

We ate camp-style bbq chicken with assorted salads, potatoes and pitas that tasted like good bbq should.  Unfortunately we had also stumbled upon a camp outing for five tour buses full of pre-teen Israeli school children.  They slept in the goat hair tents just behind our cabins.  The beds were very hard but the shelter was good and we eventually fell asleep.

The morning allowed us to finally get our bearings.  The scenery was breathtaking.  Storm clouds darkened the sea and the eastern mountains while tiny rays of light filtered down like heaven's graces upon the water.  The Judean desert sparkled in the early morning sun.

This good light was fleeting and by the time we got ready to hike, our sun had moved far to the west.  We wandered along well-marked hiking/jeep trails and got a very good look into Wadi Dagura, a deep dry riverbed canyon, which we were told by several people could be deadly on days like today when the flash floods could arrive.



We finished hiking the cold, empty desert and decided it was time for a Dead Sea float.  We went to Mineral Beach because it was cold outside and they have a hot-spring fed hot tub.  I really enjoyed floating in the extra-salty water.  It was a very strange sensation.  You had to stay on your back the whole time because if you leaned forward, the water was likely to tip you onto your face!  It was a cross between water and gelatin.  Kenny called it "sludge."

After the float, we washed up, toweled off and drove to Masada.  Masada is the remains (very well preserved) of Herod's palaces where ~1000 Jewish revolutionaries held out against a Roman legion for years.  The story goes that when it was clear that the Romans were going to win the siege the Jews in Masada chose a free death over slavery and committed mass suicide rather than be taken prisoner.  Such is the mystique of Masada that the Israeli Defense Forces hold their swearing in ceremony there and declare "Masada shall never fall again!"

We had a tour-de-force since they close the park at 4:00 and it was 3:00 by the time we got up to the summit.  Because of the lack of time we took the gondola up and hiked the Snake Path back down.  We made it out to the three sections of the Northern Palace, perched on a the edge of the cliff.  That was the most exciting ruin I have ever visited.  Here are some pictures:

Descending to the Northern Palace

Northern Palace from the bottom

The storerooms

The national park workers shooed us out the gate at 3:55 and we took a nice leisurely walk back down.  By the time we reached the bottom at 4:45 the visitor's center was completely deserted.  We walked around the building several times before concluding that the only way we were going to get to our car in the underground car park was to walk through the garage.  I half expected to see a gate over the front since a sign had said "closes at 4:00," but fortunately it was open and we drove out without hassle.

We took the southern route past Mt. Sodom and the pillar of rock that's called Lot's wife.  It was clear in the west but stormy in the east, creating some amazing weather, including a rainbow.  Veronica snapped a shot of it from the backseat as we drove and finally I got a picture at sunset just before it disappeared.  Gorgeous!

Zach fired up "Enter Sandman" on the ipod and we drove through the rain and the night to our next stop deep in the Negev desert--Mitspe Ramon, which means "Ramon watchtower."