Day Twenty Five
Posted by David on
April 15, 2009
Morning comes after a cold night and there is frost in the tent. This means it will be a lil before we can head out. The tent needs to dry out. As soon as the sunrises it will take less then a half hour. I make some coffee and do some yoga to get the day started right. After breakfast I pack up and we head out. It’s about a five kilometer hike until we reach the base of the Karboloet. Karbololet in Hebrew is the top of a roosters head. This red up and down thing-a-ma-jig. Its an appropriate name, for that is what this hike is all about. The Karbolet is the outer rim of Machtesh HaGadol. When we first arrive we see what we think is a short[...]
read more »Day Twenty Four
Posted by David on
April 15, 2009
When David and I wake up the sky is blue and there is water everywhere. I have never seen the desert so beautiful. Everywhere you look there is water and the ground is so clean. Good thing about the water too cause David and I are close to being out. We refill our bottles in a few puddles and clean the water with chlorine pills. We hike all the way out of Nachal Hava to Nachal Tzin. When we arrive there we see a flash flood in action. Nachal Tzin is the main drainage channel of the northern Negev. The Nachal is usually dry except for after rain. Now it was bigger then the Jordan River. I couldn’t believe it. A big river in the middle of the[...]
read more »Day Twenty Three
Posted by David on
April 15, 2009
I wake up this morning bright and early ready for a great day. I make some coffee for the group pack up my gear and get ready to head out. Most of the others are still rubbing there eyes. I realize that they are not as serious as I am about doing the hike. I head out with one other and agree to meet up with the others later. Guy and I hike to a spring in order to re-up with water. On the way we run into some guys in the army who were on a retreat. They hook us up with some chocolate pudding. Yum. We meet up with the others right around lunch and we all sit down for some tuna fish and tehina. After luch we sit down and try to map out our cours[...]
read more »Day Twenty Two
Posted by David on
April 15, 2009
Day Twenty Two: I woke up today, said my goodbyes to the friends and people that I met and to my surprise found a few people who wanted to go along with me, about 5 others. So the six of us headed out. We hiked along the craters edge all morning which offered great views of this natural phenomena. Unfortunatly I found my camera gone. Bummer, but I still have my video camera. We were headed to Ein Hava but missed it by a few kilometers. We camped out in a beautiful place nestled in a few hills outside Ein Hava. Cooked beautiful meal and had a great sleep.
read more »Day Twenty & Twenty One
Posted by David on
April 15, 2009
Day Twenty and Twenty One: Shabbat in Mitspe Ramon. I was sick the whole time. The whole two days I spent lying in the sun and sleeping. There was a Chabad guy there so I was able to have a nice meal and a place to pray, with a minyan. I planed my hike for the next week as I was going to separate ways with the hippies. It had been fun, but it was time to go.
read more »Day Nineteen
Posted by David on
April 15, 2009
Day Nineteen: Todays hike from indside the Machtesh to outside the Machtesh was stressful. I was in charge of the caboose fro the group. That’s means that it was my responsibility to make sure that the group, which is close to a hundred people stay somewhat together. No just imagine a 100 hippies in one of the most beautiful places in the world not getting lost, lazy, or just sidetracked by some rock, bug, or imaginary fairy. The hike itself was packed with incredible beauty and the whole time I was wishing that I had been on my own. I decided right there and then, that I would leave the group after Shabbat and start hiking the rest of t[...]
read more »Day Eighteen
Posted by David on
April 15, 2009
I woke up this morning feeling the need for a lil quite time in the desert away from the group of Hippies that I have been hiking with for the last two weeks. I meander over to a few friends that I have made to let them know of my decision. Tali a girl from Yehud here in Israel feels the same. So we hike the day together. The day started off flat and curved through a wadi til we hit highway 40. We cross and proceed to climb a steep and big hill called Shen Ramon. It wasn’t easy but the top offers a beautiful view of Wadi Nekarot and the Machtesh Ramon. It looks absolutely magnificent. We descend Shen Ramon down to the Wadi. We’ve been hik[...]
read more »A Sneak Peek and a Meeting with the Defence Minister
Posted by David on
April 4, 2009
I don’t know what I did right in my life to deserve such fortune. It just seems as though everything is working out nicely for me on this hike. Nice=Exact. Now I know I have been a lil lax on my updates, I will fill in the blanks over Passover, but here are some sneak peeks on what has already happened on the trail, but that I don’t have entries for yet. After a grueling week of ups and downs through the Karbolet and down the small machtesh ( don’t be fooled by its name ) up again the next day and through the Judean Desert, I met someone on the trail who's sister works at one of the Hotels at the Dead Sea. Walla, Shabbat at the Dead Sea[...]
read more »Comments Off
Day Seventeen
Posted by David on
April 2, 2009
The hike today was a good one. We saw a lot of fossils called ammonites, they are an extinct marine animal. Pictures will come. The most exiting part of the hike was Ammonites wall or the Harem of Karbolet. It was a beautiful ridge that looked over the machtesh Ramon, Israel’s largest crater. In a weeks time I will be doing the real Kabolet, when I arrive there I will be arriving to the hardest part of the trail. This is just training. Today was a lil longer then the last two. 22km. The hippies feel it. The night camp is a lil less then spirited. I go away from the group to sleep and camp on my own. I find a wonderful lil cove, set up my te[...]
read more »Day Sixteen
Posted by David on
April 2, 2009
Today is another quick hike. Only 12km, so the group takes many breaks which is pleasant. Its so nice to take it easy and make coffee in the middle of the day with the sounds of the birds and the wind to send you into peaceful dreams as you take a nap under a big robust acacia tree. These are good days my friends, these are good days. We hike to a place called Holit Pit. It’s an average night camp. The hippies have brought a bunch of wood with them. You see, they have a logistic team that brings there bags everyday so they don’t have to carry them ( I choose to carry all me gear ) in addition they have volunteers who build and take down t[...]
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