35th day (Desert 101)

The Israeli spring is characterized by pleasant warm temperatures with a few days of sharav which are very dry with intense heat. It turned out that the date we planned to drop down Har Amasah and cross the desert for the first time, a very strong sharav was forecast. We had fears that even our plan of starting  walking at 5 a.m. so that we would finish by 10 would leave us dried and fried in the heat.
So we awoke at 4.30, had a cup of coffee, and at 5.00 bid farewell to the Har Amasah Hilton. I'd expected a chill in the air at 5 in the morning at 850 metres above sea level, but the air was what I may describe as "warmish"...not cool and not warm. hmm. An ominous sign of things to come.

This small kibbutz is not only in the middle of no-where, but is in the middle of no-where on the border of the green line, so security is an issue. The gate is permanently closed and there's meant to be a guard on duty 24\7. Well, at 5 A.M. the sleeping citizens of the kibbutz were on their own. And so were we. The guard was no-where to be seen. Problem is that there was a 2 1/2 metre high gate  separating us from the white blue and orange markings that we were so eager to follow. We had some phone numbers of people to ring but their phones were either disconnected or they didn't answer. After 15 minutes of scratching our bums it was obvious that there was only one solution. If Clint Eastwood could do it in "Escape from Alcatraz" we could do it in "Escape from Har Amasah". So the three 50 year olds somehow scaled the high gate, landed (fell?) softly on the other side and were happy that no-one was there to witness what was a very un-graceful manoeuvre.

The downside to our early morning callisthenics was that we got on to the path at 5.30. Normally half an hour earlier or later is irrelevant, but half an hour at 10 or 10.30 in the desert might be very relevant. So be it. Off in the distance beneath us we saw Arad. This is the first time that we could see our end point from the beginning. The first few kilometres we walked up and down gentle hills along the ridge that leads to the peak of Mt. Amasah. It was at once pretty and daunting. The sun was a red ball that turned orange to yellow as it climbed higher over the horizon. Beneath us there were Bedouin settlements and a few stands of trees that dotted the yellow landscape. Very pretty.  It was daunting, however, because we had to cross this landscape in order to get to Arad.

After stopping for water at the top of Mt Amasah we started the descent down the side of the mountain into the desert below. Where are your Holy Tablets when you need them? At the foot of the mountain lies the village of Derijat that is neither Bedouin nor Palestinian Arab but is inhabited by a local Arab tribe that traditionally lived in caves and worked the land, Fellachim. We hoped to go through it but the path led us within a couple of hundred metres of it, but no closer. It looked neat, tidy and orderly, something that you would never say of any of the Bedouin encampments, villages or cities in the area. Not long after passing Derijat it was back to the Bedouins, but not in traditional tents. They were in new caravans. It was a bit weird to pass by a caravan village in the middle of the desert, but if that's the way the authorities think they can improve the lot of the Negev Bedouins then who am I to argue?. I just hope that the Bedouins agreed to leave their tents and their nomadic lifestyle for the caravan park.

It was after 8 by the time we reached Tel Arad and it was getting warm. Even though we couldn't allow ourselves to dawdle I didn't want to pass seeing the well preserved ruins of a city whose history spans from the bronze age, 4,500 years ago to the more "modern" 1st temple period of the Israelites. As is so often the case when the child in me wants to explore , Yoni and Garry roll their eyes, head for the nearest shade and wait for me to finish looking around. I found a hole in the fence, poked through and had a quick look. To be honest, it looked like a big bunch of ruined buildings, which of course is exactly what it is. I certainly couldn't tell the difference between the Canaanite and Israelite architecture but given that we had serious time restraints and Yoni and Garry were waiting for me, my tour was far from in depth. Under other circumstances, like having an air conditioned car waiting for me at the end, rather than 2 more hours of walking through rising heat, I would have quite liked to explore the site more fully and at a leisurely pace.

After leaving Tel Arad we crossed road no. 80 and the scenery changed. Whilst the geography was the same, before Tel Arad we'd been walking though arid desert. Now we were walking past well tended agricultural land that obviously belongs to the Jewish settlements in the area. It gives discernible meaning to the cliché that  the Zionist movement made the desert bloom. There were almond groves, wheat and sunflower fields, grape vines, olives and more. Since we'd been walking in the open the entire time and once we passed these fields we knew that would continue in the open, this was the perfect spot to rest a bit and have our sandwiches. Even though we hadn't eaten anything this morning, we were a little hungry but certainly didn't devour our food with the usual gusto that typifies most of our shvil legs. For once, eating our sandwiches was an actual physical need rather than part of the fun.

From here it was past the Arad sewerage treatment plant that smelt just like the bathroom at our room at Har Amasah. Yuck. Then on to Arad Park which, with rows of spindly pine tree, must be one of the least attractive parks that I've seen. It was getting hotter, though not yet unbearably so. We were walking through barren open rocky desert and funnily enough, perhaps because it was the first time, we were really enjoying it. Go figure. The three of us had already finished our first 2 litre bottle of water each and with water stops every 10 minutes or so, were well and truly into our second bottle. Despite the heat and obvious exertion, our shirts were bone dry, the sweat evaporating immediately in the waterless air. It's actually much more pleasant than being drenched in sweat in the humid Tel Aviv summer. By the time we reached Arad we will have drunk almost 4 litres each!

The final 3 kilomtres was through nachal Tze'elim which, though not a deep ravine, was quite pretty and a welcome respite from the monotonous landscape that we'd been walking through the previous 10 kilomtres or so. The dry rough creek bed was coloured purple, red and ochre due to the minerals in the rocks and we could mark it down as another first in our more than two years on the shvil.

By 10.30  we had reached Arad and the heat was starting to have a kick to it. We could have plodded another 3 km through town to the car, but it was never a realistic option. Instead, we called a cab and waited  on a bench outside the local supermarket, pondering whether the cab-driver would let us 3 derelicts into his car. A brand new shiny Volvo pulled up and judging by the snarl on the driver's face, he wasn't happy  having half of the sand of the Negev and 3 smelly Australians filthy up his taxi. He ensured that we had only the minimum  possible stay in his cab by covering the distance to Garry's parked car in a time and manner that, had they seen the performance, would have had the Ferrari FI racing team offering him a long term contract. Oh well.

Planning the logistics properly allowed us to finish the 20 km without suffering. We also know that as we get further into the desert after Arad, logistics is going to be even more the make or break for us. We'll deal with that as we get closer to the time. For the moment we were more concerned with quenching our thirst at 11 a.m. with a well deserved beer back at the Muza pub. 

34th day (Along The Border)

We'd been blessed with a long winter and a late relatively cool spring , which led us to plan an overnight leg that would have us walk through proper desert for the first time at a time of year that may ordinarily be too hot. Our aim was to get to Arad before the enforced summer break .

But before that we had a small section to tie up to complete the sequence. A late afternoon 10 km walk between Meitar and Lahav being the missing piece in the puzzle. Of course we have a bigger piece of the puzzle to complete, in the Jerusalem Hills, but we'll get to that over our next few legs in June and July. Once we complete that we can say we have walked (and driven) from Dan to Arad and are ready to tackle the last, long, hard sections of the Negev to Eilat.

With the usual formalities of meeting, coffee and driving 3 hours just to get to the starting point behind us, we turned off road no. 60 opposite Meitar, looking for a safe place to park. We quickly found the shvil markers adjacent to the road but in strict keeping with our "no road walking" policy, kept driving until the road petered out. Thing is, the road didn't peter out. It continued for about 4 km as far as the settlement of Sansana. As I think I pointed out in the previous blog, this entire area skirts the most southern section of the occupied territories. Sansana looks like it should be on the other side of the security road, alongside the settlements of what we call in Israel, South Mt Hebron. We entered Sansana in order to ask the exact location where the shvil left the road and went into the forest and found a number of young religious families that had many children and the glint in their eyes of those that are fulfilling their Zionist dream. Good on them, I say. At least it's in Israel proper and no-one can claim (other than perhaps the Hammas) that it's disputed or belongs to some-one else. Just 3 km north there are settlements that can't lay stake to such a claim.

It didn't take us too long to find the path. We parked the car and drove off to the Joe Allon centre for Bedouin culture, next to kibbutz Lahav, where we'd spent the night with the Hochberg brothers a few months ago. This was our starting point for today's walk.

It was close to 5 p.m. already and the sting had gone out of the day's heat, which is what we wanted. How do I remember that it was 5 o'clock? Simple. Yoni had a conference call to make at 5 to a business associate in the U.S.A. So before we actually started walking Garry and I had to wander around in circles, aimlessly kicking the dirt, whilst the third member of the party solved the problems of marketing policy for Fred in Atlanta Georgia. The call was much shorter than the one we had to endure in Spolletto, Umbria, where Garry and I were sent to wander the streets for hours while he laid plans for world essence domination. I digress. We dropped down through a thin pine forest and looped back behind the rear gate of Lahav.

We wandered across the dry scrub, crossed a road that linked anonymous point A to anonymous point B and continued on through the scrub. I would be lying if I said that it was the most enthralling section of the shvil, but the late afternoon sun, the waning heat, the cool breeze and the yellow and green surrounding hills made for very enjoyable walking. Two landmarks brought us back to the Middle East. During the previous walk I made comment that the route took us as close as we get to the border fence and security road that marked Israel proper and the occupied territories. I stand corrected (or in this case, walk corrected). The path went within 10 metres of the high fence and security road that is bordered by a wide sand strip that shows if anyone has crossed. Even though it divides between what is theoretically two parts of one country, if it looks like an international border and behaves like an international border then maybe…let's not get too political here.

The second reminder that we were here in a part of the world that knows far too much bloodshed was a small memorial plaque, set into the ground where two people were murdered in 2004. We hurried on, partly concerned for our own safety, it being so close to the occupied territories and partly out of a sort of superstition, with a spooky feeling of not wanting to hang around were people had been murdered.

We made it back at the car barely 2 hours after we dropped it off opposite Sansana. We planned to start walking the next day at 5 a.m and be finished by 10.a.m. so as not to melt in the desert heat and this forced us to get organised today. To this end, Garry's car was parked in Arad at the end point and we went to the local Arad supermarket to buy produce for our sandwiches for the next day. With that out of the way, it was dinner time. We'd been recommended a pub called Muza as the coolest place in Arad and since we're cool characters, made a bee-line for it. And cool it is. The walls and ceiling are covered with scarves of hundreds of football teams from around the world, though not a single one from an Australian Rules football team. We'll have to remedy that. After driving, walking, driving, parking and shopping it was time to do some drinking. The place had a good range of international beers and that was the first thing we dealt with. It didn't take us too long to deal with food either. We didn't think we'd find anywhere normal in Arad, but with a friendly staff, cool ambience, good food and drink, Muza certainly far exceeded our meagre expectations.

By about 9 p.m. it was time to head up to Mt.Amasah. Here too, we didn't know what to expect. If Muza had exceeded our expectations, the shvillers guest room here left us under-whelmed, to say the least. We thought we'd hit rock bottom at Lahav, where there wasn't enough electricity to run the kettle and the heater at the same time. Here at Mt. Amasah there was plenty of electricity and even hot water, but the bathroom stunk of sewerage, so testing the hot water in the shower was not recommended. The tap in the sink didn't work and was held in place by a bucket wedged between the tap and the edge of the sink. If we'd had the energy and didn't have to get up so early the next day we might have actually cleaned the room, something that hasn't been done since Ben Gurion left politics and retired to Sde Boker. Instead, we made sandwiches for the next day, set our alarm clocks for 4.30 and went to bed. Garry and I stoically viewed the accommodations as a quaint shvil experience, not really minding where we spent a few hours between walks. Yoni's deafening silence suggested that he thought otherwise. There's a hotel in Arad and to Yoni's insistence, that's where we'll stay next time we're in the area.