56th Day (Heavy Traffic)

This could have been our last shvil trip. We had three not overly long days of walking to go and we were travelling five hundred km to Eilat to do two of them. It's insane, isn't it, having to come all the way back sometime soon, just to walk one, last, thirteen km segment? Well, as we have said so often, especially these last few years, life gets in the way of the shvil and we simply couldn't get away for that third day. Let's just say that two days walking is better than no days walking. Or to put it another way, after forty years of friendship and seven years of shvilship, what's another day?

Caffeine addiction can lead to serious withdrawal symptoms, especially at 5.00 a.m. when you know that for the next 8 hours, popping down to the local espresso bar for a quick macchiato is not going to be an option. So we were livid when we discovered that even though the holiday apartment was quite nice and equipped with all the mod cons, even a kettle, it had no coffee. Now I ask you, what good is a kettle without coffee? Not only did we have to get up at 5.00, but it would be without the aid of the world's most widely used drug. This will not do.  Sometimes taxi drivers are not just experts at getting you from point A to point B, but also at procuring needed drugs. It was true when I was 18 and it was true when I am 56, albeit with some difference. Sure enough, Shimon knew where to get coffee at this hour, even if it was from the convenience store at the local petrol station. Lucky for us that convenience stores in Israel serve premium Lavazza coffee.

 All caffeined up, we were ready to tackle whatever shvil yisrael could through at us, including lots of boring walking at the start of the day. We had a mere 13 km to walk today, a pittance compared to the 27 we walked on the first day of our last trip. Now I have a riddle. When is a start not a start?  Answer:  When the point you start walking from is 3 km before the official start of the section. And thus, the recognized starting point for the day is at an overnight camping ground, 3 km along the shvil path from where the road ends and we said farewell to Shimon. The 13 km had suddenly become 16km. An extra 3 km of magnificent vistas or snaking multicolored canyons would have been fine, but three km of broad, yellow desert, of the type that is about as interesting as sliced white bread, did not exactly thrill us. We're too shvil old and grumpy for this shit. When signs of recent rain are the most interesting features of the area, you know your day is not starting off too well. It didn't really get much better once we got to the Nachal Rachem campground, the official start of the day. Boring old Nachal Rachem continued on just as it was before the campground. 

 

Two things kept us from falling asleep on our feet, one good, one bad. It was very nice to see, not long after we started walking, our first shvillers. Shortly after that, we saw some more. And then some more. At the Nachal Rachem campground, there were about 15 young Israelis who were about to pack their tents and continue on the shvil. We had seen more shvillers so far today than what we'd seen in total these past four years.

Unfortunately, the other thing that kept us from snoozing and walking at once, was the lack of signs. At first there were some shvil signs every now and again, together with green and white ones. After a couple of kms, Mr Shvil Painter obviously thought he could make a few bob on the side by pocketing his paint money, since Mr Green and White Path Marker had anyway already been here.  Trouble is, Mr Green and White Path Marker had pocketed his paint money, so we were left wandering in the desert without any markings at all. Now we know how the Children of Israel felt 3500 years ago. No wonder they complained. It could be that we were being a tad over-anxious, but given our track record, it was forgivable. At one point we decided that instead of walking together, we would spread out across the wide valley, in the hope of broadening the scope of finding some sort of marking.

At least we had the book. Yeah, right!  If in the past we have occasionally griped about the vagueness of the guide book, today we were ready to use it as kindling for a campfire, one that we were inevitably going to have to light, given that we had no indication whether we were in the right place, had missed the turn-off or it was just around the bend. The book would describe turn offs and colour markings, but was unclear whether we should be taking them or not. Distances in the book seemed to be described by guess and not in any way related to the time and distance we were travelling by foot. Eventually, the book foresaw that the valley would narrow into a pretty canyon, shortly after which the path would change colour (what colour?) from green to black and take a left hand turn. Lo and behold, a shvil yisrael marking appeared on a rock, together with a marking indicating that the green path continued straight and the black turned left. Whilst our worry proved needless, we would have been far more relaxed had there been some sort of coloured signs these past 4 km. At least it distracted us from the not very interesting walking.

Too often we have noticed that the interesting stuff on shvil yisrael is usually padded with boring stuff at each end. Desert valleys, mountain views and deep ravines are always in the middle of a section. You finish the interesting bits and inevitably you have to walk a few more boring km just to get to the end. Or in today's case, we had to walk 8 km before we got to the good stuff.

Sometimes I wonder what I mean by good stuff. Today, the first bit of so called "good stuff" was once again trying to impossibly heave our bodies up and over giant boulders. There are times when you walk mindlessly because it's boring. Other times you're awe inspired by nature's beauty. And then there are times that you have to seriously use your brain to work out the best, safest or only way up a rockface. It's scary, it's difficult, but it is also fun. After a number of such tests we arrived to Gev Rachem. A gev is Hebrew for a waterhole that fills up after rain. Since we'd seen damp soil already we fully expected to see a full desert waterhole. The desert disappointed us. 

The time was getting towards 9 a.m. We'd been on the shvil over 3 hours and our tummies were rumbling, so we found a comfortable ledge to sit on in the shade to have breakfast. No sooner had we sat down than a group of young shvillers passed us, walking in the opposite direction from us. And then another group, a larger group after that and then even more. We suspected that they were part of an organized troupe that was walking the shvil, but this wasn't the case. This is the season that through shvillers start from Eilat and simply lots of youngsters had randomly chosen a couple of days earlier to begin their trek. In the 20 minutes we sat on the ledge, I estimate that almost 100 shvillers passed us by. I would say with confidence that we had seen more hikers this morning than we had seen in total, these past 7 years.

Upon resuming we passed a very pretty oasis with of clumps of palms trees before starting the day's big climb. The ascent towards the pinnacle of Ma'aleh Amram was long and steep, but we quickly forgot the exertion when we saw the views from the top. We've had majestic views countless times on the shvil and seriously, one is as stunning as the next. But we hadn't yet had the view of Eilat, Aqaba, the Red Sea, Sinai Desert and maybe even the border with Saudi Arabia, where it meets Jordan. To add to the dramatic view, a deep red and black ravine lay directly beneath us. It is indeed impossible to rate one view over another, but the landscape here was certainly amongst the most breathtaking we've seen to date. 

Part of the landscape that no-one could have predicted was the masses of hikers that were coming up the long steep path that we were about to descend. The day started with us crossing a few shvillers. A large group were camping at the campground and a long steady stream passed us as we ate breakfast. Now it was a swarm. I identified 3 organized groups that were all intermingled together. Religious boys, religious girls and an enormous group of mostly middle agers, sort of like us, walking in commemoration for someone that had died. All in, I would say well over a hundred, perhaps two hundred, people passed us as we gaped at the view. Remember, this is the middle of no-where, not Dizzengof St. We'd gotten used to having the shvil to ourselves, and now we had to share it with a horde, as smiling and as well-mannered as they were. Even at the tail end of our shvil experience, we manage to get new and different slices of Israel. This is what makes Shvil Yisrael so amazing.

The descent from Ma'aleh Amram was steep, long and crowded, but nothing (except for the crowds) that we hadn't done numerous times. But, as is the case when you walk downhill…you eventually get to the bottom. And then there was more "good stuff" waiting for us and this time, the good stuff was indeed good, in the form of a comfortable path through a magnificent canyon. The canyon walls were colored black from the granite, white from the chalk and red and yellow from the sandstone. The softer sand stone had crevices, crags and caves carved in to the walls from years of natural erosion. In other places the rock-face was striated with layers of different colored rocks. Pillars of more hardy stone remained where other stone had been eroded away. I couldn't help but think of Petra, without the world famous temples at the end.

 
 

After a few kilometers, the canyon widened and we were back to the boring type of walking that book-ended the good stuff in the middle. Thankfully, it was well marked and shorter than the morning. We arrived to the end point at Schoret camp ground half an hour earlier than we had anticipated. Shimon, our Eilat wheel man convinced us that the campground was accessible by 4*4 vehicle only, so we'd booked Danny the Desert Driver to pick us up. Imagine our surprise when the car park was full of regular, every-day 2*4 cars, and some yuppy-type soft 4*4 recreational vehicles. We were being picked up by Danny and his rugged Jeep Defender. Talk about over-kill.

We've learnt two things from these past few years of walking in the desert; One - Almost the only shade in the desert is afforded by acacia trees.  Two – Camels and goats love acacia trees and they love shitting around acacia trees. Flies love camel and goat shit. Therefore, between the smell and the flies, sitting under acacia trees in the desert might seem like a good idea, but it really isn't. Why am I telling you this?  Because we had a frustrating half an hour wait for Danny, with the many acacia trees in the campground beckoning us with their shade but repelling us with their flies and shit. There were so many flies that they swarmed around us, even if we weren't sitting in the trees' shade. The only person not too disturbed was Garry, who once again showed his amazing ability to fall sleep anywhere. We were careful not to forget him, asleep in the field, as we did last time we were in the area.

It was really weird being back at our apartment, early afternoon, with no organizing, planning or mending broken bodies. We had time to relax (not that the previous 6 hours had been so stressful), shower and find a place to have a good cup of coffee. Somehow we never got to the coffee. We all fell asleep, instead. Not to worry. Once we woke, we still had time to go out for coffee, wander around the Eilat boardwalk like true tourists (whilst Yoni had a conference call, of course) and hunker down for a mighty meal of fried calamari, fried cauliflower, fried potatoes (i.e.chips) and giant hamburgers, washed down by ice cold beers. There's no need to suffer on the shvil, is there?