55th Day (Grumpy Old Shvillers)

We awoke without the pressures of the day before. We'd had a good dinner, slept in good accommodations for the 2^nd night in a row and were facing a short 13 km jaunt across the Timna National Park.  We even got to sleep in till 5.15, since the entrance to the park was only a short 2 km drive away. It is true that we once again omitted supplying certain information to Yoni regarding a very sharp ascent and sharper descent as part of the jaunt, but what you don't know can't kill you, or at least you can't complain about it until it's upon you.

The book had us mistakenly believing that the trail-head for today was about 3 km from the park entrance (I admit, I think I misread the book, but it's more fun to blame the book). At 6.00 the ticket office was closed, so we parked the car outside the gate and started to walk the 3 km to the trail, when a car, coming from within the park, opened the gate and drove out. We quickly ran back to the car and drove in, before the gate had a chance to close. Actually, I blocked off the infra-red eye so the gate would not close, but let's not get technical. We had a stroke of random good luck that saw someone, for some reason, leave a park in the middle of the desert, at 6.00 a.m, just as we entered it. I'm gonna buy a lottery ticket.

So we drove and drove and couldn't find the shvil markings. We became convinced that something was not right when we drove past a path with red markings rather than the familiar tri-color shvil markings. I re-read the book and realized that I had probably previously misread it. We returned to where we started at the visitors centre at the entrance, Yoni once again turned on Google Maps and for the second time in two days we were saved from wandering around in circles by modern technology.

We were walking on a slight upwards gradient, through the same sort of desert gullies that we'd been walking through these past 300 km or so, only this time the rocks were colored in all sorts of earth hues. Very nice. Every few hundred metres a sign explained the geographical formation or geological history and composition of certain rocks. Who knew how many different combinations of the words "volcano" "quartz" "heat" and "pressure" could be jumbled and mixed, and then printed on signs? After almost an hour of Harry Butler (the Australians will understand) the path turned abruptly to the left and we stared at a shvil sign, painted half way up a sheer,15 metre high rock-face. It seemed to be  hinting that we were to somehow scale this mini cliff. There was no path, no hand rungs and no obvious way over. It was sort of like a logic test in the field. Well, in terms of pure logic, the solution was easier than it appeared. In terms of pure physical effort, the solution was more difficult than it appeared. The shvil sign wasn't lying. We had to find a way to drag ourselves, hand over bum over foot, up the rock. We hadn't been asked to do this for a long time and it wasn't easy finding foot and hand holds in fissures in the rock. But we did succeed, rather ungracefully, I might add. And then there was another rock-face we needed to crawl over and yet another. I quite like rock climbing to be honest, but I think Yoni and Garry were enjoying it a little less. After 4 or 5 such climbs, the path returned to normal, at a slightly steeper incline. If that was the hard climb I'd read about in the book, then once again maybe I'd misread it. But that didn't seem to be the case, especially since we were surrounded by very very high mountains with vertical cliffs beneath their peaks.  Now that wouldn't be fun, I thought to myself. Eventually the path, or Mr Shvil Painter, decided which one of these peaks we were to attain. And so we started to climb. Part of it was just walking up a steep path, whilst other parts demanded more rock climbing, scrambling up crevices and general over exertion. And it never seemed to end. We could see where we had to get to, but the distance didn't seem to be getting any less, until we arrived to one last, extra steep straight path up to a ridge. Fifty metres along the ridge, 12 metal hand rungs were driven into the cliff. Climbing up the rungs like a ladder led us to what is called the Timna platform. The top of this mountain was flat and about the size of a football field, with breathtaking views of more mountains, colored red and black and more deep, yellow valleys. It may be a cliché, but we really felt we were on top of the world. The perfect place for breakfast.

The only thing disturbing our breakfast was the sight of the path we had to take to get down off this rock. Our creaking knees and ankles, aching muscles and blistered feet were all starting to panic at the thought of a repeat of yesterday's drop, down Ma'aleh Malchin. In truth, it was difficult, but no-where near the magnitude of the previous day's 500 metre descent. Yoni and I have many times thrown grace and dignity to the wind, descending over rocks on our derriere rather than on our 2 legs. Today even more time was spent sliding, given that our legs had nothing like the spring needed to walk down steep and uneven terrain.

When we weren't gasping for air on the way up or grasping for grip on the way down, we continued to grapple with the question of what the book means by technical walking. The descent yesterday, which was certainly difficult, was described as technical. Neither the ascent nor descent today was given such an honor, yet to us, scaling rock faces, deciding the best route through a crevice or climbing a cliff with the aid of hand rungs is far more technical than a steep descent on loose scree along a well-marked path. Go figure.

When we weren't contemplating  the deep meaning of technical and non-technical gut wrenching walking, medical marijuana, which has been in the news lately, was a hot topic. Given our theoretical knowledge on the subject, Garry recounted a discussion he had with a (legal) grower, regarding the different varieties and their various potential uses. This same grower also made claims about marijuana oil and female sexual pleasure. Obviously we are not expert on the subject, but we tried to imagine empirical testing methods. This is a G-rated blog, so anyone wishing for more detail will have to contact us privately.

 At the bottom of the descent the path ended in a T- junction. The sign pointing left was the continuation of shvil yisrael, through a pretty looking canyon and on to the Timna pools and Solomon's Pillars. The sign pointing right said plainly "exit".  At this stage of our shvil experience, we don't want to miss any of the main features, but we have a sort of "been there, done that" view of anything peripheral, even pretty looking canyons. Added to our deliberations, we had in mind a 5 hour drive home ahead of us. So it was a right hand turn towards the exit.  In other words, we've been on the shvil 7 years and feel that we can be a bit like grumpy old men who don't have the patience to muck around with anything that's not essential in getting us to the beach at Eilat. Our shvil life is happily coming to an end.

This is not to say that the hour's walk towards the exit was easy.  I had always wondered what walking through this area would be like if there was no path and now I had my answer. The terrain itself wasn't difficult and if there had been a path, I would have probably described it as a pleasant stroll. But without a path, we were walking in a valley exactly as nature made it and it was far more rocky and uneven. Shortly before the valley opened out to the road, the canyon we had been walking in intersected with another canyon with a defined, red marked path. We had arrived to the road at the point where we had turned around a few hours earlier.

Next part of the exit plan was hitching a ride back to the car at the visitor's centre and park entrance. After 20 minutes, 2 cars and a bus which didn’t stop, Garry decided to walk back to the car. His mountain goat feet didn't hurt as much as Yoni's and mine. Unfortunately, his walk to the car was necessary, as not a car passed in the 40 minutes that it took him to get back to the car and come pick us up.

By 12 we were heading north. A coffee stop at our usual Aroma, north of Mitzpeh Ramon brought back memories of past stops, with flat batteries in the carpark and being dripping wet and barefoot after being flooded out. This time the only reminders of past visits was the slow, snarly service.

The trip back was uneventful and would have otherwise gone unmentioned, other for the fact that Yoni's iphone, that had saved us twice on this trip, now let us down. We have a close friend who is a musician and has just released a new album. For some unknown reason, the iphone took a dislike to the music, and in the middle of every track would automatically change to a "how-to-learn-Spanish" podcast. Actually, it was quite a pity, given that we were really enjoying the music. Certainly far more than ¿Cuándo es el próximo autobús? Geeze people have weird stuff on their iphones.

So in the end we arrived home at a civilized hour and as always, tired, happy and a bit sore, but also gratified that now we had completed these two sections we only have three more days to go.