50th day (...and God laughs)

I have long admired how Israelis love getting out into nature. During the spring or autumn holiday periods, on any single day, more than a million people can be found in Israel's numerous national parks. That's out of a population of 8 million. Shvil Yisrael's existence and popularity is further evidence. (not that we actually ever see any through shvillers on our journeys.)  I'm convinced that one of the reasons for this love of the Israeli outdoors is the mandated tiyul shnattie, annual school field trips that every pupil in the country goes on, starting from 3^rd grade. By high school, these yearly excursions take the children into the wild for 3-5 days, where they will cover some pretty difficult but very beautiful terrain.  And so, as we fell out of Salvador's taxi at 6.30 in the middle of no-where, we were confronted by two large buses and a group of 70 high school pupils, gathered around getting last minute instructions. Yep. This is Israel.

I may be full of poetic admiration for one of the few things that the Israeli education system gets right, but we had no intention of getting stuck behind this gaggle of loud Israeli youth. We started the climb up the first of today's many hills, before the Ramat Gan 3^rd district high school broke from its huddle.

This hastily started climb was the ascent of Mt Saharonim. We've climbed steeper mountains over our time on the shvil, but it's still a pretty rude way to start your day, puffing and panting so early in the morning. (no risqué comments, please). I always like to see a point of reference below get smaller as I climb. By the time we got to the pinnacle, the 2 buses below in the valley looked like tiny ants. I look down at what I have just climbed with some satisfaction, thinking "wow, look how far I've climbed in such a short time". And then my gaze leaves the buses and roams up the entire valley beneath us and my self-congratulation turns to awe. Wow. From here we can see the entire Ramon crater beneath us, a mirror image of the amazing view you get from Mitzpeh Ramon. The first of many stunning views of the day.

We continued along the ridge at the top of Mt Saharonim for a bit, until we started to drop down in to the Nekarot stream valley. The walking was not too difficult, the company good and the weather perfect. There had been reports of the possibility of rain and flash floods in the southern valleys, but it was cool with light high clouds. Not a raincloud in sight.

We may not have seen any other walkers in the area, but we did meet some locals. Not Bedouins, but Ibexes, standing around on some rocks next to the path. Very nice. They were far less excited about the chance meeting than we were. The ibexes didn't seem scared of us at all and stood on their rocks oblivious of our existence. For our part, we lined up like Japanese tourists at the Mona Lisa, snapping away with our smartphones.

Like everything so far today, the Nekarot stream is very pretty. The big attraction here is the Nekarot Horseshoe, a deep smooth-sided bend in the stream. The riverbed itself is strewn with enormous boulders, thrown randomly around like kids' toys over the floor of their bedroom. After 20 minutes of walking through this, the creekbed narrowed into a winding bottleneck, no more than a couple of metres wide with the walls scrubbed white from the yearly floods.  We'd barely been walking 2 hours and had already seen a larger variety of landscape than we get in an average day on the shvil. And we hadn't even gotten to the day's main attraction, the carbolet charirim. Carbolet is Hebrew for cock's comb, which is thin and jagged. There is this, the carbolet charirim on the edge of the ramon crater, which may be a path on the top of a high narrow ridge, but it isn't too difficult to negotiate. Then there's THE Carbolet, on the edge of the machtesh hagadol, (the large crater) which is the hardest section of shvil yisrael. There, it's razor thin with numerous hills and gullies and sheer drops off the path.  Don't bother trying to look for it in past blog posts. You won't find it. We have elegantly dodged it, it deemed too difficult for one of our intrepid party.

                                      

               

The climb up from the Nekarot streambed to the carbolet charirim ridge started easily enough, gradually steepening until the last section was a vertical scramble up to the pinnacle. As we struggled to the top we'd half noticed that the view looked pretty good. There's an understatement if ever there was one. Now that we'd stopped for a water break after reaching the top, we could see that the view was breathtaking. We had a broad desert valley directly beneath us to the left (north). This birds-eye view was to accompany us for the next hour or so as the path followed the top of the ridge. Narrow mountain-top ridges tend to have two sides, and the path sometimes changed to its other, southern side. Here we had a different, equally as stunning view of other desert valleys, over to the Afro-Syrian rift valley and the Red Mountains of Moab in Jordan making our horizon. We were 300 metres up, on a path that switches from one breath-taking view to the other, sort of like flicking between National Geographic and Discovery Channels, only in real life. Have I ever mentioned, "it doesn't get any better than this"?

Eventually the path dropped down into Nachal Ma'uk. Without wishing to sound blasé, we were happy to have some "boring", plain old desert valley walking. Mind you, this was still far more interesting than, say, Nachal Faran that we walked through last time we were in the area. At some point, I saw Yoni struggling a little. As friends do, I asked him what the matter was. Through a tight faced grimace, he complained that his left thigh was starting to cramp. Friends are not meant to laugh when they hear of such strife, but I did. It was sort of an embarrassed laugh. I had also started to cramp in my left thigh muscle. I don't know if it’s a coincidence or the walking was such that the left thigh muscle was the one that had been forced to work hardest. What is certain, Yoni and I are at similar level of non-fitness and Garry, who runs regularly, and Bob and Sharon who looks as good as they did when they left Mt Scopus, 30+ years ago, had strolled through everything that today's route had so far offered. Whatever. We'd been on the trail almost 5 hours and had really enjoying it so far. With cramps in mind, we decided to stop and eat our lunch. Yoni and I figured that processed cold-meats, tinned tuna and tomatoes would replace the salts that our left thigh muscles so craved.

 

As we sat and relaxed, Garry and I noticed the light white clouds that had accompanied us most of the day were starting to be replaced by their lower, darker and heavier cousins. We exchanged worried looks but knew that there was absolutely nothing we could do about it. Our only wish was that if the weather was going to get nasty, that it should do so before we arrived at the campsite where we were staying the night. Getting drenched whille walking is far better than getting drenched overnight . Soon enough we would get our wish.

The processed meat, other assorted goodies and a good rest did the trick. After lunch we crawled, crampless, up a short but sheer vertical climb and continued along a nice easy section. The clouds continued to gather. Still, it rains in the desert only 5 days a year. What were the chances of getting serious rain? The answer was "very high". Less than half an hour after we'd resumed our walk, light rain started to fall. "It won't last" we said to one another. "This is the desert". Were our perfectly laid and executed plans about to unravel? Bob and Sharon had to meet our jeep man so he could take them out, in order for them to catch the  bus to Tel Aviv. Was the rain going to affect that? We weren't too far from the end and couldn't influence the weather. All we could do was raise the easy walking pace that had been the norm so far to a quicker walk, to avoid the chance of being stuck, or worse, in flash floods. This, however, was easier said than done. The last part of the day's walk threw up yet another variation in topography. We had been walking for most of the day at altitudes that ranged between 300 and 600 metres above sea level. The Gev Holit campground, where we'd planned to stay overnight, is at 12 metres above sea level. The way down is not via a gentle stroll along pastoral meadows. No sir, it's straight down the Gled waterfall and cliff-face. Like everything else today, breathtakingly beautiful. The descent can be more or less divided into 3. The first part is pretty rough, dropping down between boulders, often on our bums. After completing 16 km and with legs that weren't quite as supple as they were 6 hours, let alone 30 years ago, grace and shvil chic are the last things on our minds.

As this steep section petered out to a nice, gentle, easy slope, I thought we were only 5 minutes from the end. I promised Bob, who was starting to look a little ragged, that we'd done the hard stuff. I was forced to apologize and hope that he wasn't inclined to use his expertise as a lawyer against those who innocently can't keep to their promises. The third part of the descent was by far the steepest and most difficult to pass, especially over wet and very slippery rocks.

The rain had now progressed from a light drizzle to steady downpour. At first, light puddles formed on the ground. These puddles burst into rivulets that joined to form small streams. We were witnessing the formation of flash floods. Fascinating. As we descended the Gled cliff face, these streams came together and burst out of the cliff, forming spontaneous waterfalls. The cliff face is a couple of hundred metres wide and had four or five jets of water sprouting from the top. To see this sight, up close and personal, is something that I will always remember, and is certainly one of the highlights of our time on shvil yisrael. The path, being so steep, didn't allow us to see where we were heading for any more than 5 metres ahead. At one point it looked as if the path was taking us through one of the water falls. Fortunately, it changed direction and we got no closer than about 30 metres to the waterfall. Believe me, that's close enough.

Eventually, the path did get to the bottom, and so did we, wet but safe. I can't speak for the others, and I'm not  so sure they even agree, but I found walking in the cold rain quite exhilarating. I really enjoyed it. Maybe it's the little boy in me.

excuse the water drop on my lense- gives a certain camera veritae look to it

There was, of course, a major down-side to this deluge. We'd planned this two day section meticulously and it all added up to naught. We were soaked and there was no chance that we could camp out. Instead, we would drive home and spend New Year's Eve on the road. Man plans and God laughs. Then again, in some way, we still had the last laugh. We'd managed to do a leg of shvil yisrael that was as beautiful and as varied as we'd done to date. It had everything that the shvil has to offer; it was the complete package. True, we didn't sleep out and wouldn't be walking the next day, as planned. Instead, we were privileged to witness a rare and powerful force of nature, from as close as is safely possible. Ultimately, given the choice, I know which one I would have taken.

The Gev Holit campground was sufficiently high to protect us from the rising Gled stream. We had no cell phone range, so we couldn't ring Itsik, our jeep man, to tell him that we'd arrived an hour and a half early. All that was left was to wait for him to come and get us. I walked down the campsite towards the confluence of Nachal Gled and Nachal Nekrot in order to see if perhaps there was cell phone range. Suddenly I saw a white 4*4 van trying to ford the rushing stream.  I waved liked a lunatic, sure that it was Itsik or his son coming to fetch us. But no. It was Tsachi and his wife Michal. Tsachi was taking Michal to watch floods as a birthday treat. I'm not sure that this was the birthday treat that Michal always dreamed of, but who knows?  In America there are tornado followers, in Israel, flood followers. After seeing it up close, I could suddenly understand their fascination with this exhibition of nature's power. This being the meeting point of 2 flooding streams, the current was quite fast, but not so fast that he couldn't cross. I was of course surprised to see anyone out here in the rain, but I think Tzachi was way ahead of me in the surprise stakes, seeing a lone, drenched, fat, middle aged Australian in the middle of a flash flood, waving like a lunatic. Surreal doesn't even get close to describing the scene. When I called the other 4 over, surprise gave way to astonishment.

We had a slight dilemma here. We knew that Itsik was coming to get us but had no way to communicate with him. We were cold and wet and didn't feel too inclined to stick around. The longer it rained, the more swollen the streams would become, so if we waited too long, there was a very real risk that no-one would be able to get in. Then we would be really stuffed. Tsachi assured us that there was only one way of getting to this point, so we would certainly meet him along the way. Next problem was how were we going to fit 5 sodden people into the 3 seat back of a work utility? There is no answer. We just did it. Tsachi took a baby seat and some baby toys, yesterday's newspaper, his toolkit and other assorted stuff off the seat, placed it all into the van section at the back of the vehicle and in we rolled.  Not for the first time I felt like a little kid and not a 54 year old father of 4.
 I knew I liked Tsachi from the outset. When he politely asked what we do, we gave him the roll-call. One a lawyer, another a world renowned doctor.One of us is a  manufacturer of tools, another a business consultant and the last a chef and culinary entrepreneur. And which one did he see as the most important or interesting? The chef!! Indeed, a clever man who's priorities are in the right place!

Now I don't want to sound ungrateful, because I really do appreciate Tsachi's willingness to help us out by sardining us into his ute (and who am I to criticize one with such astute taste?). However, driving like a rally cross driver over rivers, mud, bumps and dips was great fun for him, but had the spinal care unit of Be'er Sheva hospital on full alert, waiting for incomings. Eventually we crossed Amotz, Itzik's driver, and disembarked from Tsachi's ute. We were a little embarrassed when we saw the mud that we left in his car, but he took it in his cool good-natured manner. And now, for once, God was interfering with our plans in a good way. Tsachi is from Be'er Sheva. Bob and Sharon had to get to Tel Aviv. The plan was for them to catch a bus at 5 to Be'er Sheva and then an onward train to Tel Aviv. Tsach was quite happy to drop them in Be'er Sheva, almost 4 hours ahead of what they had originally planned. We farewelled our guest shvillers here in the mud and continued on with Amotz to Yoni's car that we'd parked a little over 24 hours earlier at Sapir. Only 24 hours? It seemed liked we'd packed a week's worth of activities in this short time.

It's funny how quickly you stiffen up after finishing the walking. By the time we'd gotten to the closest Aroma coffee shop, about an hour and a half's drive from where we'd picked up Yoni's car, we could barely move. In fact, I'm not sure what the servers at the Aroma thought when 3 decrepit old men, dirty, wet and walking in a very hunched and unnatural manner, asked to be served coffee.  To make matters worse, Garry and I were barefoot, our shoes being far too muddy to be allowed into Yoni's Prius, our socks too wet to wear.

When we'd finished our coffee, Garry's car, which we'd picked up on the way back from Mitzpeh Ramon, decided to act decrepit as well and refused to start. So as a final act of unplanned activity, we had to run around (still barefoot) in the car park of the Aroma, begging people to help jump-start the car.

 I could hear God laughing all the way home.

Man Plans

Checklist

•   Place to stay night before in Mitzpeh Ramon
•   Taxi ordered to take us the actual starting point at Saharonim campground
•   Jeep man booked
•   Shopping done, separated into days and given to jeep man to bring to us at end of day 1
•   Map is with us
•   Thermal underwear, warm clothing, wool hat, sleeping bag and tent for sleeping out in the desert. Torches. Toilet paper. Spare water
•   Yoni made soup. I made pasta. Portable stove and "gazia". Coffee, tea, munchies
•   Sharon and Bobby - out with jeep man to bus to TA

After the frustrations of wasted time and cross-country car driving of last time, we were determined to apply the lessons that we'd learnt, get the logistics right and enjoy 2 full days of walking.

The day started at 1p.m. at Sharon and Bobby's hotel in Tel Aviv. Some more old Melbourne friends joining the 3 little boys on their ongoing adventure. At a quick count, that makes 6 ex school friends from 35 years ago to have joined us so far. Having decided for the first time in 5 years to sleep out, mid winter in the middle of the desert, we really felt like little kids getting ready for an adventure. And what an adventure it turned out to be!

After meeting Garry at the agreed time and place we continued on to Ein Yahav in the Arava, where we completed the shopping for the next 2 days, then headed to Hatzeva to meet our Jeep man. The plan was to give him all our camping equipment and food so he could meet us at the conclusion of the following day's walk at the Gev Holit campground. We would sleep there and continue walking the next day as far as Sapir, where we will have parked a car.  Itsik, our Jeep man, seemed to fully understand what we wanted and where we wanted him to meet us. He instilled far more confidence than some of his predecessors.

All that remained of the day was to find our pre-booked apartment in Mitzpeh Ramon. With a little difficulty, we found Johnny and his AirnBnB apartment. Without giving away free plugs, AirBnB can be really good. It can also be a bit weird. Johnny, the owner and inhabitant of the apartment, simply goes to sleep at the neighbours' when he rents his place out for the night. A bit weird.

 I have always wanted to cook something on one of our shvil legs, and since we were in an apartment with a proper kitchen, I readily promised to cook up a curry. There's something very comforting about 5 friends, sitting around the table, with good food and wine. Even more so when it's cold outside, warm (sort of) inside, a holiday feel and  anticipation that we are about to embark on an adventure. By 9.30 we were ready to turn in. As always,we had early start tomorrow.

I was watching some TV on the couch I was about to sleep on when I heard Johnny come in from next door and start to check through the kitchen. A bit strange, I thought. I wasn't quite sure why he would come in and how he knew exactly when to come, but I put it down to co-incidence. We arose at 5.15 in order to be ready for the taxi arriving at 6.00. Johnny came in at 5.30 to check everything was ok. Again, how did he know that we were awake at this ungodly hour? I seriously suspect a spy-cam. Very creepy. Bate's AirBnB?

At any rate, Salvador, our funny little taxi driver, arrived exactly on time, crammed the five of us into the four places in his car and traversed the dirt track to the saharonim campsite. He was cheerily oblivious to the fact that his car wasn't made for this type of mistreatment.

So far, almost unbelievably, everything had gone exactly to plan. Even the weather, which had been a bit drizzly on the previous night, seemed to be smiling on us.

I rarely mention actual dates of our trips, but I would like to point out that we disembarked from Salvador's Skoda on the morning of 31st of December. I was planning to spend New Year's Eve with my 2 friends, sipping ouzo till, say, 7.30. It's dark already by 5 in the evening, and I can't really see any way that we were going to stay awake in the freezing desert any later than that. Happy New Year.

 

49th day (The 2 Canyons)

At four fifteen we rolled out of bed, or more correctly, rolled off our paper thin mattresses, in the aim of getting out by a quarter to five. Yoni was nowhere to be seen.  He claimed that it was preferable to sleep on a mat besides the sulphur pool, with its rotten egg stench,  rather than have to put up with my snoring. Indeed!! In any case, this hour was set after long and bitter negotiations, pitting Mark, Garry and I against Yoni in a battle of wits that made the Abu Mazen and Bibi show look like a lovers spat. In the end, four fifteen was a compromise that, like all good compromises, made both sides feel like they'd lost. I will go on record here and say that Yoni was basically right and it was a good thing we didn't start any later.

Whilst the day turned out to be far more successful than its predecessor, we were once again plagued with logistical issues before our boots touched the trail. Without going into long-winded detail, logistics prevented us from actually starting to walk until after eight.

When we eventually started walking, it proved to be not exactly the most exhilarating landscape we've been through. We were even warned not to go this area; not because of the boredom, but because it was a closed military area. There was a large sign at the entrance to the trail that stated in no uncertain terms that this was an army firing area and there was positively no entry. So it's not enough that the shvil elders have had us drop down cliffs, ford running streams and climb flimsy ladders so far on our 5 years on the shvil, now they're sending us through a firing range. Terrific.

This closed military area was perhaps incrementally more interesting than the 4 km of the Yellow Plains of Moab from yesterday, but Nachal Faran is the sort of place you have to walk through just to get to somewhere else. Not long after we set off, we passed a group of youngsters on what appeared to be a youth movement trip. They were sitting around getting last minute instructions from their guide as we passed them.  A short time later, they passed us, their walking pace being slightly quicker than ours. We figured that they were about to hike the same route that we were doing today, it being a fairly well known hike. But no. Fifteen minutes later, we passed them, after they'd stopped by the side of the path. This was the last we saw of them for the day. I can't imagine what happened to them, but I certainly hope they weren't forced to march down Nachal Faran in its entirety, or worse, that the sign at the entrance actually had some meaning.

Today's route was a bit strange. There were two amazing sections, Vardit canyon and Barak canyon and two long, quite boring sections. The nachal Faran section was 8 uninspiring km. Now I want to comment here on an interesting phenomenon. When the walking is long and boring, the conversation is more interesting. When the hiking is interesting (and usually difficult at the same time) there is far less conversation. I guess our limited attention spans are too busy taking in the beauty. Alternately, we can't spare what neurons we have for conversation when they're too busy in self-preservation.  So over this long boring section there was much conversation about the dwindling numbers of fore-mentioned neurons, failing memories, bespoke, and things-that –are-said-on-the-shvil-stay-on- the-shvil. The conversation about failing short-term memory made me particularly happy. The playing field had finally been levelled and my friends were experiencing what has always been regular for me.

A path forked to the left away from the nachal Faran path and thankfully took us around the corner and into some shade. After a short drink stop we were suddenly in Vardit Canyon. And wow, it was worth the eight not so interesting km that we'd just covered. The canyon is only a few hundred metres long, but it is steep sided and high, it's walls marked by wind and water erosion. Petra in Jordan is very similar, only here there is no amazing temple at the end. Instead there's a vertical climb up a narrow crag in order to get out. Hand and foot rungs lead to narrow ledges that lead to ladders that lead to more rungs and more ladders. Sort of a playground for adults. The angle is mostly 90˚ and the crag less than a metre wide. We were climbing up a crack in the mountain. It's surprising how flexible your old heavy body can be when it has absolutely no choice, and I knew I was going to pay for this enforced flexibility the next day.

Occasionally we'd look down or across the desert below and this only further enhanced the "wow" factor. Eventually we made it to the top, totally exhausted by the effort, but feeling satisfied that we'd done it. Garry wandered ahead a little as we rested. Suddenly we heard an exclamation along the lines of "oh shit". When Garry says "oh shit", we know we're in trouble.
We had gotten to the top of the vertical climb out of Vardit, but now we were being asked to walk up a very very steep hill. Howls of protest came to mind, but it wouldn't have helped. So, as a certain sporting goods company says…just do it. I thought it strange that other long hard uphill climbs had names; Ramon tooth, Akev point, Eli ascent to name but a few. This one was nameless, but just as hard. On more than one occasion on today's walk, Yoni and I would pathetically look at each other and gasp "we've gotta get into shape".

 The higher we got the more spectacular the views became, until we reached the top, where we had a panorama over the desert, the hills and into Jordan on the opposite side of the rift valley. It was as striking as we've seen to date.

That was about the extent of the good stuff for the moment. A beautiful, high walled desert canyon, a vertical climb and then a gut-wrenching walk made for a pretty good hour and a half. The next hour and a half was undulating rocky desert. At least nachal Faran had been flat.

Mark found the energy to keep chatting, but it was mostly one sided, as the rest of us were too busy trying to get oxygen from our lungs to our heart and failing muscles to actually have a conversation. We knew that eventually we would get to the top of Barak Canyon and a few time thought we saw the path go towards a cliff, only for it to go past and onwards on the plateau. It actually wasn't that bad…there was a lovely breeze and whilst not scintillating, I've walked worse.

The path eventually came around a bend and suddenly there was an amazing canyon below us. We could see the path wind down the side of the mountain, disappear into the back of the canyon and then continue on out of the canyon and into the valley.  At some points the canyon appeared a few metres wide, at others not even a metre, just a crack in the rock. We could also see how and where it widens to a "regular" steep sided canyon tens of metres across. All this from our birds-eye perch from above. After walking the six kilometres that link the two canyons, this sight was quite exhilarating.

The walk down was pretty, as we quickly dropped down from our view from above. The path wound its way along the side of the canyon, but we couldn't see what was waiting for us. We knew that in order to get onto the canyon itself we had to drop down some ladders, similar to what we'd gone up, coming out of Vardit. Or so we thought. What we hadn't been told was that this was actually the secret training camp of the IDF gymnastics team, which readied itself for international competition against the Marines, the French Foreign Legion and the Chinese Secret Police. If it wasn't for our Tzahal, the Iranians would also compete. They're pretty good at hanging.

The first element was the standard rungs. A simple training exercise where you are expected to climb down a cliff face, backwards, with the aid of hand and foot rungs. For the most, the rungs are in the right place, but you must be careful not to become wrong-footed. The next set of rungs are for the advanced gymnast. The rungs are not always where you might expect them to be and you have further to drop.

Once we have successfully negotiated the rungs element, it's the ladders. First trick is actually getting on to the ladders safely. You must, of course do this backwards, and this entails dropping your body over the lip of the ledge in the hope that your feet find the first step. The ladder is made of steel cable, meaning that when it's attached closely to the cliff-face, it's reasonably stable. Occasionally, where it is still attached to the cliff and the cliff actually slants inwards, it can be difficult finding the next step. At some point the cliff slants too far inwards and the ladder does what ladders do…continues down vertically, not attached to the wall. The would-be gymnast now has to encounter a strange and scary phenomenon called wobblization. True, we made this word up, but it aptly describes the ladder's side-to-side rocking motion as we tried to descend. It's bloody scary.

When we heard Garry upgrade his exclamation from the earlier "oh shit" to "oh fuck", we knew we were in for more trouble. It turned out that the main reason for going down the first ladder, about 20 metres in length, was to prepare us for the next ladder, which dropped down about 40 metres. Garry the Brave (and relatively lithe) admitted that even he was scared. It wasn't just the length, the reverse angle and the slippery metal which made it difficult, the wobblization this time was backwards and forwards instead of sideways.  Still, we made it down safely and are all here to tell the tale.

Next, and last on the gymnastics training drill was the ropes course. A thick hessian rope had been anchored into the rock. It's purpose is it to help us balance ourselves whilst finding steps hewn into the ledge that we were trying to descend.

Don't let our gymnastics blind you from the fact that we were inside a beautiful crevice. It was somewhat other-worldly. We could look forward and see the crevice wind on through the rock.

After finishing all the descents, we felt we deserved a good break. Finding a nice flat rock that allowed us spectacular views down the canyon, we sat down and had lunch. Occasionally we'd look back and up, not quite believing what we'd actually done.

After lunch, all that was left was to walk down the canyon, which gradually opened up into a valley, which eventually led to Yoni's waiting car. A simple, pleasant and very pretty hour's walk. That's what my eyes and brain thought. The muscles in my legs had a different opinion. They decided that they'd had enough and cramped up every now and again. Have you ever had a cramp on the muscle that surrounds the ankle? I didn't even know I had one there till it cramped. We arrived back to Yoni's car with the feeling that we'd finally had a really good, proper day on the shvil.

For once, we had some luck. As we neared Yoni's car, the weather very quickly started to change. Up till now it had been a pleasant autumn day with a cool breeze. Within ten minutes, dark black clouds rolled in, the sky turned grey and almost to the minute of us arriving to the car, it started raining. There is no fear in walking in the rain in other areas, but in the desert, rain can easily be accompanied by flash floods.

As we were driving out, a car full of young kids stopped us and asked us if Barak canyon was worth a look. Given that it was after two in the afternoon and raining, we admitted that it was indeed beautiful but most definitely not recommended at this time. They drove on, despite our warnings. We didn't hear about any disasters in the Aravah region, so I assume they got out safely.

By the time we retrieved the car parked at the beginning, it was getting late. There was no way we were going to make it home for Shabbat dinner, but we still hurried to get back north.

It was great to finally be back on the shvil. As always, it was a lot of fun, but the one undisputable point that came from our first shvil episode for the season was that we spent too much time mucking around with logistics and this was an unwanted and unnecessary distraction. We'll do it differently next time.