Lots of things happened since my last blog post. We are happy to report that our security deposit for the apartment we were renting on Sderot Yitshak was returned in full. I always wonder what the “sweet spot” is when moving out of a place. You want to clean well enough to get the deposit back, but not so much that you throw your back out.
On December 21 we moved out of the Airbnb on Margalit Street in Haifa. As we were packing the car, Millie moved the book she loves (Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls) from its place on the counter and it was left behind in the apartment. Luckily, the Airbnb host lives and works in Jerusalem and goes to Haifa on Fridays to check the apartment, so we are hoping to meet her this weekend to retrieve it.
Paul came up to Haifa to help us transport our stuff because it would not all fit in the Picanto. I drove back with the girls, while Adena went with Paul. We intentionally drove out of Haifa using the route by the water for one last look at the waves.
The drive was fine, despite a bit of traffic in Tel Aviv. There was also a little rain and a rainbow on Route 1 near the Latrun exit. We made it to Paul and Laura’s in time for Shabbat dinner and everyone was there: Kayli, Ziv, Amalia, Avi, and Noam.
Saturday was a lazy day. I got in a run (down to one per week now) and we watched Smallfoot as our weekly family movie in the afternoon.
Sunday we headed down to the town of Mitzpe Ramon in the Negev desert and spent three nights at a hotel one block from the edge of the “crater”. It reminds you of the Grand Canyon and apparently, it was formed by water and erosion rather than a meteor impact, hence the quotes around the word crater.
We had a great time despite what felt like a five hour drive down. South of Be’er Sheva (Beersheba), there were road signs warning of camels wandering up to the roadside, lots of military vehicles, and drivers going way too fast around winding desert curves. The room layout was perfect with a separate sleeping area for the girls, a bathtub, and a kitchen table for working. We found some dinner at this unassuming restaurant down the street, but the food was amazing and the staff was super nice. (It was so good, that we went back the last night we were in town.) When we got back to the hotel, we saw this bus parked by the door and I assumed it would be hard to sleep.
Sure enough, this busload of young adults were loud, but the noise stopped promptly at about 10:30 pm.
The next day was Christmas Eve. The breakfast spread at the hotel was not as large and varied as the one at Ein Gedi or Marom Golan, but had more things I actually wanted to eat. After breakfast, the girls wanted to use the indoor pool. I never remember to bring flip-flops and so we all walked down the stairs and across the courtyard in bare feet. There was a fully clothed (sweatpants, hooded sweatshirt, cellphone) lifeguard sitting in the corner and some of the windows were open to help with the fog that had formed due to the temperature differential. After the pool, we walked from the hotel to the Mitzpe Ramon Visitor’s Center where were learned about things to do in the area.
The grey area in the bottom-right corner of the image above is the “crater” and we walked back along the rim trail shown in the green dotted lines. The weather was sunny and in the sixties while we were in Mitzpe Ramon and the view was spectacular.
There are Nubian ibex roaming free all over town, but they seem to be pretty harmless. Millie and Adena continued all the way up to Camel Hill (Camel Mount on the map above) while I took Aviva to the playground near the trail. They enjoyed the view from the top of the lookout.
We rested a bit in the hotel, then headed out for a 90 minute jeep tour down in the “crater” with Amnon Bakar. There were times when I wondered if the terrain and rocky dirt roads would be too much for his Mitsubishi Pajero and I was relieved when he whipped out a pair of sunglasses as we drove directly into the sun. He was talkative and told us a lot about the Bedouin who live in this part of country including government efforts to resettle and assimilate them into Israeli society. Amnon was good with the girls and we even got to see the sunset from a ridge.
After the tour, we had a WhatsApp call with grandma and grandpa, then had pizza and salad in the room.
The next day we visited an alpaca farm just west of the “crater”. This was one of the best experiences of the entire trip. It was very laid back and self-guided with a few roaming alpacas and llamas that you can feed by hand with the bags of pellets you get with the admission ticket.
There were three other English-speaking kids who were staying at one of the cottages on the property and the girls made friends quickly, petting Blintz the border collie and holding her puppies (Potato is shown here).
There was a swarm of birds that kept flying overhead in these awesome, fluid formations. The sound of their wings was really cool. We got coffee, tea, and hot chocolate at the little cafe but Aviva was too small for the horse rides and Millie was way too big for the alpaca rides, so we didn’t do either. It was mostly an enclosed space for the kids to roam and explore without much supervision and it was very nice.
In the afternoon, we took the Picanto down in to the “crater” and collected colored sand in bottles.
Then we dashed across Route 40 to the Vulture Lookout, which is part of a quarry reclamation effort.
We were able to climb back out of the “crater” in the Picanto and then went to the pool for a bit. As I mentioned, we went back to the same restaurant as on the first night in town and Aviva fell asleep before the food arrived. We had been out in the sun all day and the girls were both exhausted. They ended up going to bed about an hour earlier than usual.
The next day we packed up the car, walked over to the rim for one last look, then headed back to Jerusalem. We stopped at the Ikea in Be’er Sheva to pick up a gift card and had lunch. When we first arrived in the desert, the girls made this checklist of things that we might see (with some help from me).
As you can see, there was lots of rocky sand, cacti, sand dunes, and even a chicken, but no dragon glass or lizards. Maybe next time…
Keeping It Israel 