Elad’s blog

This weekend I travelled what I assume to be the longest dead-end road in Israel. Some 20 k”m of paved road, starting at the back of Arad’s cemetary, crossing the Kana’im valley at the middle of the Judean desert, and ending at the back end of Masada, led me to one of my favorite lookouts of this neat desert, just in time to see the sunset.

You can look at some pics from there in the photo gallery; actually, the quality of the pictures is less then the average for that location, because when I arrived there the light was already rather dim.

I arrived there quite spontaneously. Around mid-day Idan called me and asked if I feel like travel. Of course I do. I told him to pick a number, and he said 17. Cool. Map number 17 is the Negev (there are 20 hiking maps, that cover all of Israel); so we headed south. On the way the destination changed a few times, as it usually does. We stopped at Lahav forest, made a nice coffee but didn’t find a suitable trail. Then I suddenly remembered this lookout that I have visited long ago, and decided to go and see if something there changed.

We headed to Arad. We wasted some precious minutes there looking for the rear exit - it wasn’t where I remembered it. Arasd in general seems bigger then I remembered it - looks like they built a new neighbourhood or two since I last visited the city. After some time we found the back road - like you may road, Arad has one main entry, on the road that connects the Dead Sea with Be’er-Sheva, and the less known back road, which goes into the Kana’im valley in the desert.

I like this road because the land there is very virgin: you can see very dramatic scenery anywhere you look. Oh, and there’s this road sign. “Dead End”, it says, “No connection to road number 90″. Then the way continues for over 20 k”m. Near K”m 13 you turn left to climb a hill over dirt road (accessible to all company cars), and you reach this amazing lookout - where we arrived just before sunset and took the lousy pictures you can see in the gallery. I recommend going there in the middle of the day, when you can fully appreciate it.

On the way back, I recalled that Oren and Osnat invited me to go to the Stalactite Cave at Sorek the following morning. A quick phone call approved this, and sent me into the second hike of the weekend; a few of its pictures are visible in this link. This was a funny trip, as it involved their children - one brave 3-year guy, and his little sister. The way from the parking to the cave entrance has over 150 stairs, and it was very funny to urge the kids to pass all of them; as were the signs that the park authority put there in order to urge the parents (”these stairs are 400 calories worth”, “by now you have passed the equivalent calories to half a pasta dish”, “you have only 66 steps left - it is still not too late to come back and buy some stuff”, that sort of things). The cave itself is just as I remembered from my previous visit there - extremely beautiful, packed with coloured stalactites of all forms, amazingly well lit and beautifully conserved. Many cave-keepers worldwide should learn from Israel’s park authority how to manage a very touristic stalactite cave - from the governed entrance (only guided groups, and you have to see a short educational movie before entering), the “petting zone” (they put some fallen stalactites in a box for the kids to pet, and then they forbid touching the rest of the cave), the paved road (hung above the stalagmites in some places), the balanced atmosphere, and all the rest. Really an impressive example of good conservation effort.

I managed to get back home before the storm begun, but I didn’t manage to visit a cousin of mine who became, for the first time, a mother this weekend: maybe it was better this way, because my parents went to visit her in the hospital while I was in the cave, and when their visit was over - by the time I came back - they warned me that she wasn’t really in the mood for visitors. You can understand this - I heard most new mothers generally prefer to be left alone rather then disturbed by some cousins who ruin their precious post-delivery rest. Anyway - Mazal-Tov!

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 21st, 2007 at 14:39 and is filed under Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.