I spent the night in Be'erot, which is a very nice campground. It is clean and has showers with boiling hot water, a food kiosk, big "Bedouin" tents that you can spread your sleeping bag in, and of course a place to top off water supplies. This is a major issue in the Makhtesh, where there is no running water and only a handful of hard-to-find springs. On the minus side, you have to pay to stay there: around 50 shekels for your own tent and 60 for a space in a big tent.
The guy watching the campground overnight was a young Azazma Bedu from the Zin Valley, a bit further north. He was writing a fiction book about the way the Bedouins used to live in the past. We chatted a bit; I asked him if he was familiar with my friend from Hevron, Eddie Dribben, a cowboy from Wyoming who used to herd horses across the Negev in the 50s and 60s, who had learned his Arabic from the Azazma, but he wasn't. Incidentally, I will launch another blog this summer, with G-d's help, consisting of extended interviews with Eddie about his life.
I spent the freezing night in my own little tent/hammock. My sleeping bag, the Big Agnes Encampment, is about 4 years old and has seen a lot of hard use, so it doesn't insulate like it used to, but with a Thermarest pad, the rain fly of the tent acting like a vapor barrier, and my woobie fleece hat, I did alright.In the middle of the night, I woke up and looked at the desert sky. If you haven't seen the desert stars at night, I can't describe it other than to say that it is the closest thing to looking into infinity that I know.
The next morning, I woke up, dried my sleeping gear out from the condensed moisture, prayed, cooked and ate my breakfast (rice/lentils,) and was off. I walked under Har Ardon, the mountain overlooking the northeast rim of the Makhtesh. On the way, I ran into some go-kart tourists. There are a couple of side tracks that seem promising that I did not have time to explore; in general, the less accessible and marked a place is, the higher the odds of seeing cool things, animals, etc. So, next time.
The guy watching the campground overnight was a young Azazma Bedu from the Zin Valley, a bit further north. He was writing a fiction book about the way the Bedouins used to live in the past. We chatted a bit; I asked him if he was familiar with my friend from Hevron, Eddie Dribben, a cowboy from Wyoming who used to herd horses across the Negev in the 50s and 60s, who had learned his Arabic from the Azazma, but he wasn't. Incidentally, I will launch another blog this summer, with G-d's help, consisting of extended interviews with Eddie about his life.
I spent the freezing night in my own little tent/hammock. My sleeping bag, the Big Agnes Encampment, is about 4 years old and has seen a lot of hard use, so it doesn't insulate like it used to, but with a Thermarest pad, the rain fly of the tent acting like a vapor barrier, and my woobie fleece hat, I did alright.In the middle of the night, I woke up and looked at the desert sky. If you haven't seen the desert stars at night, I can't describe it other than to say that it is the closest thing to looking into infinity that I know.
The next morning, I woke up, dried my sleeping gear out from the condensed moisture, prayed, cooked and ate my breakfast (rice/lentils,) and was off. I walked under Har Ardon, the mountain overlooking the northeast rim of the Makhtesh. On the way, I ran into some go-kart tourists. There are a couple of side tracks that seem promising that I did not have time to explore; in general, the less accessible and marked a place is, the higher the odds of seeing cool things, animals, etc. So, next time.
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