Day 5 - Timna National Park
Trip Start
Mar 21, 2008
1
5
15
Trip End
Apr 05, 2008
Eilat,
Israel
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Israel occasionally gets a nice warm wind in from the desert called Hamsin in Arabic. We were lucky to have one of those while in Eilat. Day 5 was the warmest day with 39 degrees. We decided to spend it in a part of the desert called Timna. This has been and still is the site of copper mining since Neolithic times. You can find many hand dug tunnels along with Egyptian hieroglyphic murals and remnants of camps and temples in this barren wasteland. There is also quite a bit of copper ore just lying around. We enjoyed walking through Wadis (dry river beds) and climbing through natural sandstone arches. As the sandstone is pliable by the forces of nature there are also a few magnificent pillars and mushroom-shaped formations created by the erosive powers of wind and water. At the end of the trip we filled some souvenir jars with many different colours of sand as tiny aide-memoirs of all the colours that make up the desert here.
