Day 7 - Makhtesh Ramon
Trip Start
Mar 21, 2008
1
7
15
Trip End
Apr 05, 2008
Mizpe Ramon,
Mizpe Ramon,
Israel
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Desert anybody? Yes, it's our fourth day in the desert. Being the early risers we have come to be, we swam the Reef bye-bye and checked out of our cosy Red Sea Reef Hotel. Of course I still had time to sneak a couple of my dearly beloved fish'N'cheese sandwiches out of the breakfast room to strengthen me on the way.
Plan was to steadily work our way north through the Negev to a dimension-defyingly huge megacrater called Makhtesh Ramon (this means "big-um Roman crater"). This geological phenomenon is 40 km long and 2-10 km wide. It's not a volcanic crater, but came into existence as shortly (in geographical terms) after the ocean receded here rivers carved out the inside of the crater leaving the harder rock of the crater rim to stand. The ground at the bottom of the Makhtesh is 200 million years old
Ramon's crater
! We took a couple detours to do some walking. Firstly through another splendid and deep wadi (dried riverbed) near an old Nabatean caravanserai. The Nabateans are a merchant people that reigned much of the middle East from their capital Petra (the pink temple splendour hewn into the rocks of a hidden valley in Jordan and known e.g. from the 3rd Indy movie) before the Romans somewhat forcefully took over business. And a caravanserai is a truck stop for camels. Next we scaled a little mound of what looked like perfectly formed basalt bricks. Turns out it's a formation of basalt (this is volcanic) crystallised under high pressure to form polygonal chunks of rock. Comparable to the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland or for that matter formations on the Otzberg where, incidentally, Regine and I got married the first time (...we marry twice in Germany, first time is the official registry bit, and if we want a church wedding this is usually on a different day).
Journey's end was to be the town of Mitzpe Ramon. Mitzpe (lookout) teeters precariously atop the crater rim and offers sweeping views of everything inside the crater. It's not very happening, so the kids hang out at the local falafel place. And that falafel has truly deserved the attention, let me tell you. Mmmh! After watching the sun set and infinitely lengthen the shadows in the valley we spent a very cold night with all 5 of us in a room with bunk beds at the youth hostel right by the rim.
