Day 8 - what do we appreciate: D-E-SER-T! T! T! T
Trip Start
Mar 21, 2008
1
8
15
Trip End
Apr 05, 2008
Beersheba,
Beersheba,
Israel
Friday, March 28, 2008
Day 8 will be remembered as "Udo's hard slog". Regine's dad would be driving us 500 km today. As usual I was splayed out comfortably in the front seat snoozing away blissfully as the scenery rolled by for the appreciation of my backbenchers. A gentle prod from behind by my loving wife would then alert me to the particular splendour of a given location.
First such location is yet another caravanserai in the Negev desert: Avdat. This was a once sprawling fortified town with glorious baths and temples. These were later converted to churches under Byzantine reign. Avdat also produced its own wine and the wine cellars were a welcome retreat from the midday heat. Looking around it's hard to believe that the barren soil is fertile enough to produce any crop worth mentioning. Yet Udo had in the past set out to prove that it is possible using ancient techniques of the Nabateans. He was once part of a University of Tel Aviv test farm for desert agriculture right at the foot of Avdat that's still in use today, albeit a bit run down. At its prime it was a green haven of orchards and wheat and various other produce kept hydrated by a simple system of canals and terraces. This terrace system is the basis of any form of agriculture in all arid parts of the World. Udo relayed it to other countries in the Middle East and North Africa. And his colleague David, whom we'd meet later today, spent quite some time introducing it to the Navajo Indians in Arizona.
Sunrise over Maktesh Ramon
We then stopped briefly to take in the graves of Israel's founder and first President Ben Gurion in nearby Sede Buker before descending to the spring of En Avdat. It's in yet another deep shady canyon full of wild-life: Ibex mountain goats, various birds, frogs, huge dragonflies and even ducks! I was mesmerised by seeing mosqito larvae for the first time in my life. It doesn't take much to get me excited...Only swimming wouldn't have been such a good idea here as you can contract schistosomiasis. For you non-medics that's a nasty old larva that bores through your skin, travels through your blood vessels to mature in the liver before finding itself a partner and snuggling up as couples of rather long worms in the circulation of your gut or bladder and producing a constant flow of spiky eggs that you either poo or pee out. Now ain't that fun! Parasites are sooo fascinating, don't you think?
We then made our way past the site of Udo's other desert test farm at Wadi Mashash, through Be'er Sheva. This is the last town in the desert, the only true city in the Negev, and here Eva and Udo had lived with Steffen and Regine while they were still infants/toddlers. And Regine returned here after finishing school to spend over a year working at _____, a kibbutz looking after learning disabled adults. To all our disappointment we did not have time to have a look around because we had to be in Zikhon Ya'akov further north in time for the start of Sabbath.
teetering on the crater's edge
Zikhon Ya'akov is a hillside town not far from the Mediterranean coast, renowned together with the town of Binjamina for wine growing. The scenery had by now long introduced a variety of green shades that were punctuated by a succession of settlements. Aforementioned David and his lovely wife Hanna had invited us to join in on their Sabbath dinner. And they let us stay in a beautiful apartment overlooking the sea.
Sabbath lasts from roundabout sunset on Friday until sundown on Saturday. I've already previously outlined some of the restriction the Sabbath brings along with it. A further restriction is that because strictly you're not allowed to work or push buttons people tend to pre-prepare all the holy day's yummies in slow cookers. Hanna put a lot of preparation into the glorious feast she presented us with, but she did push a few buttons to get things just right and will surely be amply rewarded for this on judgement day. When David came home from the Synagogue he sang a song and scatted a prayer before saying a lovely poem of praise to his wife. More of that should be custom around the world. He then passed around a ceremonial chalice of wine to be drunk first by the males in descending order of age and then by the females in the same order. Then David broke the bread and passed it around. Then we could dig into the scrumpteousness that was to be the first round of a successful weight gain program under the auspices of Hanna's incredible cooking genius.
The evening was very pleasant. Good old times were revisited and I was impressed by Eva and Udo's spoken Hebrew. Regine was able to understand a large part of it, too. Steffen and I did get an occasional translation and English and French were spoken as well, so all in all we got the plot. Interesting! The night ended in a bacchanal mainly involving whiskey. As a result of which I swore I'd seen a figure climb onto our balcony from the one next door around midnight before scaling down to the terrace below ours. I just shook my head and decided to run that past Hanna the next day. After some investigations it turned out it hadn't been a figment of my nebulous imagination after all. A bunch of residents a few levels below us had been so starved they had decided to plunder the Sabbath buffet of the Hotel that sat atop the apartment complex. Caught red handed they fled over the many terraced balconies. The staff found out where they lived and the chef sent down a cart of goodies for them to dine on with an invitation to join in next time rather than attempt to steal stuff. Nice story.
