A driving day (Israel, Day 5)
Dec. 31st, 2008 03:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhu[Written Monday, posted Wednesday]
Since I can't LJ today, I'll type it up in Emacs and upload it later. This also means that the picture integration won't be as effective, but that'll be fine.
But first, a little bit about Efrat, where we're staying.
Here's![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
abbasegal's and dodajen's house in Efrat, where we're staying.
And here's the neighborhood synagogue, as seen from their front door.
The vineyards down the hill
The neighborhood mercaz, a few blocks away. (A few small stores and restaurants.)
We drove through Jerusalem and then east along Rte 1 to the Jordan River. It was strikingly beautiful, and they had markers showing the elevation every so often (including a photo op at sea level that we didn't realize about until we'd missed it.) There were lots of camels along the way, along with a few people riding donkeys and one shepherd moving his flock along the side of the highway.
Just before the river, we turned right and headed down Route 90, which parallels the Jordan and then the coast of the Dead Sea. We arrived at Ein Gedi around 12:30 and had lunch with our host family. We then took the "lower Wadi David" path, which is a 2-hour loop (less, no doubt, without children) and is stunning.
Basically, the Dead Sea is a tectonic rift. Above, you have a limestone aquifer and the water comes out at springs (Hebrew "ein") such as Ein Gedi. It then trickles down the limestone to the bottom of the rift, slowly eroding away a Wadi (chasm) over millions of years. Every so often, there's a heavy rain in J'lem, and the water pressure causes a flash flood into the wadi. (The actual water molecules that come out have been enqueued in the limestone for thousands of years.)
Our friends, with whom we're staying.
Alissa took this picture of me
So walking up the wadi on the north side, it's all chalky white desert limestone cliffs with the occasional cave. In the middle is the flow of water, and that's lush with vegetation and dramatically beautiful with the cascades. Coming back down on the south side, it's all dark soil, created by the water rushing down a more direct path from the spring interacting with the vegetation that can grow from these periodic inundations, and rutted by the flash floods.
We saw a lot of hyraxes, and a pair of ibexes (ibices?) who came very close to us just as we were leaving.
There are many wonderful pictures of this in the Picasa albums. Tani took a lot of great pictures today, too. (Some of those are Heather's with his camera, but many are actually his.)
We then drove across the street to the Ein Gedi beach on the Dead Sea. The kids and Heather rolled up their pants and went into the water; I'm told it was a lot of fun.
Finally, we endured the three-hour drive to Eilat. Our hotel room is reasonably nice; there's actually a separate bedroom so the kids can go to bed while we stay up a little later. The other nice surprise is that not only breakfast but also dinner is included, and we got in at 8:30 and dinner is served until 9, so we didn't have to go looking for food. It's buffet style, all you can eat, and the food's not half bad.
But, no wifi.
The one thing we had planned that we didn't get to do today was Masada; we'll rearrange our plans for tomorrow and Wednesday so we can do that on the way back North.
Oh, and some fun pictures that Heather took of me doing the blogging the other night when it took me three hours:
And some more pictures that Alissa took:
And, finally, some pictures of our friends:
Since I can't LJ today, I'll type it up in Emacs and upload it later. This also means that the picture integration won't be as effective, but that'll be fine.
But first, a little bit about Efrat, where we're staying.
Here's
abbasegal's and dodajen's house in Efrat, where we're staying. And here's the neighborhood synagogue, as seen from their front door.
The vineyards down the hill
The neighborhood mercaz, a few blocks away. (A few small stores and restaurants.)
We drove through Jerusalem and then east along Rte 1 to the Jordan River. It was strikingly beautiful, and they had markers showing the elevation every so often (including a photo op at sea level that we didn't realize about until we'd missed it.) There were lots of camels along the way, along with a few people riding donkeys and one shepherd moving his flock along the side of the highway.
Just before the river, we turned right and headed down Route 90, which parallels the Jordan and then the coast of the Dead Sea. We arrived at Ein Gedi around 12:30 and had lunch with our host family. We then took the "lower Wadi David" path, which is a 2-hour loop (less, no doubt, without children) and is stunning.
Basically, the Dead Sea is a tectonic rift. Above, you have a limestone aquifer and the water comes out at springs (Hebrew "ein") such as Ein Gedi. It then trickles down the limestone to the bottom of the rift, slowly eroding away a Wadi (chasm) over millions of years. Every so often, there's a heavy rain in J'lem, and the water pressure causes a flash flood into the wadi. (The actual water molecules that come out have been enqueued in the limestone for thousands of years.)
Our friends, with whom we're staying.
Alissa took this picture of me
So walking up the wadi on the north side, it's all chalky white desert limestone cliffs with the occasional cave. In the middle is the flow of water, and that's lush with vegetation and dramatically beautiful with the cascades. Coming back down on the south side, it's all dark soil, created by the water rushing down a more direct path from the spring interacting with the vegetation that can grow from these periodic inundations, and rutted by the flash floods.
We saw a lot of hyraxes, and a pair of ibexes (ibices?) who came very close to us just as we were leaving.
There are many wonderful pictures of this in the Picasa albums. Tani took a lot of great pictures today, too. (Some of those are Heather's with his camera, but many are actually his.)
We then drove across the street to the Ein Gedi beach on the Dead Sea. The kids and Heather rolled up their pants and went into the water; I'm told it was a lot of fun.
Finally, we endured the three-hour drive to Eilat. Our hotel room is reasonably nice; there's actually a separate bedroom so the kids can go to bed while we stay up a little later. The other nice surprise is that not only breakfast but also dinner is included, and we got in at 8:30 and dinner is served until 9, so we didn't have to go looking for food. It's buffet style, all you can eat, and the food's not half bad.
But, no wifi.
The one thing we had planned that we didn't get to do today was Masada; we'll rearrange our plans for tomorrow and Wednesday so we can do that on the way back North.
Oh, and some fun pictures that Heather took of me doing the blogging the other night when it took me three hours:
And some more pictures that Alissa took:
And, finally, some pictures of our friends: