I left early this morning to join Pardes (where I’m studying) for a hiking trio in the Negev desert. Today we hiked in machtesh Ramon. A machtesh is a former mountain where the middle got carved out through erosion by water over millions of years, with the erosion only going out one side. There are only three in the world. All in Israel. Beautiful hike though quite challenging especially when we came across tel surprise pools of water that we needed to traverse or climb up and down steep rock to bypass. I waded up to my waist in the first pool and learnt how to rock climb to avoid the second pool which would have gone up to my armpits. We also saw ibex (too far away to photograph) and cane across lots of Hebrew and Arabic speaking teens doing the same hike with their schools.
Getting ready to climb to the machtesh ledge
Interesting desert formation
Vegetation in the desert
Wading through the water pool from last month’s rain