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photo page 48 |
Guess what? We're having dinner again with Raymond and Etti.
Well, you guessed wrong, since this is 7 o'clock in the morning,
and already an hour's drive from Eilat. Raymond even got up at 4:30 to buy us yachnun for breakfast, a yemenite traditional
Shabbat's meal with heavy dough, tomato, schuk and cooked eggs. Despite the early hour, we feast! We are on our way to meet Raymond's
daughter and Etti's nephew at the Dead Sea. |
Etti's nephew Eldad is a park ranger with the Israel nature reserve organization INPA. He works at Enot Zukhim nature reserve,
literally "springs of the cliffs", where water from the mountain aquifers wells up from the ground and flows into the Dead Sea.
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In the park Assaf, Raymond's daughter Ilona and their sons Yair and Amir join us. The water from the springs is less salty
than the sea, and allows a lush vegetation of plants that can cope with the salty environment.
This bush secretes the salt immediately from its leaves, giving the strange sensation of eating heavily salted salad.
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We are in the lowest and most barren place on earth, yet the trees and reeds grow way over our heads.
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Over 200 springs in the area form little rivers that run straight down to the sea.
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To enhance the use of this water, the park has dug a number of lakes in which lots of fish live.
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Time to muck about: we move southwards to the Mineral beach, for the traditional mud bath. No escaping this time: the mud bath was a
stern condition of Raymond for this trip!
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How low can you go? Well, not much lower than this: 417 meter below sea level. And it was great fun! The mud gives you a good scrub and makes the skin soft and
prickly, and when dry it cracks and wrinkles in funny ways. Afterwards, we tried soaking it off by floating around in the Dead Sea.
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It took time, but finally we got our normal appearances back.
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All this mucking about makes hungry, and so we opened our cooler and conjured up a DIY of pita tuna and pita cheese.
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Next on the list was kibbutz Ein Gedi's botanical gardens. Wow, what a tree....
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Normally a pot plant in Holland, this one grows over 2 meters high!
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Beautiful, deep purple weeds. This plant is nicknamed "the wandering jew", cause in no time flat your whole garden is covered with it,
and those of your neighbours too!
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A day with a star! We returned the same way, but made a stop-over at 101, a fun-park annex truck-stop annex gambling place smack-bang
in the middle of the desert, recently extended with a good "cup-a-joe" coffee shop. We passed this place frequently, always thinking
"we should stop and have a look", and this time we finally did it. Really nice place for coffee and amusements. Toda raba Raymond and
Etti, for organizing this wonderful day and suffering the landrover's small doors and high seats.
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