Leaving the city of Tel Aviv behind, our destination was Mitspe Ramon- a small town on the edge of the magnificent Makhtesh Ramon – the crater that’s not technically a crater.
En route to Mitspe Ramon we stopped to explore the beautiful En Avdat National Park, located in Wadi Tsin. We had terrific views of this valley from above – where Ben Gurion has his tomb.
We descended the hill, parked the car and walked into the canyon itself (where the white arrow is on the pic above), following a small stream of water that led to the En Avdat Pool and waterfall.
After admiring from below we walked up some small steps to get to the top of the waterfall and then further along to a grove of trees. From here it is possible to ascend the metal ladders to the caves used by monks in the Byzantine era. It is not possible to descend the ladder though and as we didn’t have a car waiting for us at the other end we could just look at the entrances to the ancient caves from below then retrace our steps back to the car.
We then drove round to the other entrance and took in the views of the canyon from on top of the cliffs – beautiful.
The National Park flier that came with our ticket mentioned Havarim Cistern as being a nearby site to visit. We decided we had time to see it before heading to Mitspe Ramon so off we went, found the turn off ok and parked the rental car we’d hired that morning. We walked in the direction of some other people and headed down the hill into the valley.
We were looking for the cistern but had no idea where it was. We followed a path and some markers on rocks but after some time we’d arrived right at the bottom of the valley and doubted a cistern would be located there.
We didn’t have any water and realised we needed to turn around and head back up. It was a beautiful wee walk anyway. On the way up we came across an Israeli family out for a weekend away and once they figured out what it was we were looking for told us it was up by the car park! I think we walked an hour or so to finally reach the Havarim Cistern, only to discover it was literally about 30 metres from our parked car!!
The cistern was dry but still fills with water when the wadi floods. The roof of it rests on a central hewn pillar which has an ancient Nabatean symbol identified with Dushara, the chief Nabatean god. The main thing we will remember about this cistern is our long walk to find it! A fun little adventure!
We arrived in the town of Mitspe Ramon late in the day and headed straight for the crater/ makhtesh to have a look before the sun went down. It was decidedly colder here than elsewhere in Israel – we needed to pull out our jackets for the first time!
The accommodation we chose was right on the edge of the makhtesh with our own private pool and sensational views….
Yeah nah… just kidding! Actually we went for the most budget thing we could find which was a ‘tent’ with shared bathroom. At $112 it was good we were only staying here one night! The shower had an almost see through door and we could hear people talking and moving outside our tent and in the tent next door. It was an experience! There was a common area and a kitchen so it was nice to cook my popcorn for dinner! (More on that in my food and markets post). We ate outside on the verandah enjoying the coolness of the night – a refreshing change from the hot temperatures on the trip thus far.
We packed up the next day and headed back to the makhtesh, this time walking in the other direction from the visitors centre. Here there were some sculptures and we had fun playing with hippo and taking jumping pics.
What we were admiring and photographing looks like a crater but was not formed from an impact of a meteor nor was it a volcanic crater. Rather, at 40 kms long, 2–10 kms wide and 500 metres deep, Makhtesh Ramon is the world’s largest ‘erosion cirque’. More about it here.
Descending down into the maktesh, we soon came across a lot of cars parked off to the right of the road.
We pulled in to see what they were doing there and here was an old quarry (closed operations in 2001) that had filled up with water due to the heavy rain the week before. Israelis were swimming and picnicing – it looked great! But with no shade we decided to drive on, along the base of the makhtesh and on through the Arava Valley toward Eilat – that’s the subject of my next (and final) Israel post!
