Off the Beaten Track in Israel - Mitzpeh Ramon, the Ramon
Crater
by Michael Rosenbloom (spidermr@aol.com)
Mitzpeh Ramon is literally and figuratively a breath of fresh air. "Mitzpeh"
is truly off the beaten track, about an hour and half drive northwest of Eilat. Most
people, when driving to Eilat from the north, generally choose a more traveled route, one
which doesn't pass through Mitzpeh Ramon.
On our trip, we arrived in Mitzpeh Ramon in the late afternoon, so the sun was not at its
strongest. We drove to the visitors' center, which was closed. But the view from the
center was breathtaking, looking over a cliff onto the Ramon Crater, a huge crater in the
Negev, supposedly the largest of its kind in the world. The cooling Negev air was
invigorating.
Don't expect nightlife in Mitzpeh. The town does not have even a movie theater. Although,
it has numerous Sephardic synagogues. What Mitzpeh does have besides its view and
wonderful air is its close proximity to the Ramon Crater.
There is a beautiful hotel in Mitzpeh, which is not cheap. We however decided to sleep in
the field school, which had spartan but satisfactory accommodations. The next day a local
guide with a jeep met us at the field school. I had decided that on this trip to Israel,
my girls would become acquainted with Israel's desert. This we did with the help of our
guide who showed us among other things, fascinating geological formations, and remains of
the old Roman spice road, which once stretched from the Arabian Peninsula to the
Mediterranean Sea ports. We saw wild gazelles skipping over rocks in the distance. Our
guide showed us evidence of various other wild animals, which inhabit the Negev: wild
asses, a leopard, hyenas, wolves and foxes.
We drove to Ein Saharonim, an oasis for the wild animals of the desert and once for humans
as well. Evidently a vast natural water aquifer runs under the Negev, not much below the
ground. In Ein Saharonim, the aquifer runs so close to the surface that you can see
evidence of animals having dug the sand away to uncover water for drinking. Our guide
himself demonstrated this unusual desert phenomenon.
A short walk from Ein Saharonim are the remains of a Nabatean caravanserai: a desert rest
stop during ancient times for those journeying in caravans along the above mentioned spice
road. The Nabateans were a desert people who built the famed red rock city of Petra in
Jordan, 2000 years ago, as well as several cities in the Negev (Avdat and Shivta). Our
desert jeep tour was full of other interesting nuggets. One was a beautiful hike in a
dried up river bed, through a narrow canyon with white mountain walls, smoothed over the
millennia by countless winter desert flash floods.
We returned to the field school after five hours in the desert. We gathered our belongings
and left Mitzpeh Ramon with smiles on our faces, having experienced a new and stimulating
place in the country we thought we knew so well.
May 1999
Next article: Tsiporri (Sepphoris)
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