Israel 2: Palm tree forest or the reindeer syndrome

The rays of sun woke us up before we could fully rest after the long journey, but we didn’t come to Israel to sleep. Our kind hosts took care of our stomachs and prepared provisions of food and water for the further journey. That day, we were supposed to get to the southern border with Egypt crossing the biggest part of the country. 

We planned to make two stops only. Due to the limited amount of time, we had to choose those two from the long travel must-see list. But as our final destination was the desert, we had a very tight schedule.

Soon we left the urban areas behind, and the desert landscape of Judea appeared along the road:

We all agreed that the landscape resembled Iceland with the only difference of the domination of monotonous colours. But the biggest difference between those countries stroke us when we left our air-conditioned car - the difference of approximately 30 degrees of Celsius. 

Also, the area was more densely populated than Iceland.
Over the hills we could see clustered houses in small villages and some more dense housing.

On the way, one time and another, we could see Bedouin camps. We didn’t know anything about their life, but the striking contrast with the rich Tel Aviv was clear.

And sitting inside our modern car and going on carefree vacation, we felt really embarrassed to see how poorly they lived.

And then, we saw a reindeer.

Maybe not a typical one. Ignoring the temperature, we stopped at a big palm tree forest. Palm trees were grouped in even rows like apple or peach trees. All four of us started to take photos like crazy. We had already seen single palms growing by the roads or boulevards in Greece or Croatia, but never a real palm grove. 

At the end of holidays, we realized we behaved like a friend of ours who went on a journey to the polar circle. He was so excited to see the first and also the second reindeer that he filled his memory cards intended for the whole journey with photos of those two animals. Yet after seeing the fiftieth one in a row, he got only irritated with their company.

We used to recall his stories during our trips and so did we when we saw the fiftieth, one-hundredth and two-hundredth palm grove. We didn’t even bother to take out our mobile phones.
After documenting our first-to-see reindeer, we continued the journey.

The variety of means of transport was impressive. The one on the right made us think of our friend’s reindeer once again.

We restrained ourselves from leaving the car and having another photo session. This time, the resemblance of the animal to its “northern cousin” was more striking. 

But we managed to control ourselves driven by the soon-to-see first “serious” attraction during the journey - Ein Gedi National Park. 

The National Park constitutes a part of Ein Gedi Oasis and is located next to the famous kibbutz named the same. Due to the micro climate of the Dead Sea depression, the vegetation is abundant, especially along never-dry streams. It’s a unique phenomenon in Israel.  The Park has the surface of 25 km2, so you can spend there a lot of time wandering through different trails. However, we chose to have a walk along the Arugot stream. 

We entered the park around noon and it was just in time, because the purchase of tickets was only until 2 hours before the park closed, i.e. around 4 p.m. (or 5 p.m. during summer).

Over the hills we could see the buildings of the Ein Gedi kibbutz, established in the 50’s of the 20th century. 

At the turn of the last century, an amazing botanical garden with over 900 plants from all over the world was opened there. My desire to see it was huge, as I have a soul for gardening, but the holiday’s theme was the desert and not botanical gardens. So we continued.

The landscape we had before our eyes compensated us losing the opportunity of seeing baobabs in the kibbutz. 

The contrast between burned-out walls of the canyon...

... and abundant vegetation at its bottom was amazing.

You could get down to the stream and soak in your feet. 

And not only feet. In the stream and nearby water reservoirs, as well as in the waters of mini-waterfalls, entire families were having fun.

And the temperatures were really high. At the end of October, the temperature reached 30 degrees Celsius. You could barely imagine having a walk there during the warmest months. Even if there was a possibility to refresh in the stream.

Luckily, we could hide in the shadow for a while, as the path lead through a canopy of dry bush.

Unfortunately, it soon disappeared and left us exposed to the burning sun. 
It was surprising that the plants could made us happy with its healthy green colour in such conditions.

But Ein Gedi is also about the animals. You could see them close at hand, while they were eating green twigs.

Or peeking at the tourists and wondering why did they decide to wander through these rocks.

Only after getting back home did we discover that we actually happen to see was the Nubian ibex at its best:

We didn’t manage to complete the entire trail along the Arugot stream which takes approximately 4 hours. We only had a 3-hour walk, because we planned also a bath in the Dead Sea. It would be a sin not to enjoy a complimentary SPA.
All the more that we had to pass by Ein Bokek, an Israeli sea resort with high-rise hotel buildings, not very attractive by the way.
But it was not the architecture we came here for, so we parked at the crowded parking lot by the road between other cars and some tents where you could hear a local “arabica” disco music and smell barbecue aromas enriched with local spices.
We were not bothered by that. Finally, we got to the lowest point on Earth.

We enthusiastically marched towards the hotel beach hoping to find a changing room.

It was quite late already, so that part of the beach wasn’t crowded.

The salty bottom of the sea looked incredible: it was very rough and could even injure your feet.

But nothing could stop us from having a bath in the sea! I tried not to think about what could this drainless lake possibly contain! But I was cheered up by the thought that the high salinity of the lake eliminates all potentially harmful bacteria. 

We joked that it was a pity that we didn’t have a newspaper to take a typical photo, but we had our imagination.

The water felt “oily”. The high salinity made us float on the surface like rubber ducks. Even the smallest wound hurt heavily, but we were willing to sacrifice ourselves for beauty and health.
Once we felt beautiful and healthy enough, we started a search for a shower in the part of the beach belonging to the hotel. And we felt there like in Eastern Europe. Eight out of ten tourists spoke Russian. The other two - Mandarin (I suppose). So, we were surprisingly exotic guests.

After having a shower, we packed out salty rigid swimsuits and towels to the car and continued the journey, passing between the coastline of Dead Sea and rocky hills.

The monotonous landscape made us sleepy, but this view woke us up:

We felt uncomfortable about photographing the men by the road, so we pretended to be very interested in the rocks behind him. 
We couldn’t miss this opportunity. We also happened to have a break in strange places: to warm up a soup at the parking lot by the swimming pool in Vik, to get hungry after seeing the Skogafoss waterfall and open jars with cucumbers in a viewing point, but the chill level that man achieved impressed us.

The sun was about to set. The last thing we saw that day were huge conglomerates, most probably processing the water from the Dead Sea. White heaps of salt lying next to the building and heavily corroded installations proved us to be right.

And then we entered the dark of the road leading to the South.