Ein Gedi

Since this is probably the last weekend I'll get to do anything fun and/or completely unrelated to my finals and papers due in the next three weeks before I go home, I went on a little mini-trip to Ein Gedi yesterday.

Ein Gedi is a small oasis type place right next to the Dead Sea, with waterfalls and actual greenery, and as you would expect the desert area isn't as cold as Jerusalem is, so all around the change of atmosphere was nice. Except since Friday night is the beginning of Shabbat, we (Nari and I) had to get our butts up early to get a bus to the place, see it during its reduced hours, and get a bus back at 2:30, which was when the last bus to Jerusalem reached Ein Gedi. It's illegal for them to run during Shabbat.

I do like the bus route though, since it's the same one that the bus to Eilat takes, and travels the length of the Dead Sea on the Israeli side. So on good days, it's a pretty great sight. We had some problems finding our actual stop, and when we figured out we were at the Ein Gedi kibbutz Nari asked the driver where the nature preserve was. It turned out we'd gone a little too far, and were going to have to walk there. The driver was funny, since we'd have to get there "ba-regel" meaning on foot, and Nari repeated it, to make sure. He looked back at her and said "You have legs, yes? One, two, good!" Then Nari turned around and said "Vamanos" to me and two friends of ours from school, who we'd met at the bus station. Which was also funny, because Nari had spoken Hebrew with the bus driver, not English, so people on board started asking if we were from Peru or something, since Nari spoke Spanish to us and we responded. I kind of have to wonder at their logic skills, though, since Nari is of Korean ancestry and looks it, and she only spoke one word that is kind of a well-known form of "let's go," and if you're going to guess where someone who speaks Spanish and is in Israel is from, wouldn't your first guess be, like, Spain? Although what do I know, maybe a lot of Peruvians come to Israel.

So we got off the bus and trekked about a mile or so north, where we split up with Hannah and Hailey, the two friends of ours we met at the bus station, since they were going to be there longer and had to check in at their hostel, and Nari and I wanted to check out a Dead Sea beach we'd just passed. So they kept going and we looked at the beach, which we decided to come back to later since it was clean and non-crowded. Some people were camping there too, which I thought was very cool.

So we walked up the road again until we found the Ein Gedi nature preserve, which was only about ten minutes from the beach anyway, got our tickets and decided we only had time for the baby hikes up and around the waterfalls in Wadi David. Kinda sucks, because there's a spring, a Chalcolithic temple, some huge lookout points and an ancient synagogue on several different trails, but they were too long and difficult to do in the time we had. But the waterfalls were great anyway. Cold water, but fun. And we were the only ones with the guts, or the stupidity, to go in. Some passing Israelis took pictures for us, but then went on their merry way. No swimming for them.

So after seeing the waterfalls and playing around, we went back down and out of the preserve. Nari bought some water at the place downstairs, and as we were walking down the short road that leads from the preserve to the main one the parallels the Dead Sea, I commented on how I was sad not to see any ibex, which the preserve is famous for. Nari looked at her water bottle, which has a picture of a Nubian ibex on it, and asked if that was it; I said yes. She lowered the bottle, and no joke, there's a freaking herd of ibex eating plants not twenty feet away from us. One of those moments where you're so surprised you almost trip over your own feet because your mind forgets about keeping up the normal pace. There were even more a little farther down, some were standing in a tree to eat the foliage. I couldn't believe they were so close to the main road, I figured they'd be hiding in the actual preserve. One van that had been driving away stopped and backed up to where we were so they could stick their cameras out the window too.

When we got back to the beach, we found Hannah and Hailey already floating in the water, and they got out to tell us their long and hilarious story of hitchhiking with some guy to a sulfur pool somewhere, which was very funny but you really had to be there. Nari and I did some floating, which was fun, but weird for me, because you're not really supposed to swim, because you don't want to splash water in your eyes, that stuff's so salty it'll probably dissolve them. But there were little waves going, since it was windy, and a small current, and after twenty years of oceans, it made me very uncomfortable to think that I couldn't really swim if something happened. All my instincts, useless. The lifeguards, who spend their time telling people not to do this or that over the loudspeaker, had to tell me to relax and lean back. Not likely, man. It's water, and I should have to tread it.

Speaking of the lifeguards, I kinda felt sorry for them, since they are constantly yelling at little kids not to jump and splash a lot, not to climb on the rocks which are dangerous because of caked and pointy salt formations (they also had to tell Nari that too), and not to do this, not to do that. I know how much it sucks to deal with people who don't follow water safety rules all day from my lifeguarding times too. Then Hailey made a totally accurate observation: they're never going to have to dive for a body. They don't have to watch for people who get too far out for their skill level, who disappear under the water and don't come back up, or even for unfriendly marine life. If it weren't for the loudspeaker yelling, they'd do nothing except call ambulances for if people ever whack their head on a rock. They have the cushiest lifeguarding job in the world.

So we sat on a blanket and ate food until it was time to walk back to our bus stop. The bus ride back was uneventful, and I took some pictures from the window, since it's probably going to be the last time I see the Dead Sea for years at least.

Back in Jerusalem, it was almost Shabbat. Both the bus to the station and the taxi to the dorms took us through some ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods, and I don't think I 've ever seen so many black-coated, black-hatted men on the streets at once. There were masses of them walking to synagogue, a whole group crossed the street in front of our taxi, taking some young boys with them. There was also a huge chanukkiah made of lights on the street somewhere near the bus station, with four of the "candles" lit. Probably not something the ultra-Orthodox put there. :)