Masada

After the interesting early morning at Jericho, we finally made it to Masada a little after 8.

Masada is the site of a fortress constructed by Herod the Great between 37 and 31 BCE. It was later inhabited by Jewish extremists and other Jews who had fled Jerusalem after the Second Temple was destroyed. One of the stories of lore of Masada is of the 960 Jews who committed mass suicide rather than be taken by sieging Romans. As the story goes (as told to the early historian Josephus), the Jews, realizing they would be enslaved by the Romans whom they could no longer hold at bay, decided suicide was a better option that slavery. The problem is that Judaism does not take kindly to suicide. The solution was for the men to draw straws, the process of which would leave ten men to kill every other person on the mountain so that those people would not have to commit suicide. Then, one of those ten men was chosen to kill the other nine, so that only he was left to suicide. Pretty grim. The leader of the 960 had all of their food and supplies burned so that it would be clear to the Romans that the Jews had chosen death voluntarily and that they had not died of starvation. Sort of a final “so there” to the Romans.

Archaeologists have found little evidence to support much of this story, but, you know, tomaytoe/tomahtoe.

You can either hike up the mountain like a 1^st century donkey or you can ride a cable car like a 21^st century wuss. We chose the donkey route and made it to the top of the mountain by 9 o’clock. It was raining lightly (in the desert, yes) and was overcast so the pictures weren’t great. Brace yourself for many pictures of rocks.

Jericho

It’s after 4 in the morning and it’s still as dark as midnight. We’re in the car, stopped, facing a roadblock of rocks and rubble cutting off our way out of the West Bank town of Jericho. It’s silent and we’re thinking about how to get out of there. Suddenly I hear a creak and a snap, and when I look over there’s a man in my side view mirror approaching the car.

Let me back up.  When Sarah and I had begun making our rough plans for this around-the-country drive, one of the first elements we had to decide on was how we were going to approach the West Bank: visit it, drive through it, or avoid it entirely. Pre-trip research had revealed a spectrum of experiences and advice. Some travelers had driven through it without any problems, and some said that you shouldn’t stop, even for gas. Some travelers said stopping is safe enough but you definitely wouldn’t want to spend the night. The State Department warns Americans of terrorism and kidnapping. Also, unlike in the rest of Israel, there is very little English spoken in the West Bank so if you don’t know Arabic you’re probably out of luck. (Reminder: I don’t speak Arabic. Neither does Sarah.)

We decided to drive through the West Bank but at a time at which there would be virtually no danger of being forced to spend the night. Avoiding the area entirely would have been a big pain in terms of sticking to our itinerary, as to get from the Sea of Galilee to Eilat we could either drive straight down the Jordan border through the West Bank desert and along the shore of the Dead Sea, or we could essentially double back the way we had come through the northwest and Tel Aviv, and drive right by our ultimate destination, Jerusalem. The West Bank just made sense. Besides, what could happen?

When we first arrived in Tel Aviv and went to the rental car desk, I asked the girl working there to clarify the rental agreement terms. They said we could not drive into other countries. The West Bank isn’t really a separate country, so how does that count? She shook her head and said no, no. She pulled out a map of Israel and said to look at the areas in pink: Bethlehem, Jericho, they were all Palestinian cities. She said that if we went there and something went wrong with the car that the company would not come help us as it would in the green, Israeli parts of the country. She made it clear that she thought driving into the West Bank was not a good idea, and she was not just reciting the company line.

We figured it couldn’t really be all that bad and that we’d take our chances.

Masada is a site in the West Bank. It is the ruins of a settlement of Jewish rebels who lived on the top of a mountain to escape their oppressors. Aside from the ruins, the summit offers hikers amazing views of the vast desert down below, including a spectacular sunrise. Catching that sunrise is why we left Jerusalem so early that morning.

Getting from where we were staying to the highway that would take us south to Masada should have been easy. As it happens, signage is Jerusalem is not the best, not to mention not in English most of the time. Further, at this point we did not have a map of Jerusalem (a questionable decision, I know – alas). We finally got out of the city going in the right direction and on the right road. We knew we wanted to head towards Jericho because Jericho was south, and south was the right way. Easy enough.

So on the highway we see two signs, one for Jericho and one for a different city that seemed to be the wrong direction. We didn’t check the Israel map we had, and no, I don’t know why. I think it’s because it had taken us so long to get pointed the right way initially that by this point directional frustration had set in and we thought we finally knew what we were doing and darn it if we didn’t. So I turned off for Jericho, which I took to mean I was getting on the road to Jericho but I could just pass it and continue on to Masada.

What actually happened was that I had just taken the highway exit to drive into the city, but I’m not sure of that yet. I think it’s just a checkpoint for entering the West Bank. At this point it’s around 4am and pitch black outside. There are very few if any lights on the road and there certainly aren’t any other cars. Before I know it, we’re approaching the checkpoint, or “barrier,” as they’re called on the signs. I cannot make a U-turn. The car has very obviously Israeli yellow license plates.

I pull up to the guard station with two men in military fatigues holding large machine guns standing outside, and one walks up to my window with his weapon resting on his hip. He says something in Arabic. I respond with an English “Hello.”

He cocks his head to the side and asks, “Nationality?”

“American.”

“Really? You want go to Jericho?” He’s genuinely surprised. Why would an American be crossing the border into Jericho at 4 in the morning? Good question, guy.

Rather than explaining that we’re trying to get to Masada to go hiking, I just say “Yes, really, American, yes.”

“Passport.”

So I turn and begin going through my backpack to look for my passport, trying to remember who exactly it is I contact if a Palestinian border guard decides to make my passport a keepsake, the embassy or the consulate? I hand it to him. He studies it for several seconds, looks at me, and back at the passport. His buddy comes over to see what’s going on. The first guy leans over and asks Sarah if she’s American too. Yes, she says. He hands me my passport and steps back.

“Welcome.” Again, genuine. Now I’m the one who’s surprised.

So we drive through the checkpoint. It’s not until this moment that I realize that we will very soon be in the dark city itself and that we were not simply on a highway going towards it. The guard seemed benign enough but I figured at that point it was best to pretend we had a real purpose, that we knew what we were doing, and just find another way back to the highway. I thought that turning around and exiting through that same checkpoint not 5 minutes after we had entered, especially after confirming to the guard that we wanted to go to Jericho, might not play well in suspicious minds. The highway was a big one and there had to be more than just that one way to get to it.

One the very first things we passed was a USAID site. A good sign, I thought. Also, one in every few signs had English transliteration. There were some touristy things in Jericho, after all – how hard could this be?

By the way, we did not have a map.

With that in mind, I knew that with every turn we took down another dark, windy road we were getting further and further away from the highway and more and more lost. I knew that, really. I just kept thinking that it was the wisest decision to refrain from going back through that checkpoint so soon and that we’d figure it out one way or another. Just keep driving.

Well, that we did. We drove and drove and drove, never finding a way out. We passed Palestinian Authority vehicles and we passed men walking the pre-dawn streets. We passed restaurants, stores, and desolate neighborhoods. Then we passed it all again. And again. I couldn’t find either the first checkpoint or another way out. It was still dark as night.

Suddenly Sarah pulls out her guidebook; she’s realized that it has a very crappy map of a couple of the historical sites in Jericho and the map has the names of a couple of the major streets. We decide that the best way out is by an old palace in the northeast corner of the city. We begin to look for signs for the palace.

We still haven’t seen any signs for the highway. More men are appearing on the streets and an increasing number seem to be noticing this car with Israeli plates that is driving apparently aimlessly around their city. Soon it will be light enough to see that two young white people are in the front, and I wonder what these guys will think. I don’t think we saw any women.

Once we get to near where the palace should be, I start making turns based solely on relative direction; I just keep trying to head northeast and hoping for the best. This somewhat desperate line of thinking takes us through some large construction projects and by a large compound, the high walls of which are decorated with Palestinian flags and razor wire, as well as a red flag I’m not familiar with. It’s hard to decide if we’re going the right way because we keep switching between paved streets and dirt roads, and when you’re in a ten thousand year old city, what does that mean? Do they pave near new stuff or over the old stuff? Near the highway? Is it a new highway exit? Do the dirt roads mean we’re heading away from the highway or are they just there because this is obviously a construction area? What was that red flag on the razor wire compound, anyway?

Suddenly we can see the highway. I can see a car on it! That has to be it, we just need to find the right piece of road to take us there. A couple turns later and we must be heading right for it. Holy crap, I think we did it. There it is, the on-ramp for the highway! We did it! We navigated our way out of a city in the middle of the night without a decent map, with only a few signs in English, and I didn’t have to forfeit my passport to a guy with a machine gun!

I bear right at a makeshift intersection and point the car towards the on-ramp. The lights illuminate the road and I slam on the brakes.

A huge rubble pile, some large rocks, a barrier. The on-ramp is blocked. We can see the highway but we can’t get out. Apparently the Israeli army sometimes does this to Palestinian towns. Sort of a way of saying “You don’t want to give us Jericho? You think you can take care of it without us? Here, deal with this.”

I utter something along the lines of “You must be joking.”

So we’re sitting there, still in the blackness, able to see only the roadblock and the highway beyond it.  I turn the car off because I figured the three of us, including the car, could rest for a minute before going back to the center of the city to figure this out. It is dead quiet. We’re still basically right in the middle of many construction sites and they are all empty at this hour. We are nowhere near anything residential. We are not talking, just sitting.

Suddenly I hear some sounds behind us and I check the mirror and I see a man approaching the car from behind. I didn’t see him driving up and I have no idea where he came from. My window is open. I put my hand on the key, ready to hightail it out of there.

I hear a quiet grinding noise as he approaches. I realize he’s on a bicycle and he’s slowly making his way towards the car. He passes my window.

“Good morning!” he says, cheerful as can be.

Flabbergasted, I say good morning to him.

He slowly pedals past the car and heads right for the roadblock. There is a very narrow dirt ramp on the right side of the roadblock. He pedals up and over and disappears.

This was not our first experience in the West Bank. We had driven through it to get to Eilat from Tiberias, as I described earlier. That drive had been entirely in the daylight and we didn’t really stop much the whole way. Nothing eventful happened but during that drive we were still a little bit under the spell of the unknown and even the very remote possibility of danger. Nothing had happened to enhance or disprove that feeling so I think we still had it when we drove around Jericho that morning, not to mention the added element of the dark, being lost, and the interaction with the checkpoint guard.  As we drove around and around Jericho the intrigue began to fade little by little.

The guy on the bicycle was the climax for me.  When I saw and heard and felt him approaching I imagined a dozen different scenarios of what could happen and I honestly did have my hand on the ignition in anticipation of one of the bad scenarios becoming reality. For a split second I was afraid that this guy was going to confirm the fears of the girl at the car rental desk, of the State Department, of the travelers whose stories I had read online.

But really he did the opposite. He put me more at ease than any personal account or reassurance of a safe journey through the West Bank could have. I’m a little ashamed to say I needed that but it turns out I did, and I hadn’t even realized it before I got it. When I turned the car around and we headed back to the city center I was afraid of nothing (other than taking so long to find our way out that it would mess up the entire day’s itinerary). The West Bank became just another place with all the usual dangers of a third world place that happens to have semi-regular conflict. I know that probably sounds strange but it’s true.

We eventually found our way back to the checkpoint we had entered through, waved at the guards, and got back on the highway. We stopped at a gas station for coffee and some very fresh and surprisingly good chocolate croissants, and watched the sun rise there. Then we drove on to Masada.

A scare, diving with dolphins in Eilat

The next morning after arriving in Eilat (we’re on Monday now) I had a dive scheduled for 9:30 at a local reef. Sarah was going to find some water activity while I was diving and we had to check out anyway, so we had gotten breakfast at the hostel and were getting ready to go nice and early. Sarah noticed a military vehicle in the street in front of the hostel. No big deal, I said, that’s not the direction we’re going.

We walked out to the car. As I was throwing my bag in the back, a woman in military garb stormed up to me. “You go in the hostel,” she said.

“It’s okay, we’re leaving,” I told her. I looked out to the street and noticed there were no cars on it.

“That way?” she asked, pointing towards the vehicle blocking the street.

“Nope!” I said, trying to show her it was not a problem. “The other way.”

“No,” she told me, shaking her head. “No. Not that way. Bomb.” And she hustled off.

I turned to Sarah. “So we’ll just stay here then?”

We stood on a balcony near the entrance to the hostel to watch the drama unfold. Very soon, one of those little bomb robots wheeled down the road.

There was a private security guard on duty at the hostel entrance. Just as I took that picture he said “This is a show for you, eh?” I immediately felt like a jerk. I knew what he was saying; this is their reality, it’s not a photo op. I thought about trying to explain to him that I just think robots are cool, which is true, but instead we got into a conversation about what it’s like having frequent bomb threats, how it affects daily life, etc. He said he suspected that this was nothing but an abandoned bag or package, since that’s usually the case. He said that the bot has a camera on it and a little arm to explore the bag or package in question. The robot operator, working by remote control, sees through the camera and uses the little arm to poke around and see if he can find something that looks like a bomb. The robot also has a shotgun on it so if the operator can’t find a bomb to defuse he can just back the robot up a few feet and shoot the package. Not twenty seconds after the guard telling me that, we heard the bang of the shotgun. Soon thereafter people and cars began to fill the street and we were on our way.

Of course by this time I was going to be late for my 9:30 dive. I didn’t make it to the dive desk until nearly 10 o’clock. The woman asked if I knew I had a 9:30 appointment. I said yes I did but was late because of the bomb scare thing. She was not aware of any bomb scare so I told her where it had been. She shrugged and said “That will happen…welcome to Israel.”

It was a spectacular dive. I chose this particular reef, Dolphin Reef, because I wanted to dive with dolphins and I was not disappointed. Within 20 seconds of submerging a dolphin swam up to our guide and rolled over to have its belly rubbed like a dog. It then swam around our small group (me and two German women), checking us out, frequently swimming right in front of me. Sometimes two or three would come over to play, then they would dash off and disappear from view, but you can still hear their sonar squeaking when they’re out of sight. Sometimes I would be focused on a fish nibbling on a piece of coral, hear the sonar squeak, look up, and there would be a dolphin.

Other than the dolphins there were a few types of coral and an array of fish including the awesome lionfish.

After the dive we went to a nearby attraction called Coral World that is part aquarium, part underwater exhibition. The latter is sort of the inverse of an aquarium; instead of walking among several giant fish tanks aboveground, you are in a tank several meters underwater looking into the sea at whatever happens to be swimming by. Pretty cool.

We picked up and headed north.

Home

Although I’m home I am now going through notes and posting short (and sometimes not so short) blurbs on stuff we did, mostly in chronological order. After I’m done with all the posts I’ll put a boatload of pictures on Flickr and hopefully finally a recap.

Sneak preview of the recap: it was awesome and I must return one day. You should all go.

Makhtesh Ramon

In the Negev Desert there is a large dent in the earth known as the Ramon Crater or Makhtesh Ramon.  When Sarah and I told Allie, our hostess in Jerusalem, that we were going to the Ramon Crater, Allie exclaimed “It’s a makhtesh! It’s not a crater!” From what I understand, a makhtesh is a huge geological landform that looks a whole lot like a crater but was not created by an impact the way craters are. Rather, they are the result of erosion. Incidentally, the makhtesh formation is unique to Israel. That being said, Israeli signs refer to the dent as a crater, not a makhtesh, as a quirk in the translation. To satisfy everyone, Allie and I decided that a makhtesh is a kosher crater.

Mitzpe Ramon is a small town on the ridge of the makhtesh. They have all kinds of neat outdoor stuff to do there like rappelling and hang gliding and hiking and whatnot that we didn’t have time to tackle on this trip. Driving through the town very briefly has earned it a spot on my list of places I absolutely must return to. It is also the first place in hundreds of kilometers that has a gas station. I know this because as our little car was huffing and puffing up the very steep road to get to the town the needle on the gas gauge was quivering on empty as a result. I was beginning to plot quietly to myself how we would pull off sleeping in this tiny car when we saw the light of the gas station.

We didn’t have time to stop for long since we still had a couple hours to drive to get to Jerusalem that night. Since we needed to fill up on gas anyway we also stopped for a cup of coffee and directions to the makhtesh. It was nearly sunset and the sun setting over makhtesh in the desert sounded nice. I asked the guy at the coffee shop where the crater was.

“It’s a makhtesh.”

“Yes, I…”

“It is very nice at sunset.”

“Yes. Where is it?”

“Well, you will see it on your way to Eilat. You are driving south, right?”

“No, we’ve just come from Eilat.”

“You came from Eilat? You came from the south?”

He started sounding suspicious so I started getting suspicious.

“Yes?”

“On road 40?”

“Yes!”

“You just drove through it.”

To be fair, on the way to Mitzpe Ramon both Sarah and I had noticed that the landscape looked different than other parts of the desert we had driven through, that some of the colors of the soil were different, and that it generally just looked weird. It didn’t occur to us that we were driving through the kosher crater but lo and behold we had just driven across the whole damn thing. Let me tell you: it’s pretty big.

Here are some pictures from inside a makhtesh. One of the things I couldn't help but notice (in fact was routinely amazed by) was the silence. I frequently made us stop on the side of the road to take pictures because I couldn't believe the landscape. At times it looked like we were on the moon. But on top of that it was quiet in a way I hadn't heard before. I think there are different kinds of quiet. Desert quiet, empty room quiet, everything-covered-in-snow-so-everyone-is-inside quiet, lake quiet, etc. I don't think I've been in the middle of a desert, that far away from any city or town, with no cars around, with that kind of quiet.

So try to imagine that when you look at these.

Home stretch

This has been probably the most productive trip I’ve been on in terms of hours spent doing and seeing stuff per hours in the country, represented by the following highly scientific formula that I just made up:

(Hours doing cool stuff) ÷ (Days in country X 24) = Trip productivity

Thus far our trip productivity quotient is very high. We suffered a setback yesterday thanks to a full day of cold, wind, and rain in Jerusalem. Also, despite the weather, there are many more (other) tourists in Jerusalem than anywhere else we’ve been. This is a hindrance generally, both psychologically and physically. An example of both: yesterday we wound the tiny streets of the Old City to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. We arrived cold and wet, already somewhat beaten down by other near-misses and failures we had already suffered that morning, to find scores if not hundreds of tourists and pilgrims (tourgrims) milling around the church. It would have been impossible to see the church without getting elbowed and pushed by these loud groups who exist for the sole purpose of ruining places for everyone else (yes, just like the trip I was on last year).

So we left, and we are heading back this morning, a few minutes from now. It is just past 6 am right now in Jerusalem; hopefully we’ll beat the tourgrims and much of the church, which opened at 4 am, will be quiet and empty (or at least more so than yesterday).

On today’s slate for after the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is to walk the Twelve Stations of the Cross (which I’ve also seen described as Fourteen Stations – I’ll try to figure that one out and get back to you) and tour the Mount of Olives -- all before sundown because we're doing shabbat. Tomorrow we have the Temple Mount and the Dome of the Rock (which we also tried to get into yesterday and were thwarted, first by the Temple’s policy of sometimes completely arbitrarily closing and then by hoards or tourgrims) and the Israel Museum. Sometime tomorrow evening we will return to Tel Aviv to catch our flight early Sunday morning.

I have started a couple posts now and again recounting the days between arriving in Eilat and now, but my free time has been virtually zero. This is a good thing and it is how we wanted the trip to go, but I thought that somehow, as on other trips, I could squeeze in some writing time. I hadn’t factored in the secret variable that I relied upon to find time to write on other trips: hours spent on public transportation. Since we’ve done all the transporting ourselves, and I have done all the driving, the choice has come down to pounding the laptop or adding precious hours of sleep to my already scant supply, and I almost always choose sleep. I have many notes that I will convert into posts and, of course, the pictures. Here are some recent ones, then it’s off to continue the whirlwind.

Desert, guns

After we left Mount Tabor we stopped at a mall for lunch. We went to a grocery store and got some pita and a container of hummus and that was our meal. We wanted it to be cheap and quick and it was. It was also delicious.

The mall was basically a two-level strip mall. It was just off the highway and looks like any American strip mall minus the Hebrew. As we pulled into the parking lot a very bored security guard stopped us and looked in our trunk to make sure we hadn’t forgotten to remove the very obvious bomb from the car before we went out shopping.

There are armed personnel everywhere. I am used to seeing a healthy amount of guys with guns walking around since there is so much security in Washington, but they take it to a whole different level here. First of all, the guns are bigger. Second, it seems like everyone has them. Third, most of the people who have them look to be between 18 and 21. I’ve gotten used to it by now, probably because none of the locals seem to think twice about it. I’m sure it makes people feel safer to have military walking around with guns than if they weren’t there. I think it makes me feel safer. It also leads to interesting pictures such as this one.

The next stop would be Eilat, which is at the very southern tip of the country and the very northern tip of the Red Sea. To get there we had to drive through the West Bank. I had told some people before I left for this trip that we would be driving through the West Bank. I got mixed reaction on this. If the West Bank looked like what some people offered as predictions, it would have been burning fields, constant gunfire in the distance, bodies on the side of the road, military presence, and a sure carjacking. Well, none of that happened. Yes, there was a border staffed by guys with huge guns and no, I did not stop to take their picture. Yes there was Arabic on the signage but that had been the case before we crossed the border. One major difference was that none of the signs before the border mentioned Jericho, which is on the highway we were driving on. As soon as we entered the West Bank, Jericho appeared on the signage. This did not seem like a coincidence. It also didn’t seem like a coincidence that the exit for Jericho looked like this:

The drive through the West Bank was remarkable because of the change in the landscape. I mean, look at this:

That was taken just a couple hours after the pictures of the lush green of Mount Tabor. We went from rolling green hills to jagged desert in no time. At times the desert landscape was simply unreal. For miles there would be nothing but mountains, then suddenly there would be miles of nothing but wasteland.

 

The visuals only got more stunning as we began driving along the Dead Sea.

We got to Eilat around dinnertime. Eilat is a resort town with nice hotels lining the water and a fancy mall with western stores and plenty of foreigners milling about. There is also a long boardwalk filled with the same old stalls selling the same old junk you can find in any resort town that has a boardwalk. But the hostel had a reliable supply of hot water, so that was good and a welcome change from what we had gotten used to.

I’m going to have to abruptly cut this short because in real life it’s 10:30 on Tuesday night and I need to be up and out by 3 am. I’ll explain why later, and hopefully will have some good pictures to show for it.