Shvil Israel: Maktesh Ramon

After a good nights rest in a bed in Eilat, Ari and I headed up north via bus to Mitzpe Ramon - the town overlooking Maktesh Ramon - the Ramon crater. Our plan was to start hiking at around 4PM after the peak hours of heat. We took our time walking around and we went ot the supermarket to get food. We found out that the heat was not nearly as bad as it was in Eilat and there was no problem starting to hike at 3PM. We started the hike along the boardwalk which offered fantastic views of the crater. Once we made it down the 400 meters of elevation the view was less impressive. Not so shortly thereafter we noticed that we were not on the correct path. We got back on trail and calculated that we had unnecessarily hiked an additional 5 kilometers. Once back on the trail we continued hiking towards THE (emphasis on the word 'the') noteworthy item of the days hike. Within the hiking book it points out the highlight of today was THE tree. Yep, the highlight of the entire day was THE tree. Not a tree, but THE tree. Despite the fact that the desert has been blooming - there is plenty of agriculture in the negev desert, there seems to be a need to make note of trees to the point where they need ot be highlighted as highlights. There must be something wrong if I ask someone if they saw THE tree and they know exactly what I'm talking about. By now its probably clear that this hike was something dissapointing if I'm spending this much time talking about THE tree I bet your wondering what THE tree looks like by now. Well I'm going to build up the suspense!

So we got to THE tree, took a few pictures, rested a bit then continued on our way. We hiked another mountain (120 meters in elevation in 0.5km) and then went to bed as it was dark. In the morning we hiked 3 or 4 kilometers to the main highway and hooped on a bus to head back home. After the 2 day hike from Eilat this hike did not compare. The views from the cliffs were much more impressive than those from inside the crater.

hiking total: 13 km plus 5 for having gotten lost

Now you can rest at ease, here is a pic of THE tree. I hope you didn't cheat and scroll down here without reading the blog post. SHAME!

For these few days of hiking that we did we managed to hike about 44km of shvil Israel which is 4.6km of the entire trail. It looks like I have a lot more hiking to do if I want to complete this trail one day.