Day Trip

We went on all-day trip that consisted of three hikes, several stops at archaeological sites, and many spontaneous lessons about geology, cultural history, political history, and desert animals. Sometimes David spoke and explained while we hiked, and other times we paused to listen and observe.






I was extremely happy all day...I felt like every single moment held something valuable and educational. The one structured lesson of the day was about reconnecting with nature and it consisted mostly of silence. We were told to walk a part of our hike in complete silence, listening to the wind, to our feet on the rocks. The end of the silent walk brought us to this fabulous spot:



In the afternoon we went on a little hike that I thought was pretty scary! The trail was very narrow and slipping would have been a terrible disaster! Below is a portion of that hike. We sat down at one place and the view was spectacular, and we learned a lot about the Arava and the Negev, including different ideas of how people passed through this land thousands of years ago on trade routes.



Before going on our third hike, we stopped on top of a hill where we could look over Egypt and Israel, and we learned about the history of that border, and the geological formation of the Red Sea. Here is Egypt:



Our third hike was through this wadi:



The Arabic script on this rock is from the seventh century:



Here's my group, taking a little break on the third hike, very happy!


It was a really wonderful experience.