Out of the Desert

The disconnect I was feeling from the last post has long past. The last two days have been spent on long desert hikes, sleeping in Bedouin tents, riding camels, and smearing myself with Dead Sea mud. It has been incredible!

Two days ago the whole group left in a bus south of Jerusalem, about 2 hours until we reach the Bedouin tents we were spending the night at. First off were the camels. Jeramie Bloom and I picked the best looking camel around and hopped aboard! We traveled the trail and took some fun pictures, but our camel was a little too excited to head back to camel on the return and nearly bucked us off at the end!! - Continued...


That was a little freaky and we were both all too excited to head back to camp and learn about the Bedouin culture while enjoying their fabulous sweet tea. Turns out the Bedouins have been in a pretty hard place since Israel has been developed. Many of their homes these days are illegal and not recognized by the government. Their living arrangements are little scrappy shacks, we saw a few of them from the road, a far change from the exotic tent and nomadic way of life we were treated to at the camel rides. Seems like their struggle is similar to the Native Americans of our country.

Well from the tents, we had a 5am wake up call and were off to the first desert hike. I choose the harder hike of the two which was described as a 4 hour hike through the plain desert. I think that explanation was meant to weed people out because it was truly amazing! Although from far away the desert looks similar all through out, every step for me was something quite unique. Smooth stones, steep paths that we needed ropes to get down, big boulders we had to shimmy over, nothing was the same.

At the end we felt wonderful and had a great view! The group then traveled to the Dead Sea. We had some fun with mud and floating, but it is definitly not a good idea to wash your face in the water!

Now we are back in Jerusalem for the rest of the weekend and off to Be'er Sheva on Sunday (apparently Sunday is the new Monday here and the weekend starts on Friday)