The late afternoon sun casts the scenery in a vaguely rusty light. All but the folks retrieving the morning cars are assembled near the campsite. We are exhausted from the 17 km hike in the Israeli summer heat but the pace does not let up… “Kicking back” is just not an Israeli trait. It is not necessarily important that things are done correctly, but it is urgent that they are done! There are tents to pitch and potatoes to be peeled. Soon it is all hands on deck for dinner preparation. Massive quantities of onion, cauliflower, squash, and potato find their way into an enormous cauldron… along with two entire chickens. The fire is lit, then it’s only a matter of time.

The campsite is under several massive Jujube trees which I think is cool. You can even see the trees in the center of the satellite photo. I find out later on the web that these Jujube trees are larger than described in the literature. The reason the Jujubees are here is probably due to the presence of a spring nearby and the associated infrastructure is quite interesting.

A pipe projecting from the hillside directs a trickle of water in to a first stone catch basin, which is apparently for people to collect water from. The overflow then spills into a second larger rectangular trough built of stone that is accessible to animals. Finally the water collects in the large covered cistern you can see in the photo with the dog. Inside, the cistern is filled with people escaping the heat.

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Night falls and dinner is served. The soup tastes so good that it feels illegal. Somehow it is precisely what a deeply disturbed physiology requires. Tons of additional food is brought forth, tomato and cucumber salad, a variety of herbal teas (not the bag kind), pita, hummus, labane… its all there. Then it is time for turkish coffee…“Limits” and Jess-the-dog and I are sleeping without a tent, California style. It’s apparently uncommon to do that here, but all my life I have wanted to be able to “see what’s coming.” So unless there are vast amounts of insects or the weather is seriously inclement, I prefer the stars. At about 4 am I discover why a tent might be useful under Jujube trees ripe with fruit… what sounds like a dozen very sociable Egyptian Fruit Bats are having a full blown party clambering over our heads. A steady rain of something that I hope is just jujube dates or pits begins to fall. In my exhausted, jetlagged, semi-halucinitory state, I am conflicted. I have never seen a fruit bat before. As a biologist I know I should get up and try to take pictures, but I am not sure how my hosts inside their tents would react to some lunatic foreigner setting off flashes at 4 am… taking pictures of what is most likely a laundry nuisance to them. Instead, I carefully reach over and quietly sneak out my Sony Handycam with infrared nightshot plus. The camera works pretty well. I’ve managed to find my way out of a cave once with it when the flashlight went dead! But I can’t really see any bats through the viewfinder and I am fairly nervous at being discovered. After all how does it look to be videotaping in pitch darkness in a campsite filled with children? When I get home it seems that the bats were out of range or shielded from the infrared by the thick branches. I was under the tree of course, and they were on its outer surface. Still, it’s a memory I don’t want to forget. After a couple of hours the bats are gone and it is time to get up. There is no sign of bat scat… which is good.
The rest of the group is soon on its way for a second day of hiking… this time only 15 km. But we are bailing. “Setting Limits” has found her limit… and so has the animal. I pretend that I am disappointed to not be going along… but kicking back with sweet coffee by a cool spring on a sunny morning sounds very good to me and the dog. A ranger on a quad zooms up packing a six-shooter. I kid you not. A twenty-something tan, long-haired version of Indiana Jones in short pants, he reminds us to douse the fire with water and stir the ashes when we are done… and then he zooms off in a cloud of dust. So much of this this country looks just like California…