Today was a pretty easy day for us, which was nice. Our focus today was on the southern part of the Aravah, which is the Jordan rift valley between the Dead sea and the Red Sea (gulf of Elat/Aqaba branch) or as I like to call it, "the dead to the red." We were still in recovery mode from Sinai and the late night we had coming across the border so we got to sleep in a little bit and we started our day with snorkeling in the Red Sea in Elat.
The snorkeling was fun, we only went for about an hour and a half, but I saw some cool fish and the water felt great (it was about 74 degrees). After snorkeling we went off to see a life size model of the Tabernacle. I was surprised at how small it was, it was a large tent, but it was still just a tent. It was good to see that and get a feel for what that would have been like for the Israelites to worship God there.
(life size model of the tabernacle)
After the tabernacle we went to this dairy kibbutz (a kibbutz is an Israeli commune, there were a bunch of them in the sixties and seventies but there are a lot fewer now) that is supposed to have the world’s greatest chocolate milk and had lunch. The chocolate milk was really good, as was the ice cream.
After that we made a few more small stops, where we talked about and looked at some ancient trade routes. Far and away the most exciting thing about this place was the fact that there were two things on the sign that pointed in the direction of our destination. One said Tamar (where we went) and the other said “Crocodile Farm”. I have never really had the urge to go to a crocodile farm until that moment, where I was pretty sure that there wasn’t anything that I wanted more than to go to a crocodile farm. We didn’t go there, but out teacher Todd did ask us if we wanted to go to a “bonus” stop after that, I was really hoping for the Crocodile farm at that point, but our bonus was a trade route that they only found a few years ago, the Ascent of Aqrabim.
(The Ascent of Aqrabim, does it look like it goes over a hill that is nothing but rocks? Because it did.)
And then we called it a day and drove up the Masada guest house where we are staying tonight. It was a pretty light day, but we spent a lot of time on the bus, and a few of us went for a little hike at one of the ancient routes we looked at (the ascent of scorpions) which really hurt at first (my legs were sore from Sinai), but helped my legs to feel a lot better now. Which is good because I am hiking up Masada tomorrow to watch the sunrise over the dead sea.
Until tomorrow, thanks for reading.
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