The Big Adventure

After enduring a dust storm -- less dramatic than a sand storm, makes you sneeze a lot -- and pouring rain, we decided that it was time to get out of Jerusalem for a little. Friends from Montreal were visiting so we rented a van and drove South. The rain was so bad we were scared to go by the Jericho--Dead Sea route, so instead we drove West for an hour or so and stopped at Beit Guvrin in the south western end of the Judean mountains, during a break in the rain. It was great, very green and lots of things were flowering. There are giant limestone caves, scary dark tunnels and -- because of the rain -- lots of sticky mud, so the boys had a blast and got filthy. It was just the first in a series of dirt-stompings that Avis's car got from us, by the time we finished, it was filthy (I did sweep it out a little, out of shame, before taking it back). We drove south into the desert through driving rain. The wadis were jumping their banks and washing out the roads, but we drove through with the kids screaming happily/terrified in the back as the water splashed the windows. One of these wash outs in particular had a lot of steam to it. I watched as a big tour bus went through, pulling towards the edge of the road as the water pressed against it. But they made it and I figured we could too. We reached Machtesh Ramon as the storm was abating and saw a rainbow that stretched from one end of the crater to the other. Everyone had to get out and see it from horizon to horizon. The red earth of machtesh ramon got brought back into the van in giant wads, so we had a sort of red/white colour scheme on the upholstery. From about there it was a straight shot down to Eilat. There it was warm and lovely and we spent two and half days camel-riding, snorkeling with dolphins, and under-water-observatorying. We went to Timna, about an hour out of Eilat which was dry by then, though there was a lot of collecting of rocks so the back seat became sprinkled with beautiful pebbles as well. Timna is like being on Mars , red and black and white sand, and then in the middle of it you find little bright green-blue stones which are malachite (I think). It is a mineral with copper in it. There are ancient copper mines at Timna (more crazy tunnels for crawling through). We had a long discussion about copper mining. Our friend Adriana asked how did first person look at this blue rock and say let's make metal out of it? You can't get copper out of malachite or the other common ores it is found in with a camp fire, it isn't hot enough. If I read right, copper was the first metal to be smelted, or extracted by heat from ore. While people probably used gold and iron before copper they just used what they found or mined. So why even try putting rocks in a hot fire to extract metal? The possible answer according to Wikipedia is pretty interesting. Colourful minerals were often used for painting pottery, the blue green colour probably appealed to some potter who painted a clay pot with it and put it in a kiln. When he opened up the kiln the pot would have smashed but the heat would have burned off all the other stuff in the malachite and left behind a few drops of pure copper. Copper goes into bronze, which was a huge technological advance. The Philistines had a monopoly on the working of bronze and made a point of not sharpening or repairing bronze implements of the Israelites when they were at war, a detail recorded in the story of Samson.
We swung back up by the Dead Sea and everyone went for a dip under the moon since it was nearly night by the time we got there. Lev got Dead Sea water in his eyes and I raced to rinse him off. There was a coke bottle sitting by the shore with water in it and I ran over to splash it in Lev's face. At the last minute I decided to take a swig just to make sure it was fresh water and got a big mouth full of Dead Sea water. In case you ever wondered it is really blechy. So I ran spluttering and choking over to the shower and dipped Lev's eyes and my mouth.
Now we are back and enjoying Purim which is weird in Jerusalem since it is two days, unlike most other places and you don't really do anything special on the first day except bake hamentaschen.