Day 9: From Sapir to Gev Holit: 23rd February, 2018

The plan was to walk again during the break between the semesters. It took a long time to find a few consecutive days without committments, but finally I managed to find some time. I left home at 5:30, and after a taxi and two buses, I made it back to Sapir. I had been following the weather the whole time - a day before the forecast had switched to rain in the morning. As the bus left Beer Sheva it started raining (a lot!), and I was worried I wouldn't be able to walk. By the time the bus got to Sapir, the rain had calmed down to a light rain, so I set off in the rain (after covering my backpack with a rainproof cover). A kind resident of Sapir picked me up on the access road and dropped me off at the back of the settlement, not far from the Israel trail.

While on the down side it was raining and there was a lot of mud and water, on the plus side it was a whole different view on the area to what you usually see. The usually dry river beds all turned into small streams, and water could be seen flowing everywhere. Below are some examples.

At one point I had to cross a river, but there was no obvious places to cross. After walking back and forth a few times I found some "islands" I could jump between to get across

The weather started to clear up, and the day had some beautiful views over the arava

It's hard to tell from the photo, but these cracks in the rocks go down a long, long way!

Shadow self-portraits from the top of a cliff

Most of the day I did not see anyone. In the afternoon while up in the hills, I saw a few 4 wheel drive jeeps around. I met some of them later at the campground. A few of them came to see the water after the rain, it is a rare occurance here and the water gets absorbed very quickly. 

Is it just me or does this look like an elephant?

I made it to the Gev Holit night camp at around 17:00, found the water cache, and then tried to ring home. Unfortunately no reception, and the usual trick of climbing the nearest hill did not work. Luckily I found some people in a 4x4 that were heading out of the park and they agreed to ring home once they had reception. I was exhausted after the day and went to sleep early (around 21:00).