(winter) desert vacation

My friend Y. came from Paris to start making her film about a place called Neot Hakikar, at the very southern end of the dead sea, where the biblical Sodom used to be. She and her partner and her cameraman spent 4 days there, and we joined them as babysitters for their 2 year old daughter. The weather was disastrous, we managed to arrive at the 5 yearly or so rain and storm weekend. In the desert rain might mean inundation - which nobody knows if or where might occur, so all the touristic spots were shut, just in case. so the first day and most of the second were spent indoors. Towards the second afternoon the kids were getting irritable and bored and so were we. We got in the car and drove to see the dead sea, worrying about floods and will we be able to get back. but everything was alright.

The dead sea is so beautiful and unworldly. But around it it's dirty and ugly. It seams there's nothing left untouched: electricity lines, building leftovers, pipes sticking out of the ground, and just standard human garbage such as nylon bags and plastic bottles.

The kids however didn't mind any of this and quickly got into stone-searching and mud-sinking mode.

Little E was sleeping in the car, and they could be just brother and sister again, that probably also served to calm them down a bit. 

Here they are checking out the salt:

and a second after this shot was taken they both jumped into mud, a lot of mud, with their fairly new shoes.

The next day we decided not to let the weather and outside circumstances ruin that last chance at a desert experience for us (well, for this visit at least), and went out, simply out near where we were staying, no big endeavor, no far reaching plans.

Hilel was really into climbing those soft rock mountains, the ground was much fun to walk on after the rain, it was soft like a mattress. 

 

The girls and I made a circle of stones together, in which many stories (by Amalia) came to life.

Later, at another spot, Hilel was very busy breaking off pieces of dried cracked mud and throwing them to see them shutter to dust.

Playing hide and seek, we found two circles of stones with some dry branches in them, someone made this in the middle of this nowhere. isn't it wonderful to find such things?

The highlight of the day for Hilel was climbing the mountain side and sliding down.

By the end of this day the girls became best mates at last, after 2 days of E. doing as she pleases and generally being two years old, and Amalia going nuts over it and not allowing her any of her stuff and saying over and over that she's "little". (Amalia will be three in April.. I guess for her scale E. is indeed so much younger, a year is a third of her life)

 

And here's Hilel discovering the Boom, on the way back to our normal, greener civilization.