Aliyah 105: Dead Sea Hidden Hikes (and Arad)

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Going off the “off the beaten path”

First, what a dream it is to live here. So much to explore, so much culture, so much geographic wonder, so many friendly smiling people. Chol HaMoed Pesach, secular and religious Jews, wish each other “Chag Somayach” all week on the hiking trails. The Israeli government decided to close all the parks because metal cylinders are falling from the sky. This ‘forced’ me to search harder for hikes for which I was greatly rewarded.

The best place to find a list of hikes around is Hiking the Holyland though she didn’t even make it to one of these. Look at this place of Nahal Rahaf by satellite:

More on that later. For this trip, after picking someone up in Beit Shemesh, Waze had me avoid the main highway of Israel, route 6, and I found miles and miles and miles and miles of farms – so that’s where our food comes from.

Then we stopped in Arad, on our way to the Dead Sea hiking.

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Arad, Israel

There are two ways to get to the Dead Sea: via Jerusalem along the North or via Arad and Dimona along the South. In between are nearly impassable mountains. Went South this time to other hikes, so I thought let’s break up the trip with a trip to a new place … Arad. It’s a small city in the South and there’s not much going on there.

Above is the “artist gallery”. In the middle of the non-much-going-on there’s a cafe which is hopping and kosher l’Pesach according to the teudah.

The center of the city has a nice fountain surrounded by stores and a not-much-going-on mall:

There are a lot of Chassidim dressed as such because nothing says desert town like beaver pelts on your head:

We couldn’t find the art museum – the history museum wasn’t open that day – the glass blown art is no longer in existence – and while we find a private house with the “doll museum”, no one answered and the phone number didn’t work.

On to the Dead Sea …

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Nahal Rahaf Hike to Water

Water hikes / hikes to water are always a popular attraction with my family. As noted above, national parks (e.g. Ein Gedi and Nahal Arugot were closed) so with some Googling, I found this hike along with a full parking lot of other Israelis. I guess I’m Israeli now, finding this stuff no tourist has ever seen.

It’s honestly very hard to choose pictures from this hike because there are so many, so I’m just going to lay them on you … this was a hike up hill, then more hill, then across narrow paths overlooking a canyon, where if you look back you can see the Dead Sea, and you eventually reach pools of water with natural water slides made out of rock.

Glamping – Tranquillo

As a kid, we had a tent in the backyard some summers and I loved camping … in camp. As an adult it took me a bunch of years to get out of my system. Putting together and taking down tents, as well as terrible sleep, worn out its appeal – the “automatically open up” tent is great except folding it back up is a nightmare. There are fancy hotels along Ein Bokek though they’re too posh when you want to be out in nature. For that, we have kosher l’Pesach white chocolate Hershey’s Kisses:

We weren’t enough people for one of these so we had a rectangular prism shaped tent with large queen bed and two more beds/mats on the floor. Apparently, I didn’t take a good picture of our room. It was quite nice with air conditioning (not needed at night) and a lot of clean air.

There are a good number of these types of places around Israel such as this one and this one. Unfortunately, they’re fairly expensive. It’s a thing at these places to have a refrigerator, freezer, sinks, utensils, and usually a bar / light food. The shared bathrooms here were very clean.

I tend to feel a bit out of place at these places because I feel like everyone is secular and I’m sticking out looking for kosher food and washing cups. There are no charedim at these places – that I have seen – though there are usually some frum (religious) people. Everyone is respectful, clean, fairly quiet especially once late hours hit … and fit.

While people were cooking their eggs in a non-kosher kitchen and buying drinks from a non-kosher bar, I was doing my prayer thing … and then someone asked if he could borrow my tallis for his prayers, and I felt better about being there.

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On to Metzoke Dargot

Where to go the next day? “Can we do something indoors” says the teenager. Nope! First, we’re at the Dead Sea … there’s not much indoors around here. Second, it’s probably closed. We’re going hiking again!

About 45 minutes into the hike, the teenagers were done. I outlasted the teenagers! Seems doomscrolling short videos doesn’t prepare you for the outdoors like regular aerobic exercise does.

I’m still not quite sure how I found this hike – even when I found it, I didn’t know what it was and neither did the people camping 50 feet from the entrance. Find Metzoke Dargot here. To get there, you get to go up a really steep, windy, and fun road overlooking the Dead Sea. Why is this road there? I don’t know.

The road is in excellent condition and brings you to a small glamping place … this one with cabins. That’s about it. Probably $20 million to build the road and $300k to build the glamping place. The website makes the cabins look glamorous and I was bit regretting I hadn’t found this place to stay. When we were there … didn’t match the pictures. Typical. There were also young kids being young kids rather than chilled out vibe of the 20 and 30 somethings at these other places.

just keep driving past and find people with huge packs on their back and parking lots with rocks jagged enough to puncture an emu or tamtam, yet, somehow, they don’t puncture tires.

Why do these people have large packs on their back? Turns out it’s a 6-hour hike to the bottom … and then you better find a ride back. I’d love to do this hike one day, though today wasn’t the day – we went to the first lookout.

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There must be plenty more hikes that ‘no one’ knows about still to be found.

Finally, I’ve come to love my Israeli boots though they’re getting their own article, “Ode to Israeli Boots” after some Dead Sea pictures: