Aliyah Blog 45: Ramon Crater Revisited with Llamas

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Aliyah Diary

Arrival
01. Aug 19, 2024: Preparation In America
02. Aug 25, 2024: First Few Days
03. Aug 29, 2024: Moving In

Cultural Adjustment
04. Sept 4, 2024: First Day of School
05. Sept 8, 2024: Two Weeks In . . .
06. Sept 16, 2024: Getting Comfortable
07. Sept 22, 2024: Ready for Yom Tov
09. Sept 30, 2024: Nasrallahed on the Floor
15. Nov 10, 2024: Safety Fourth
18. Nov 24, 2024: Language – l’at, ‘lat
29. Jan 31, 2025: My Son Still in America
31. Feb 3, 2025: Internet Filtering for Kids
37. Mar 3, 2025: Technical Difficulties
39. Mar 12, 2025: Prove Yourself
40. Mar 17, 2025: Holiday Loneliness

Shopping
11. Oct 13, 2024: Packages. (חבילות.)
34. Feb 17, 2025: Finding Obscure Things
41. Mar 23, 2025: New Shopping Habits
44. Apr 6, 2025: Pesach Shopping & Osher Ad

Government and Bureaucracy
10. Oct 8, 2024: Driver’s License
13. Oct 30, 2024: Bureaucracies and Stories
19. Nov 28, 2024: Taxation for Americans
22. Dec 23, 2024: Doctors & “Choleh Chadash”
27. Jan 23, 2025: Healthcare in Israel
32. Feb 5, 2025: How To Hire the Wrong Person
33. Feb 10, 2025: Quest to Pay My Taxes

Politics & Thought
12. Oct 25, 2024: October Sun and the Jew
16. Nov 17, 2024: Where People Look Like Me
17. Nov 19, 2024: Jewish Identity and Outlook
21. Dec 11, 2024: Let Freedom Ring
38. Mar 6, 2025: Talking in Quiet Peace

Travel and Trips
08. Sept 25, 2024: Jerusalem Concert
14. Nov 2, 2024: The Kindness of Strangers
20. Dec 5, 2024: Tel Aviv Art Museum
23. Dec 29, 2024: The West Bank. (Shomron)
26. Jan 18, 2025: Dead Sea Beer and Ice Cream
28. Jan 26, 2025: Yarkon River Judaism, Tel Aviv
30. Jan 31, 2025: My Son Visits and we Travel
35. Feb 20, 2025: Mitzpe Ramon Stars, Ein Avdat
42. Mar 28, 2025: Hike Nahal Tavor, Mt. Tabor
45. Apr 20, 2025: Desert Llamas and Camels

The Roads
24. Jan 5, 2025: Supermarkets & Highways
25. Jan 12, 2025: Not Cutting Me Off
36. Feb 25, 2025: Road Rules of Israel

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Introduction

Having loved my previous visit to the Ramon Crater, I returned again with some more kids. This time a very different, and unplanned adventure ensured based on the selections by younger kids.

We stayed in the same place as last time – a place called “Silent Arrow” with no electricity in a small permanent fixture of a tent. No heat, no nothing. Love it. You’d think it’d be less expensive than a hotel, though … it’s about the same. On the plus side, about six people can fit in the same tent on the provided beds with blankets. Bring your own linens.

Israeli Parks are Beautiful and Well Run

On the way we stopped at Ein Avdat again – not going to repeat what is in the previous article. New information: I needed to buy a hat as did one of the kids. There’s a trailer to buy supplies run by the parks department and they do not price gauge. A baseball cap cost about $7 and a large bottle of water … I forgot the price. Let’s say $2. It sounds good.

Some things in Israel and so easy. The next thing I found out is you can get a one year pass for all national parks in Israel (and there are a lot) … after paying about $40/family/year. You do this at the gate without even getting out of your car and in the future you show them your Israeli ID card and you’re in. No app needed. No additional membership card needed.

Food in Mitzpe Ramon

We arrived afterwards in Mitzpe Ramon – the town next to the crater where you can find a Columbia sporting goods store with $120 baseball caps. They say “Columbia” instead of “Israel Parks” otherwise seem identical. My parks hat is replacing my dad hat for now and it’s much more treasured than a hat named after a guy who enslaved and worked to death thousands of Taino people in the Carribean.

My kids wanted Pizza Hut … again. Sigh. Had it sometimes in my childhood before keeping kosher and I don’t miss it. In the town of Mitzpe Ramon (next to the crater) you can also find McDonalds and other stuff I don’t miss and haven’t tried since childhood which is kosher here because … it can be. A sporting goods store, a supermarket, and a very busy Aroma Cafe are around as well. Do not miss out on the bottled drinks with aloe vera and pointy caps. So good. (Says some of us.)

Stargazing … live and learn. It’s not so good on a full moon. Was disappointing after our amazing time the previous visit. That being said, you can see Starlink satellites popping into and then out of view, and we were able to track them! They look like tiny, thin rectangles moving across the sky momentarily like a very difficult game of Missile Command.

Alpaca Farm

Check their hours before going. They’re open Thursday – Sunday only and it’s at the end of a long dirt path through the desert … after Silent Arrow. Went there half because it was close.

There are similar things in America, just not with alpacas … e.g. there’s a great alligator place just outside the Everglades and other sorts of “petting zoos”. Here, they give you food and you go the various pens of alpacas and llamas. They lick your hand and can be aggressive about getting the food though don’t bite – herbivores. One thing I noticed: they have terrible, terrible teeth. Many have horrendous underbites. Their faces look like cartoon characters.

This isn’t as a big a place as you might find elsewhere … there are no shows or anything like that. On the other hand, they have alpacas and llamas, the only pack animals native to “the New World”.

The gift shop sells various stuffed animals made in China and yarn made on site.

There are also some dogs hanging around, drinking from alpaca water troughs and something I noticed in Israel … water fountains here have things to fill bottles with. Sure, they exist in America though here, it’s a standard almost everywhere.

Camel Rides

Should you think you’re in the middle of nowhere driving down long dirt roads surrounded by desert, in the middle of the middle of nowhere is a Bedouin guy who lives in a tent next to about two dozen camels down a ‘road’ which is really just rocks cleared along a path in the desert. Nice guy. Speaks Hebrew, Arabic, a tiny, tiny bit of English and his place is the only one I’ve been to in my entire time in Israel that doesn’t take an American credit card. In fact, he only takes cash. He took USD because it’s all I had and after six months here, I finally put some NIS in my wallet in case this happens again.

One of his camels was extremely friendly … put his neck / head around me and liked to be pet. He’s just a boy, I was told. The rest of the camels were in a pen and two of them got harnessed with a very comfortable canvas saddle for two with gripping bar. Don’t try and breathe on your own. I imagine certain people in iron lungs could ride their camels to breathe … your air exits every time the camel bounces.

Around you go in the desert with the Bedouin running alongside you with his very thick black hair and grey streaks seemingly from generations and generations of being in the sun more than a Sherpa is in the snow. I’d like to see a Sherpa ride a camel or Bedouin go skiing … then again, that sounds like cruel and unusual punishment. On the other side of the desert Bedouin are two of his dogs running alongside your camels – you can have them pull you in Colorado with the American version of a Bedouin who likes to live on his own and whose kids are homeschooled because it’s a 1/2 hour bus ride to the school bus that takes two hours to get to school.

Out to the edge of the Rimon crater you go and then back around in a large circle. It was fun and the kids enjoyed.

Artist Colony

Going to preface with if you’re going to one artist colony, go to Tzvat – best one I’ve ever seen. There’s a more sleepy one going on in Mitzpe Ramon, along the highway and easy to get to. Various artists with somewhat of a “rock”-like motif (meaning, stones … not music …and the stones don’t roll – it’s like hibbie-gibbies … you can’t have the gibbies without the hibbies). Various eateries abound as well as an outdoor bookcase of free books and nice sort of gift shop where we found some educational type things … nice games, books, yarn, and so on.

Definitely worth the trip and on my second visit when we had a lot more time than I thought we did, we found totally different things to do just sort of driving around / searching the internet. Hopefully, my blog provides a guide to help others knows what’s there, though in general, my experience in Israel has been that when you explore, you find interesting places and things to do.

One More Interesting … Guy … Followed by Political Rant

An idealistic youngin’ had a table near the restaurants handing out circular shmurah matzah for your seder. (We were there a few days before Pesach.) Fine, I’m cool with that. It’s not like the Mormons where the young ideal ones are always in pairs of two at all times for safety and avoiding slacking off … Jews are safe even by themselves around here, so is my experience.

Then he came around to the tables to hand out matzah. Fine, I guess. Then – and I mean this only about this guy – not about any group as a whole – he got pushy. Don’t get pushy.

“Do you have shmurah matzah for the seder?”
“Yes.”
“But is it hand-made?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”

Believe it or not a guy with an Israeli Parks hat eating at Pizza Hut uses handmade shumurah matzah. Maybe I’m a bit of a contradiction due to my amalgam of history … secular American Jew, Jerusalem haredi Jew, American black hat Jew, American black kippah not hat Jew, Israeli smaller black kippah Jew who only wears black pants and on occasion, a baseball cap only for practical purposes and only in the last few years.

Getting more off the topic, I came across this video about Chabad and Zionism from a very smart man who eloquently explains Chabad’s relationship to Zionism today. Chabad was classically extremely anti-Zionist like Satmar. Now they’re … more to the right on this issue than I thought.

Final thought as I get even more off track … I’m annoyed by some of the “us vs. them” mentality I heard in haredi yeshiva. Examples: jokes about the Israel government being stupid which just aren’t true, people in Tel Aviv name calling Haredi Jews on the street, that secular Jews here are ideologically against religion, and my favorite … that the Zionists purposely changed the days of the week to remove Shabbos from the name. It’s much more diverse here and the “anti-” and “no religion” people here seem to be not so many. Judaism is weaved into the fabric here.

Turning back to the days of the week thing … it’s true that the Shir Shel Yom says “yom rishon b’Shabbos” … however, it’s just a matter of practicality to call it “yom rishon” rather than adding “b’Shabbos” every time. Even more so, in the siddur itself, just before Aleinu is a quote from the mishnah with each day … using the same as modern Hebrew version. Don’t be a hater, just because. Be secure.