This has the potential for being a long-winded post, so here goes…
We just returned from a 16-day-long visit to Israel. After what is now more than 13 years in America, I am always impressed at how much changed, and how much changes, every time I visit what used to be my home. Like any person visiting home, emotions swirl around when I am there. My niece, almost 14 years old, asked my why I left in the first place. Israel is different than when I left it, just as I am, but I am not sure I belong there either then or now (insert whine here).
Consumer/Travel Info Break:
First the flight: we flew with Alitalia – first time for me with the Italian national carrier. Cost and time-wise this was an unbeatable combination – 14 hours from Boston to Tel Aviv. Planes are old, food is iffy, no arrangements almost to having a baby on board. The latter point should caution parents. No bassinets, nothing. The most offered on a trans-Atlantic Alitalia flight was a seat-belt extender; yes, not the loop belt that babies get on other airlines, but the extender for really large people.
Malpensa Airport in Milan, too, is an odd place. For an airport with its traffic magnitude, it is amazingly tiny and devoid of any creature comforts (read normal restaurants, more than 5 shops to walk through). There is one main cafeteria, a fancy Ferrari shop, 3 other clothing stores and a Swatch store and eh, that’s it. Everything is very crowded because there is just no space. The most fun part is the hall were people arrive from all around the world and transfer to their connecting flights. You have to stand in line for security and the lines are pretty packed and people have very interesting odors. Eeew. But it goes real fast and then you are off. In short, good thing Alitalia’s connections are amazingly short (not the 7-hour connection in London when flying BA from Los Angeles which I used to experience when I lived there). So in short, Malpense is nothing to see and a smidge over a Greyhound station.
It was awesome to see my family after however long it was since our last visit. All the kids grew up so much, everyone admired Ari and in short it was heartwarming.
The weather in Israel was supposed, at least in my memories to be great. Everyone told us while we were there that the weather was great. I am whining. The weather was sunny, warm and intensely humid. Sweat pores that were on hiatus for years (I used to visit Israel during winters while living in Boston) found a way to go back to work. You just sweat a lot.
A happy anecdote for me was that after 13 years of being on Israel’s Army reservist list, I was honorably discharged. No major deal if you live abroad but still nice. I spent 3 years serving in cushy and cushiest positions in the Air Force and feel like I paid some of my dues to the society that brought me up and means so much to me. I hope Ari will decide on his own will to volunteer for service. Hopefully there will be no reason for it by the time he is old enough (this is what people said when I was born…) but in my opinion as the home for the Jewish nation, members of that nation should do something for it, especially protect it.
A brief minute
Anyway, back to being spoiled and irritating: after a couple of days and meeting many of my good friends and their families, we headed to the Negev desert and to the town of Mizpe Ramon. Mizpe Ramon is a somewhat odd place. After the founding of the State of Israel, the leadership of Israel , especially David Ben-Gurion, believed that the best way to settle people in all corners of the country was to put them there unwittingly. Immigrants, who were flooding the country after the Holocaust from all corners of the world were placed in quickly built towns, several of which were literally in the middle of the desert. There is an ever-present debate how the European Jewish leadership screwed the North-African and Mesopotamian Jews by settling them far from the modern and bustling metropolitan Tel Aviv area, but in any way you look at it, moving from anywhere to the desert has to be stark.
The immigrants were not thrown out of the bus with sand around them but instead were housed in quickly built, often pre-fabricated, building projects inside of at-the-time best-of-breed architectural visions. So you have relatively good roads, a city center, schools, etc. Not a bad idea, but not everything worked for the inhabitants of these new-from-scratch towns, and not everything really worked with the desert. Mizpe Ramon was one such place. While apparently well-designed, there was little for the inhabitants to do there. Other than supporting military bases located around it, government-supported industries withered the instant subsidies waned. Although entrepreneurial, at the time starting businesses from scratch was difficult all the more with very little immediate customer base with even less disposable income. The result rampant unemployment, some crime, bad reputation and visions gone awry.
Luckily the desert charm did not go unnoticed and furthermore, Mizpe Ramon is atop one of the most striking landscapes in the world, the Ramon crater, an enormous heart-shaped crater carved by years of water erosion. Enhanced by the wide array of minerals in its soil, the crater offers a multitude of hiking, as well as growingly popular off-roading opportunities. The town also lies not far from Avdat, an ancient Nabatean roadside stop along a route running across the desert to the Mediterranean port of Gaza.
Eventually a decent hotel company (Isrotel) came up with the idea to set up a hotel there and we stayed in it, the Ramon Inn. The hotel is a very odd creation. On the one hand it has many creature comforts, from an excellent can-do staff, a decent restaurant and a lovely lobby to a world-class swimming pool. On the other hand, the hotel was created by enclosing a single pre-fabricated housing block in some glass and concrete, converting apartments into hotel rooms. The hotel is even located in the middle of housing block clusters and gives you the feeling of being a resident of sorts, not that there is much excitement nor perks. Nonetheless, it is not far removed or anything like resorts in Mexico and the major upside is that it provides work to the locals.
Being spoiled and ego-centric (why is it so freakin’ hot here?!) I would not have cared so much or even bothered to think of all of this had it not for my son, who was not experiencing his best sleeping pattern, and my need to exercise. The combination resulted in early-morning walks around this dusty (desert == dust) experiment in urban architecture. Mizpe Ramon is a very quiet place, there are many immigrants, especially now with the addition of newcomers from the former Soviet bloc, as well as military families. Then there are quite a few ultra-orthodox Jews who moved there because rent is so cheap. And here and there are the people who moved there because the desert is so striking and the weather, unlike in Israel’s urban center, is amazing. The air dry and clear, warm but not vicious (well, just don’t go into the desert alone for fun). Nonetheless, there is just very little to do, minimal buzz of life; a very different place altogether.
Eco-tourism is a growing trend worldwide and the desert is still relatively unspoiled. Two local attractions were especially cool in my eyes. The first is the alpaca farm, where an Israeli couple raises this South-American animal with success, along with its relative, the Llama. The couple started the farm after spending time backpacking (like so many post-military service Israelis do) in South America. They now have a staff of like-minded visionaries (ok, they are hippies) who help them live out there, carving a living in the desert. I find that inspiring. Then there’s the Ecotarium, a tiny zoo housing many of the life-forms of the desert. Managed and ran by the Israeli Nature Defense Society, it is managed by similarly fascinating characters who want to live out there (as opposed to the very intense Tel Aviv metro). The devotion the people felt to their work, the love to the desert and the quirkiness of the town itself was special.
[Photos will be uploaded soon, I promise]
From the Northern Negev desert we separated from my family and drove down to the southern-most tip of Israel – the Red Sea resort town of Eilat. On the way we stopped at the Timna biblical copper mine park. King Solomon is presumed to be among the first to mine copper in this Mars-like area, where striking rock formations offer hiking opportunities and fascinating vistas. That is, if it is not so hot outside and you do not have a baby. Filed under ‘visit when Ari is 10 years old’. We also had an unfortunate occurrence when a pothole caused a flat tire and I had to perform a very angry tire-change after being told by the car rental company (Europecar) to go f- myself. This apparently does not happen in America when renting from decent companies. Never claimed not to be spoiled. Anyway, that added to my 2 day visit to Eilat the fun challenge of finding a tire shop to fix the wheel. Had I been a foreigner, god knows I would have flipped out at this 3rd world level of service.
Eilat is sort of the opposite of Mizpe Ramon. Although also originally settled with many immigrants, it benefited greatly from government support to its tourist industry. It became a duty-free region in the ’90s and its port is where every Japanese and Korean made vehicle lands in Israel, where Mazda and Hyundai appear to be the dominant brands. Eilat used to be the great frontier, 300 miles from Tel Aviv it is a world away. At least it was in the ’70s and ’80s. When Israel ruled the Sinai peninsula, it was the starting point of treks into the desert and scuba diving expeditions into the its beautiful coral reefs. The peace with Egypt took most of the natural beaches away; the port, and much more industrialized marine farming, killed the reefs that were still under Israeli control. What’s left from the naturally amazing in Eilat is an underwater observatory and refuge (they help sea turtles and other marine animals) and a somewhat touristy Dolphin beach, were you can swim with the animal.
Growing up, my family owned a vacation apartment in Eilat, on the outskirts of the town. Now those outskirts are really not so close to the edge and people actually live in an area that was all for vacationers from the North of Israel (e.g. anywhere not Eilat). World-class (well, world-size) hotels sprouted around the town and it is now as mature a tourist destination as any. Peace with Jordan also offers opportunities only imaginable during my teen years to visit the other side of the gulf of Akaba, where the town of Akaba was always a sort-of friendly enemy town. The Egyptian border is less friendly despite the peace due to the handful of deadly attacks on Israeli tourists who crossed the border for beach-side vacations. Crazed Egyptian soldiers and Al-Qaeda car bombs are enough to scare most Israelis away from a cheap natural vacation.
[More to come…]
