Wine in the desert?

The desert. Cruel. Forbidding. A place where new members of the IDF can be tested to the ultimate. A place of harsh extremes, where only the strong survive! A land where vineyards grow... What? Vineyards? In the desert? Well that was the dream of David Ben Gurion, first prime minister of Israel. He wanted to see the desert bloom. Just like in the Bible. He honoured God's Word (at least the Old Testament) although if I understood correctly, he was not religious. What he wished was for Israel to be strong. So today was mostly Ben Gurion day.

We started the day at his house in Sede Boker.


Here we discovered that while Ben Gurion was a statesman he was actually very down to earth. He resigned as prime minister twice simply because he wanted to live simply on the kibbutz in the Negev and make the desert bloom to benefit his country. This is his house.


Very basic. But that is the way he wanted to live. No pretentiousness. He wasn't perfect, but he helped make Israel the country it is today.

From there we travelled to Ein Avdat. There is some connection to Moses which John promised to tell us about tomorrow. We did see water from the rock which is supposedly how Moses did the striking the rock trick. Yeah and I'm the Easter bunny. While this trip has been better on the facts there are some places where weird stuff slips in. More of that later. The canyon we hiked through was beautiful. Makes me wish I had studied geology. From a creationist perspective of course.


I have a few even better pictures on the main camera but I was so tired after the walk I didn't want to take any more pictures. I can still feel it in my legs :) No matter. Good practice for Sinai in two days times.

Food became a priority after that and we went back to another part of Sede Boker to get a bite to eat. I bought snacks and also learnt that it is ok in Israeli culture for kids to jump the queue and push in anywhere. What we would call incredibly rude they consider normal. At that site there was also the graves of David Ben Gurion and his wife.

Our last official stop explains the blog title. We went to a superb wine farm in the Negev. It is run by a family and no machines are used. Picking and sorting and all the rest is done on the farm by hand. The wine there is very good. If they had had any port I would have bought some but they were fresh out of stock. Ah well.


Vineyards in the desert. Who would have guessed it. The farm also has guest houses for holiday makers. The owner tells us that neither the government nor the banks would give them money because they thought he was crazy to start a wine farm in the desert. Well he built the farm up without their money and has been going for 12 years. Did I mention the wine was very good? :)

Then it was back to base camp at the hotel with a short detour to the rim of the crater that Mitzpe Ramon is built next to. We saw a stupid video telling us about all the millions of years and a heck of a lot of nonsense. Not being a geologist it was difficult to pick out the good from the bad. It seems that the crater is formed by erosion.



Back at the hotel I had a swim in the pool and spend some time in the steam room. Then came down to do the blog. Will have to take a picture of the pool if I remember.

So that is all for today. I must say I was really excited tonight when I went out and spotted Orion and Canis Major constellations. And Orion was the right way up. That was so cool!

Tomorrow we go snorkelling in the Red Sea and take the looooong drive to Sinai.

This is Robert le Clus reporting,from Israel :)

-- Post From My iPhone

Location:נחל האלה,Mitzpe Ramon,Israel