Be’er Efe to Arad

Yesterday's unbearable heat had turned into a grey, gloomy and cold morning. A kilometer or so after we left camp (after we managed to get all our stuff into our packs without it blowing away) we met a group of girls who were with the group we had met yesterday. They were accompanied by an instructor who made sure they were safe last night since they didn't reach their objective location with the rest of the group. A little after that we were flagged down by a man who thought we were part of that student group and after we explained we were not he walked away... Kind of weird.

Most of the morning we walked in or next to the bed of a dried creek/river. It was sandy and rocky and littered with a bunch of plastic.

There were a few times where we had to scale some rocks to get to follow the trail.

If yesterday was magical because we saw our first camels, today was freaking Hogwarts because we saw a herd of camels and a BABY. Pretty much the highlight of the trip and made the whole day, rain and all, so much better. We also saw a bunch of sheep being shepherded on the hills around us while we were in the valley. 

Once we got out of the valley the wind picked up a bit but the sun was starting to peak through the clouds so the wind didn't have as much of a bite to it. This last section of the trail before Arad has us mostly walking on roads and through some Bedouin settlements with a bunch of exploded cars on the side of the road. 

We were able to see Arad from a distance before we actually got to town. Along the way we ran into the man who gave us a ride yesterday and he told us about a restaurant in town that was really good. He also mentioned that it closed soon so we had to all but run there. Unsurprisingly it was the fasted N walked all week. On the way there we saw more camels. We made it to the restaurant and found that our friend was joking with us and they were open literally all day. N was concerned that they wouldn't serve us due to our general hiker trash appearance and the fact that our everything was covered in dirt... There was nothing to worry about though and everyone there was very nice (most likely because we brought them a group of 12 people). 

While we spent a few hours eating and celebrating N's 18th birthday! and first backpacking trip I looked up a place for us to stay. After we had all eaten ourselves silly we walked to our BnB. Since I had just booked it the owner wasn't ready for us just yet so her husband took us on a tour of Arad. When we got back we settled into out room and beelined to the shower.