Mitzpe Ramon to Midreshet Ben Gurion
Rest days are always the most exhausting when I am on trail. We haven't done anything but eat and sleep and buy more food for the last couple of days and yet I am completely exhausted.
The first part of today we spent slowly getting ready and checking out of our hostel at the very last moment possible. We spent the rest of the morning by the grocery store taking turns to buy resupply stuff for the next stretch until Arad. We met a woman from Vancouver Island which is pretty close to Washington. The world is really not that big. After eating a couple popsicles (the kind we found at Timna Park at the begining of our time here) we went to search for the bus station.
My brother N arrived to hike with us a little bit. He has never been overnight backpacking before so P, A and I are going to be showing him the ropes. We decided to skip a few miles to get to a night camp where we can start hiking tomorrow to ease N into the swing of things. Plus, this week is supposed to be really hot (like our first days on trail) so we are trying to minimize the shock to his system.
We took a bus from Mitzpe Ramon to Midreshet Ben Gurion where the first prime minister of Israel (Ben Gurion) and his wife are buried. After visiting their resting place we started hiking towards our night camp. About halfway there the Israeli equivalent of a park ranger stopped us and informed us that we needed to go back to a campsite a kilometer or so behind us because we were not allowed to be hiking in the park an hour before sunset to an hour after sunrise. Because of this tomorrow will be a few kilometers longer but it shouldn't be too bad since it's all flat.
We set up camp and N got his first taste of cowboy camping. Another group of hikers camped at the site as well and gave A a cup of coffee which he managed to spill before getting to enjoy it. P and I are trying to get A to take a trail name that has something to do with his constantly spilling or dropping food on himself but he is resistant to the idea.