Oases in Israel : Relaxing at three comfort zones in the harsh desert

The two-lane, desert highway from Be’er Sheva to Israel’s 25-mile-long Makhtesh Ramon (Ramon Crater) stretches through an archipelago of Bedouin camps, past a few modest clumps of trees and then on for mile after hypnotic mile of rocks and rolling hills of sand.

If you like the desert, then you’ll love the Negev. There’s no mistaking it for anything else. But if, like us, you are partial to the world’s tropical forests and green highlands, you might find yourself in a sudden, thirsty panic, combing the horizon for every last tuft of vegetation and imagining your car giving out at the gaping jaws of an enormous snake.

The first clue that maybe, just maybe, this is an overreaction is in the relatively heavy traffic on this well-paved road that does not lead to all that many places. Route 40, as it is called, runs south from Be’er Sheva--a famed watering hole for Abraham’s sheep 3,800 or so years ago--toward the Gulf of Eilat (Aqaba) at the southernmost tip of Israel. True, the Israelis saw fit to stick a number of ugly army installations and a substantial prison out here in what is not exactly the country’s prime real estate. But, in fact, we found ourselves in the company of a number of tour buses during a weekend excursion away from Jerusalem at the beginning of this year.

With two kids and a grandmother growing antsy in the backseat of our VW Golf, my husband and I drove through this seemingly unending landscape for a couple of hours before we rounded a bend and, boom, ran right smack into the town of Mitzpe Ramon.

Like so many of the places we have discovered in our 1 1/2 years working as journalists in Israel, Mitzpe Ramon may not be the most beautiful town we have ever seen. But it is a fun spot, nonetheless--good for walking and Jeep tours of the nearby crater, good as a stopover on the way to the Red Sea resort of Eilat, and a good base from which to set out on a camel ride.

Its very existence in the middle of the Negev seems a minor miracle.

With about 5,000 residents, many of them Russian immigrants and Black Hebrews originally from the United States, Mitzpe Ramon is a neat community of cement apartment buildings that look like college dormitories, parks with clean playgrounds and a municipal swimming pool. But the town has had trouble attracting industry and has suffered from severe unemployment in recent years since the more direct Route 90 to Eilat was built.

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In the middle of town is the Ramon Inn, a modern 96-room hotel whose lobby boasts a welcome riot of green plants. It does not offer a view of the desert crater, as guidebooks would seem to suggest, but it does have attractive rooms done in purple and peach pastels, and the staff is friendly--and will organize and book family activities for you, including hiking, Jeep tours, cliff rappelling, etc.

We stayed in an air-conditioned two-bedroom suite with living room (an extra sofa bed there) and equipped kitchenette for $174 a night. A regular double room is $86 weeknights and $120 weekends. This includes a nice buffet breakfast. for American or Middle Eastern taste buds. The spread is fresh fruit, juice, cereals, scrambled eggs and whole wheat breads, or pita bread with smoked fish, cheeses, vegetables and olives. For dessert, there are sweet breads, syrupy fruits and halvah.

There is a well-regarded youth hostel in the area, Beit Noam Youth Hostel, that must be booked well in advance; and the Hanion Beirot Camping Site, which is open day and night with bathroom and cooking facilities and also has old-fashioned desert huts for guests who want to get closer to the land where Moses led the Israelites. We did not have a chance to visit either one on our family outing.

Mitzpe Ramon, which means “Ramon viewpoint,” sits on the lip of a true natural wonder--a 1,320-foot-deep crater carved by erosion rather than by a volcanic explosion or fallen meteorite. This really is the town’s raison d’e^tre.

Our first stop, however, was at an alpaca farm on the edge of town, the only one we know of in the Middle East. Ostensibly, this was to please the children. In fact, it was to satisfy our own curiosity about just exactly how these animals of the South American Andes had adapted to the Negev.

The answer is, just fine.

“We shear them in April and build them lots of shade,” said one of the farmhands. “We are at a 1,000 feet here, so sometimes we even get snow in the winter.”

Seeing our incredulous faces on a sunny, shirt-sleeves day in January, he added, “Well, today isn’t the best example.”

The Alpaca Farm is a little jewel. The Israeli owners brought about 120 alpacas from Chile eight years ago and now have 300, a majority of them born in the desert.

Many of these long-necked creatures wander about unfenced and will gladly nosh alpaca food from your hand, which generally tickles, except for the few animals we encountered with buck teeth.

In addition to alpacas, the place offers dogs, horses, goats, rabbits, camels and a cactus garden. Our daughter Sara, age 4 at the time, happily took a turn around the farm on a saddled llama, but her 2-year-old sister, Anna, found the idea horrifying, preferring to stay on terra firma.

We passed on the local archery range in order to stop in, for a nominal entrance fee, at the Bio Ramon Animal Center, a mini-zoo of desert life. I found this collection of insects, lizards, snakes and sand rats in pens less than appealing, but the girls were enthralled, particularly because the snakes were lying next to their just-shed skins.

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The kids, on the other hand, were underwhelmed by the Makhtesh Ramon, while we found the vast crater so compelling that it changed our feelings for the desert.

We made our first visit to the rim of the crater in time to see it turn every shade of red and copper at sunset. We took the kids with us on the gorgeous stroll along the walled boardwalk that hugs the crater rim and across a footbridge over an ominous crevasse. They enjoyed the walk while we soaked up the quiet view of this craggy bowl six miles wide and 1,300 feet deep.

The next morning, Grandma stayed with the girls so that we could return to the crater for a closer look. The steep, many-layered walls of the Makhtesh Ramon provide a window into millions of years of geology, and a glass wall at the Mitzpe Ramon Visitors Center literally offers a window jutting over the edge of the crater. In the light of day, the crater is a patchwork of black basalt, sand-colored quartzite and ruddy clays.

The makhtesh--the Hebrew word for mortar--is more of a deep depression or valley than a Grand Canyon, but surrounded by near-vertical cliffs that were carved by water draining through a single wadi millions of years ago. The Visitors Center, built like a spiral shell from one of the sea animals that inhabited the area when it was under water about 4 1/2 billion years ago, offers a 15-minute audiovisual show and a model of the crater. A permanent wall exhibit walks you through geological layers of limestone, dolomite, sandstone, volcanic rock and clay, and explains the flora and fauna of the region as well.

Yes, flora and fauna. Deceptively quiet and barren, the Negev, it turns out, is as lively as our imaginations. It blooms with autumn crocuses and spring flowers, even a few pistachio trees. In addition to snakes, it is populated with ibex and gazelles, foxes, hyenas and wild asses. Even human beings have been here a good 100,000 years or so.

During the days we were wandering about, we didn’t see any gazelles or wild asses, but we did run into a few busloads of Japanese tourists, Israeli students and soldiers on a field trip.

On our way out of town, we came upon the Tzel Midbar “Desert Shade” Center for camel tours. We were too late to take one of their one-hour camel and Jeep rides around the crater or to spend time in the Desert Sculpture Park there. But we enjoyed watching the camel-hands saddle up their beasts and told ourselves we would return sometime for one of their two-day rides along the routes of Nabatean traders, who bartered in spices and other goods with the Far East and Arabia.

Heading for home, we ran through the list of creatures we had seen. We all felt quite fulfilled by the visit, except perhaps for our little one, Anna, who concluded, “Now, I need to see elephants.”

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GUIDEBOOK: Crater World

Getting there: The most direct road from Jerusalem to Be’er Sheva goes directly south through the West Bank towns of Bethlehem and Hebron, not areas where safety can be guaranteed. American travelers are advised to avoid the West Bank by driving west to Ashkelon, then cutting south to Be’er Sheva.

Where to stay: Ramon Inn, 1 Ein Akev St., Mitzpe Ramon; telephone from U.S. 011-972-7-658-8822, fax 011-972-7-658-8151. There are rooms, suites and two-bedroom family apartments with kitchenettes at this Isrotel property; doubles, $86 weeknights, $120 weekends, including buffet breakfast.

Beit Noam Youth Hostel, close to the Visitors Center and the edge of the crater; tel. 011-972-7-658-8443, fax 011-972-7-658-8074. One of the nicest hostels in the country, family accommodations with private baths and cooking facilities but no air-conditioning. Rates, including breakfast, about $20 dorm, $25 per person double room.

Tours: Desert Shade Tours; tel. 011-972-7-6586-229 The company offers day- to weeklong trips, on foot, camel, Land Rover and bus.

The Society for Protection of Nature in Israel (SPNI) offers nature hikes that must be booked in advance; contact SPNI’s Mitzpe Ramon field school, U.S. telephone (800) 411-0966.

For more information: Israel Government Tourist Office, 6380 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 1700, Los Angeles, CA 90048; (213) 658-7462, fax (213) 658-6543.

--M.M.