handstand split

ben capoeira
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

ben capoeira

ben capoeira
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

Benjamin got his belt on Friday at a Capoiera festival that involved a three hour roda (the musical circle in which capoiera-ists spar, two at a time). The auditorium was too dark to get a good picture of him on the stage - besides, his five-minute sparring session with a senior teacher involved the teacher doing back flips and handstands around him while Benjamin ducked and wove like a boxer. But I did get some pictures in the hallway afterwards. Some people say capoeira was a stealth martial art practiced by African slaves in Brazil who were forbidden to learn to fight - there are even people who believe it was used to fend off slavers.

lev and ice cream at the crater

lev and ice cream at the crater
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

This worlds-end town has a long promenade on the crater, and a single bar/cafe with outdoor tables and really excellent cappucino which is an absolute prerequisite for fully enjoying the view. Or, in Lev's case, ice cream. In this picture he's already split his lip at the hostel but hasn't yet split his chin in the byzantine wine cave.

Apparently, Mitzpe Ramon was founded when the government dumped a group of Moroccan immigrants in the middle of the desert and told them they were an hour and a half from Tel-Aviv (ummm - two and a half hours, and that's without traffic). The setting is unreal and beautiful but the town is a little sad and run-down, and the major presence is an army base that fills the two restaurants (pizza and falafel/shwarma) with a steady stream of customers. And the ibex, who have no fear.

ramon crater

ramon crater
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

It is difficult to get a sense of the scale of the crater. There is something flattening in the view from the promenade at the rim - even before I took a photograph it already seemed miniaturized, condensed. I only began to get a sense of the immenseness of the crater when I walked around inside it. The sand is all different colors - ashy lavender, black, spots of deep red like blood stains. In the fifties, lots of people came to mine the crater -that parti-colored sand suggested all kinds of treasures - but they never found much, so it's been relatively undisturbed. To which Ben said, like a character in a Disney special, "But the crater is the treasure."

We've been watching the films at all of these different attractions - the crater, the tower of David museum in Jerusalem, the observatory at Eilat. The one in Eilat had moving chairs, like an amusement ride, and a sentimental story about illegal whaling in Africa which featured a strategically multi-racial cast of pirates in torn t-shirts. The film at the visitor's centre at Mitzpe Ramon talked about the early settlement of the area in the Nabatean period, and then by the Romans and Byzantine empire. Then the silhouette of a rider on a horse crossed the screen and a deep voice-over said, "This period of civilization ended with the coming of the Arab invaders." Fast forward to the Jewish state. Honestly. At that point I would have welcomed the pirates.

ben and the pistachio tree

ben and the pistachio tree
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

On the way to the crater, we also stopped at Ein Avdat, a nature park. Here Benjamin is sitting under the northernmost pistachio tree in Israel - well, not the actual single northernmost tree, but one of several in this latitude. We climbed a series of very steep stone steps up to the top of a ravine bordering the waterfall, and signs warned us to watch out for the abyss.

poppies

jer lev poppies
Originally uploaded by nostalgist

We went away last week, to Machtesh Ramon, which is the largest erosion crater in the world. On the way we passed this field of kalaniyot (poppies) and waded in.

ben

ben
Originally uploaded by nostalgist