Negev trip, day 1

The southern region of Israel, which begins just a few miles after Zikim, is called the Negev. It’s very hot, but very dry, which is what you’d expect of a desert.

Today we drove down to Mitzpe Ramon, a town on the edge of a huge crater caused by water erosion, called Makhtesh Ramon ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makhtesh_Ramon ).

On the way we passed the large solar farm ( extra 1) - https://www.israel21c.org/take-a-tour-of-israels-huge-new-solar-energy-valley-in-the-desert/

We took the visitor centre tour, the first half of which was about Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli astronaut who was killed in the space shuttle that burned up on re-entry in 2003. Yeah, I cried - well, they played his last communication with his family ... The second half culminates in the revealing of the view after a short film about its creation, a portion of which is my main Blip and then there’s a bit more in extra 7.

In the afternoon we went down into the crater to one of the ‘attractions’, The Carpentry ( extra 3, 8 & 9 ) and then in the evening we did the obligatory watching of the sunset from the outskirts of the town ( extras 4,5 & 6 ). It was windy!

We stayed in a spare room of a nice chap who is a music student at the college in the town, which I found on Air BnB. He was jamming at a pub that night so we went along to listen. It’s a very jazz orientated music scene there, not altogether my cup of tea but I was willing to give it a go... probably would have been alright if it wasn’t for the flute ...
View of the town towards the crater is extra 2.