We were bound to leave Jerusalem just as it started to rain…. Perfect timing! We had planned an easy drive to the monastery of St. George near Jericho on our way to the dead sea resort we had booked ourselves into for 2 nights.
On our way we planned to also stop for a leisurely walk in Ein Gedi nature reserve to a beautiful waterfall and then a trip up the Masada Fortress by cable car before checking into our hotel in En Bokek. Apart from the latter, we ended up not doing any of the aforementioned things today. Instead we spent 4+ hours in our car driving through Israel.
But one thing after another. We left Jerusalem a bit later than we tought. The car was parked across town and Chris went to get it, while Esther wheeled the heavy double bag to the nearest Gate and the gate with the least hills to drag the bag up, which was lion gate. What we overlooked was that it was Friday and many palestinians and muslim Israelis were on their way to the AlAqsa Mosque and the dome of the rock. The closest gate for them is Lion gate. Hence extra heavy security and road blocks were in effect preventing Chris from driving up the the gate. So Esther needed to drag the heavy bag all the way down to the main road where Chris was waiting. Ok not too bad 10.45 AM departure Jerusalem.
Our next stop was meant to be the St. George’s Monastery—a picturesque monastery built directly into the sheer rock face of a canyon, or wadi (see the pictures from Chris last trip here). We turned onto the road leading toward the monastery, only to find ourselves stopped by a lowered barrier and a sign written in Hebrew. No one could tell us why the road was closed. Online, the monastery was still listed as open. Google Translate wasn’t much help, and neither was the woman at the adjacent gas station. A local settler at least confirmed—after checking Google Maps—that this was indeed the correct road to the monastery.
Only later did we learn that settlers had taken control of the access road and were preventing through traffic. Visitors to St. George’s Monastery are now supposed to take the next exit toward Jericho via Route 4570. Since we weren’t entirely sure whether we were allowed to drive there with our Israeli rental car, we eventually abandoned the plan. We’ll discuss tomorrow if we’ll give it another try.
Weird, but a bit disappointed we continued our journey to the dead sea, a winding highway that is marked with altitude markers of a special kind: you are currently 400 meters below sea level. Weird to think that one is at -400 m. Making good progress despite some crazy Israeli driving, our next stop, the Ein Gedi nature reserve. Looking forward to a nice walk and a great waterfall after all this rain, we made our way to the dead sea. After about a hour we were stopped by a security check point telling us that the road to En Bokek was closed due to flooding. It was only open to Ein Gedi Kibbuz.
Well that was a bummer. No way to get to our Hotel then, or to Masada and time soon. But at least we could still do our Ein Gedi hike as the road was open until there.
Driving along the Dead Sea, there is only one route, carved into the rocks running North /South . Mounatinous desert on one side and the dead sea on the other. Until we arrived at Ein Gedi it was just after 12 noon. We had water, we had nuts and dried apricots and wanted to set out to hike to the waterfall, and got stopped. Nature reserve closes at 1 PM due to Friday being Sabbat and it being winter time. We were going after te guide book, which stated open until 4 PM, last admittance 1 hr before closing. What a bummer! And now what are we to do?
Wait until the road was unblocked and from then on it would take 30 min to Ein Bokek/ our hotel?
Or turn around, drive all the way back to Jerusalem, and from there through the West bank from Jerusalem to Bethlehem and further South through Palestinian land, which is not allowed by the Israeli rental car companies. So we had to continue even further in direction of Tel Aviv, take a wide circle around the West Bank, loop back to the dead sea from the south and drive to Ein Bokek from the South. A detour of 3.5 hrs. drive. As the security guards could not tell us when the road would be reopened, we felt we really only had one choice as the hotel was already booked: drive all the way around.
Needless to say that it took us until 4 PM to arrive in Ein Bokek and nothing to show for…
But a nice board walk on the dead sea shore to stretch our legs. I guess we“ll need to recoup some time tomorrow … at least the weather forecast looks good… 18 degrees C and sunny….
