In the late morning today I finally did the hike to Ein N'tafim. I parked the car along highway 12 just north of the southern checkpoint and walked down the 4x4 dirt road. It was about a 15-minute walk, downhill all the way through desolate, rough, lifeless, and yet very beautiful terrain, to Nakhal N'tafim. The nakhal is broad and gently sloped at that point, and there's little to indicate what happens just downstream: a sudden drop-off! If there were any water running in the stream, it would be a great waterfall, but, of course, there was none today. I took quite a few pictures, and some of them seem pretty nice, but I don't think ANY of them really give enough sense of scale to convey the impact of the actual precipice! There are actually 2 trails to descend to the bottom of the falls. One of them goes way around in some way that I didn't even try to follow. The other one descends literally vertically via metal climbing loops attached to the rock! It's like a ladder in a rather tight space between the rocks. I decided I wasn't brave enough to attempt that (although it's probably not really so hard). Besides, I didn't want to have to climb back up, and I kept in my mind that I already had quite a bit of exercise ahead just going back up the road I had come down.
Shortly after I started walking back up, I met a 4x4 vehicle coming down the road with a whole family in it. These were the first people I had seen since starting on my hike. A couple of minutes later, another vehicle came down, this one with just a single park ranger in it (from the Nature and Parks Authority). He greeted me and detected immediately from my accent that I spoke English. Of course, this was his opportunity to practice English and the end of mine to practice Hebrew. LOL. Seeing that I had emptied the water bottle I had brought with me, he offered me some water, but I didn't feel that I needed any, so I declined. A number of minutes later, he again approached, going back up the road. This time, I was standing in a shady spot catching my breath for a bit. He again stopped and offered me a ride back to the highway. Although it wasn't all that far and I'm sure I could have made it easily, I readily accepted his offer. He was a very nice and friendly young man.
I ate lunch today at Greg, having their omelet sandwich.
This afternoon, I talked to David's sister and her husband. I found out that her granddaughter will probably be able to enroll in an online program to do her schooling at home. She needs that kind of individual attention, so that will be good for her.
This evening, I did some good work on arranging Flor Peeters "Prelude" for string orchestra, specifically for the virtual Synful Orchestra. Although all the notes are already in the computer (from when I recorded the piece for organ on one of my albums), I have to edit every single one and enter and tweak values for controllers in order to make it really sound nice and correct for strings.
I talked to David twice today, the second time just moments ago. He seems to be in better spirits and has enjoyed some chats with other patients. Tomorrow, I'll be driving up to visit him and to bring some additional items.
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