A Local's Guide to the Negev Highlands.
The ultimate and complete guide for visitors to the Negev – everything you need to know to fully experience the Negev Highlands
Har Avnon is a short stopover on your drive from our guesthouse to the Dead Sea. It is a lookout that allows you to see the Big Crater – recently renamed Yeruham Crater – (which you are about to cross) in its entirety. Of course it’s not actually a crater but you already know that.
To get to it,
I have a confession to make. I am not exactly a lover of the great outdoors. In fact, before we started writing this blog, my idea of a perfect and well spend day involved a good book and comfortable mattress.
I’m not sure you want to drive 50 minutes from our guesthouse just for this, but if you are planning to visit Shivta and eat at Café Ezuz then the Nitzana Hillocks would be a fine additional activity.
I wrote a separate post about the Albert Promenade (the red line on the map), a scenic walk that runs the length of Mitzpe Ramon along the rim of the makhtesh, a one hour hike, and I mentioned in that post that this walk has an extension that leaves the town behind and runs through a sculpture park. I referred to it as the fifth stretch. Well, this is it (orange line on the map).
Borot Lotz hike is a 45 minute drive from Sde Boker and the guesthouse.
Update: before you venture to Borot Lodz, check that the road 171 is open. Due to some important damages to the road, it has been closed in October 2022 until repaired.
You start driving South on road 40 in the direction of Mitzpe Ramon. About 6 km before Mitzpe Ramon, you turn right on road 171.
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Kornmehl Restaurant sits atop a desolate hill on Route 40 one kilometre south of the 211 turn-off, a 15 minutes drive from our guesthouse. All you can see of it from the road below are rows of parked cars of the customers,
Har Tzaror or Mount Tzaror is the dark mesa you can see from the Zin cliff to the north east. The hike takes you in a wide arc around this feature.
This is a two hours hike out, the time to go is December/January and the objective is the annual appearance of narcissi.
Of all Israel’s National Parks this is one of the most striking, most accessible. An easy hike of 15 minutes each way, suitable for all ages, it brings you to a spectacular spring at the junction of two towering cliffs of limestone which are home to dozens of nesting birds.
All year round coachloads of Israeli schoolchildren, soldiers, scouts and pensioners arrive to pay homage; it is an essential stop for TAGLIT groups (Birthright) and one of the few offficial locations for military ceremonies. In less than one hour they are coached in and coached out and are probably not aware that this is a university campus and that 2000 real people live here.
