Crossing the border

Today we had a tour of Kibbutz Ketura where we stayed the night. It was fairly interesting. They do a bit of research into alternative housing for developing world situations - nothing really startling, but making the technology simpler. Things they work on are insulation using straw in adobe houses, light tunnels in the roof from water filled plastic bottles, methane converters etc. Of more interest was Methusela - named for the oldest man in the Bible. This is a Judean date palm grown from one of the seeds found in a Qumran jar and thought to be 2200 years old. It's a male and has no seeds. They now need to grow a female!

Methusela - and the son of the woman who grew it

The kibbutz used to have a herd of cows - some 600 I think. It must have been rather hard on the cows as the temperatures there are quite high, reaching 50 degrees at times. Eventually they got rid of them. The barn where they lived was too close to the algae production plant. This is 650 km of glass tubing where they grow algae used in cosmetic production. The algae is high end stuff - worth US$12,000 a kilo.

Red algae growing in the sun

The other large income earner for the kibbutz is solar energy. They have a couple of very large solar arrays. The resultant electricity they sell to the sole Israeli energy company.

One of the arrays of solar panels

From there we headed to Eilat on the Red Sea/Gulf of Aqaba. It's a tatty, dusty, dirty resort town right on the Gulf. We spent two very uninspiring hours there. It seemed like a whole day. I did have a paddle!

Eilat and a bit of the Red Sea

After lunch we crossed into Jordan. I may be wrong but the toilets on the Israeli side are the best in the country - clean, fresh and air-conditioned. In contrast to the Jordanian ones... This may be a deliberate policy of the Israeli government to make the Jordanians look bad? It also took some time to process things on the Jordanian side - our guide did most of the smooching of the Jordanian immigration. We waited in an Arab coffee shop right there at the border post. Somebody's cousin? It was also very hot. One or two of our group got somewhat flustered, but we eventually were admitted to the country.

Crossing the border

We continued to Wadi Musa to our hotel. And that night some of us went for a "Petra by Night" experience. This was fantastic.

The Petra by Night Team

We walked down into a canyon, only lit by lines of candles, eventually arriving a what looked like a clearing. There they had placed hundreds of candles and in their eerie glow we could see like a huge bas-relief what looked like a temple carved out of the stone.

We were invited to sit on a mat on the ground. Tea was served and then a couple of musicians played a traditional Arab flute and then an ancient Arab cello-like instrument. The effect was haunting, lit only by candle light.