The Ramon Crater weekend

Wassup. So my weekend trip was very last minute because I was planning on doing a hike to the dead sea with a couple of people but everyone who was gunna go backed out.. so I was really bummed about that and then one of my friends Rachel from Boston asked if I wanted to join her and a couple of people to visit the Ramon crater. This is a great example of how when one door closes, another one opens.. and damn it opened real wide because this weekend turned out AMAZING. :) So first we took a bus to Ber Sheva and met up with our friend Yoella who was on my Muss trip two years ago! She's on a pre-army program and had the weekend off and decided to come with us. Then we took a two hour beautiful bus ride through the desert and finally got off in a small town and walked around for a bit because it was so adorable and there were tons of Ibex's everywhere just chillen and walking around. (An Ibex is a weird furry deer like animal with huge horns). We were pretty lost and couldn't find our hostel for a while and we stumbled upon a huge CHABAD sign (those are ultra religious jews who host jews for shabbat all over the world because they want jews to perform mitzvot so the messiah will come sooner!) and all we had for dinner was canned food so of course we wanted a full, home cooked shabbat meal along with the experience so we knocked on their door and all 8 kids ran up to greet us and they got really excited that we wanted to come and told us to come back in a couple of hours. It was a crazy meal with all of the kids running around and yelling while the father was trying to teach the dvar torah.. they could speak a bit of English and the dad was trying to translate the torah portion of the week. After dinner and benching we went back to our hostel and collected wood for a fire. The hostel is located right on the mountain and so our fire was on a huge cliff overlooking the crater and you could see tons of ibexs running around everywhere. We sat out there for a couple of hours and drank wine and talked a lot, and then the fire went out and we went for a walk. We walked about ten minutes away when we started hearing LOUD bumpin music coming from far away so decided to follow it even though it was taking us into the middle of the desert.. we walked for about 15 minutes and started seeing crazy colored flashing lights! There was a huge rager/concert in the middle of nowhere and there was a good amount of people with electronic/dubstep music and we were blown away and danced under the stars...We met some people and went to the local bar (probably the only bar in the town?) and hung out for a while and then went back to the hostel to sleep. We woke up and got
 the continental breakfast that came with the cost of the hostel and feasted. I realized the difference between american and israeli breakfasts: Israeli breakfasts consist of many different salads, yogurts,fruits, and eggs, and a breakfast at an American hostel would have been pancakes,bagels,sausages,bacon,hasbrowns,waffles, etc. Just thought I'd share that thought.. Anyway, we packed our lunches and water, and went off to find the hiking trail. We didn't get to hike for very long because one of my friends had a sore knee but it was an awesome view and we went to a beautiful lookout spot and ate lunch. We finished the hike after a couple hours and explore the town a bit more and then sat in the desert and read for a while before catching out bus back to Arad. :)