O, the best friend recently turned boyfriend (that's for another post), managed to get me out of the house this Saturday for a short easy hike, after we spent last weekend feeling like we slept it away. We live in a small city (pop. 33,000) in the middle of the desert. It's a fifteen minute drive through desert to the closest town (pop 10,000) and a half an hour drive (through desert) to the nearest developed city (pop 194,000). So the perks of such an isolated landscape is that taking a hike requires a three minute drive to the edge of the city and walking up to one of the trails that follows a (dry) riverbed. It was nice to get out into nature, even if all I wanted to do was to curl up in some soft grass (where?) under a tree with my new book. We saw a young Bedouin man herding his sheep and goats...the babies only a month old. He held one for me so I could pet him. And as we were climbing our way out of the riverbed we saw a group of young peeps hiking with guitars on their backs, we waved (from afar) and they yelled out to join them for coffee (black coffee over a tiny fire) and hookah, I agreed under the condition they play us some music. So they climbed up, and we climbed down, and there we sat with four young strangers, singing songs and drinking coffee. And I thought to myself... only in Israel. *On the left side of the photo: a little nook in the mountain and in it our new friends where we left them singing, drinking, and smoking.