We got on the bus after leaving the Dead Sea, and the landscape went from what I see in books about Israel, to full-on Star Wars. Massive hills or little mountains litter the landscape, that was shaped by water rushing down the slopes long ago. However, this doesn't happen now as the area only gets around 2 inches of water per year. There are valleys with green, yet the rest of the landscape is dry with dead grass. It looks amazing. Our bus went onto a "road" (it was a area a lot of people drove on not really a road). The bus was massive, there was a fall-off on the left side, it was scary. But, we arrived at our destination.
We hiked up a mountain with a man named Ziv. The mountain used to be an army base. It has stairs climbing up to the top, old bullets in the ground, sand everywhere, and little stations where people could lookout from. It looked over the Jordan River to the country of Jordan on the other side. One side of the Mountain was brown and dull, yet beautiful. The other side was green from the river and covered with date palms. And that was why we were with Ziv.
Ziv is a date farmer. The date plantation that we overlooked was his! He took us down, we saw some wild donkeys next to his farm, and gave us some fresh dates, still full of juice. I don't like dates, but I finished, and even enjoyed this one. We all wondered how they could have a date plantation in such a dry place, and he explained. Each tree needs 120 gallons of water A DAY. If you read the waste water treatment plant blog, you would understand that waste water is cleaned and used for farming. That's where they get the water for dates! It comes from the east and in the mountains. Yea, the water really travels that far.
Dates are hard to grow. First, they take up to 15 years to fully mature. You need to get a plumbing system connecting to each tree, cut off the old leaves, zip tie the branch that grows dates, cull off the dates so they will grow bigger, hand pick the best ones, and so so much more. They have 700 trees at Ziv's plantation, and he has 4 full time workers + guards to stop stealing during the "on" season.
All in all, it was super cool to see how people live so differently in this remote and beautiful place.