Introducing our grandchildren to the Negev; this time THE PERES WATER HOLES.
In our jeep with 4X4 we fill up the car with our two grandchildren and drive off road; they love it when we dance on the rocks. Interestingly, our ‘step counter’ counts every jump as a step!
Driving eastward towards the Dead Sea and the Rift Valley you see in the background the Jordanian Red Mountains, hazy in the morning sun. We got off road at Wadi or Nahal Tahmas, it was quite bumpy so we walked some because we did not want to expose the kids to severe jumps. There is something very wild about the bare mountains without vegetation; you can see how the sides of the wadi has been squeezed and pushed by an angry giant. This is the geographical border between the Yehuda Desert and the Negev Desert; there are markedly fewer acacia trees in the Yehuda desert than in our Negev because of it being much drier. We did check before going that no rain was expected in the area.
Approaching the Peres Water Holes the amount of people doing as we, increased: walking and groups of jeeps; this is the result of the Corona epidemic, the Negev is full of travelers like never before. Arriving at the site there were many people, but everything was very civilized, quiet and most importantly, it was clean; everybody obeyed the first law of hiking: leave behind only your footsteps.
From the upper level we saw there was water, someone even had a swim. It is more interesting with water. It had rained some weeks ago; the water is the rest of the flashfloods. I do not have a good explanation why the water is green and not blue as I expect from the reflection of the sky in the water. The white chalk is very strong and shining in the sunshine; on this Saturday it was partly cloudy. The absent waterfall is about 10 meters high with stones thrown below by an angry giant. It is a universally acknowledged truth that when small children see a small pool of water, they must jump in, as did ours !
Historically, the site was part of an ancient Roman road out of Rafiah to the Dead Sea; today it is part of the Israel Trail.
The Arab name for the site is Wadi Al Peres (ואדי אלפארס), meaning layer or deposit. It is also the name of a vulture that smashes bones of deceased animals and eats the bone marrow. The local legend has it that after Shimon Peres was shown the spectacular views by members of Kibbutz Revivim he changed his name from Persky to Peres; in the newspapers’ obituaries they said it was because he saw the magnificent wild bird, peres.
Geologically, the rock is marlstone which is indurated marine deposits and lake sediments which is estimated to be about 90-100 mill years old (Cenonmanian Age) containing large amounts of CaMg(CO3)2. The Peres Wadi of today has been formed by erosion of flash floods carrying rocks and sand carving down the content a process that is still on-going.
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