Despite the lack of hotel comfort, the place is popular among cycling enthusiasts who conduct training and competitions in Arava, but it is not in demand at all in summer – it is too hot, there are a lot of flies, peppers wither, and weak-spirited tourists spread out on mattresses. So if someone wants to plunge into the semblance of a nomadic life, then hurry up to do it before the summer hamsins, given that those families who decided to get lost in the desert will not be allowed to do this, because two energetic ladies who run the "Morgana Veil"" in the Moshav Neot ha-Kikar, guides are invited here, who are in a hurry to take vacationers on jeep excursions or pull the especially desperate into day and night hiking. I will say from my own experience that after a 6-hour night tour, you no longer care where to spend the night – even in a yurt on the floor, as long as you are allowed to lie down. The season in "Fat Morgan" will end in two months, the new one will come in mid–September, and next November international mountain bike competitions will be held here - you will still have time to practice!
But there is enough entertainment here for those who do not particularly favor extreme tourism, jumping from cliffs into the abyss or descending into caves to bats, but are drawn to calm creativity – for example, ceramics. In the same Moshav Neot ha-Kikar, the studio-workshop of Esty Barak has been operating for several years, holding annual international ceramics seminars in Arava dedicated to the methods of firing developed by her. You can understand that this is at an amateur level during a one-day seminar, where you, as a child, will be given a frolic, crumple a piece of clay in your hands, try to mold at least a curved plate or a kind of hamsa palm out of it, decorate everything with geometric black-and-white patterns and burn in a special smoky oven, absorbing together with clouds of smoke, the features of the Japanese technique "raku", thanks to which the ceramics are covered with a thin web of artificial cracks. The workshop of Esty Barak has existed in Neot ha-Kikar for 10 years, and every year more and more people are trying to return to something they don't know themselves – to something calmly atavistic-simple, to spending the night on the floor, picking vegetables in the morning and to burning pots with their own hands.
The simple monochrome ceramics of Esty Barak (08-6572176, the gallery is open daily from 7.00 to 17.00, seminars are by agreement) will appeal to many, but lovers of more refined gizmos stylized as archaeological finds can visit the workshop of Dganit Ohayun in the neighboring Moshav Ein Kikar (08-6551543). And collectors of the avant-garde and extraordinary are obliged to go straight to her husband Jojo - despite such a familiar nickname (in the world his name is Yossi Ohayun), a master with an international name and considerable reputation engaged in the manufacture of metal furniture (but not forged garden benches that have become banal, but furniture made of solid metal sheets that looks like it is made of soft materials). Only by running your hand over the colored surfaces, you will realize that all these chairs, tables, lamps, floor vases are metal. Jojo's parents owned a printing house where art albums were printed, thanks to which he acquired a love for painting and everything beautiful, which did not prevent him from settling in Ein Tamar after the army and farming. He developed the technique of plastic metals by accident, trying to improve agricultural equipment by combining high pressure and water treatment of metal sheets. As a result, four years ago Jojo started making furniture using a technology that he himself calls "metal pillows", now applying his ideas in the design of lamps and vases. escortannonce.net/escorts/paris/15e-vaugirard/
