"You know where you are? You're in Eilat," the chef said to me at sunrise, as if he was the man in Pedro Almodovar's "Talk to Her," as I lay before him fluttering my eyelids, still seeing stars from a night of sleeping outdoors.

Like always, we said we'd set out at five, at first light, get right on the road without having to fight any traffic and enjoy the crisp morning air. But by the time we went to bed, we had shifted the departure time to seven, since it was already midnight, and when we woke up in was eight-thirty, so we decided that we were leaving at nine, no matter what, but then our neighbor told me that they were also going to the guitar festival at the Shaharut Inn (http://www.camel-riders.com) and were going to take it easy and leave at eleven, since this was a vacation after all, so why rush?

At eleven I waved good-bye to the neighbors' car and went back inside to see how, as usual, the members of my household had become studious and diligent just when it was time to leave the house. It was already three in the afternoon by the time we neared Rahat, 10 hours behind our original schedule. Now, driving all the way to Shaharut seemed like too much for one day, so we called our good friend Chen from Sukkah in the Desert, who on the day we had to evacuate our lodgings in Mitzpeh Ramon excitedly grabbed me by the shoulders and said warmly: "You can always find a home with us in the desert."