Sunrise at the Beresheet Hotel, overlooking the Makhtesh Ramon. Courtesy and © Cookie West
The magnificent Beresheet Hotel is perched on the lip of the Makhtesh Ramon. Its outline on the horizon resembles nothing so much as an ancient Sumerian city: boxlike stone buildings that seem to emerge organically from the surrounding horizon. Beresheet’s separate cabin-rooms include cozy, ground-level spaces, each with its own small, shimmering blue pool outside and upper story dwellings. The world seems miles away here: all is stillness and quiet, and there is no commerce or blinking of manmade lights outside; only the gleam of the stars.
“The world seems miles away here: all is stillness and quiet, and there is no commerce or blinking of manmade lights outside; only the gleam of the stars.
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In the morning, you might see a vast solar performance from the windows of your room: the sun moving slowly up over the crater’s horizon, its rays harmonizing with the striations of the minerals in the sides of the makhtesh.
Beresheet offers a lavish breakfast—a maze of offerings, from every corner of Israel’s culinary patchwork—including fresh honey dripping from the comb, creamy labneh, and sweet and heavy dates that must have just been picked from a desert grove of palm trees. Tables overlook the bowl of the crater, which glows vivid orange in the morning sun and extends in dramatic curves and jags into the distance. It is hard to keep your focus on the food for the view, and on the view for the food!
