Today you can find remains of workers’ camps and cisterns dating from the 1 lth century BC scattered about amid the whir of modern mining (which resumed in 1955). The sandstone King Solomon’s Pillars dominate the desert at a height of 50m near the 14th-century BC Egyptian Temple of Hathor. There are interesting exhibits of ore and the production process of the mines located at the entrance. The park’s lake offers camping facilities, a restaurant, toilets, and showers on its artificially created shores. United Tours, in the Shalom Center (tel. 37 17 29), runs tours to Timna Valley for about NIS50 per half day. Otherwise you can take most buses that go to Tel Aviv or Jerusalem and ask to get off at the sign for Alipaz (not at the Timna Mines signpost). Walk to the entrance 2km away. (Park open 7:30am-6:45pm, admission NIS9, students NIS7, ages 5-18 N1S4.5O.) Bring water. There are bathrooms just inside the park entrance.

Most northbound buses will take you to the Hai Bar Biblical Nature Reserve, a wildlife park designed to repopulate animals indigenous in biblical times, many of which are now rare in the region. Ask to get off at Yotvata. The reserve is home to roaming gazelles, donkeys, ostriches, and 11 species of predators mentioned in the Bible, including leopards, wolves, rabbits, and striped hyenas. (Open 9am-l :30pm; animal feeding 8-1 lam. Admission NIS16, children over 5 NIS10, includes Hai Bar Coach tour.) Only closed vehicles are allowed to enter, lest hapless visitors become lunch for endangered predators. Either come on foot (early) and wait for a vehicle with space, or take one of the daily guided tours in Hai Bar Coaches at 9am, 10:30am, noon, and 1:30pm.