In Israel the vacations are done by Jewish holidays so for Passover I had a little over a week off to do whatever I wanted. I decided to spend some of that time doing a three day hike. With a few friends, we went from just north a coastal city called Naharia and hiked all the way to the Kinerret. Sleeping in sleeping bags on the trails, my group spent about 14 hours a day hiking from sunup to sundown. At the end of the first day we noticed that we were running low on water since we hadn't had a chance to fill up since the night before. We looked at our map and realized that we were at a we had two options of how to get to the next part of the trail some 5 kilometers away. On the one hand we could have taken a few highways, but we could follow an unmarked path that would lead us to an old, dried up stream that would lead is to another old, dried up stream that would lead us to another unmarked path that would lead us to the next part of the trail. As sundown was rapidly approaching, we decided to take the later. We walked through a town called Ma'alot, picked up some water from a kindly woman we met on the street, and went on our way. That first night we slept on the rocky, dried up stream bed, but, because we were all so exhausted, we slept soundly. We awoke a little before dawn and began our day's journey. We followed our map as best as we could and lead us to 3 unidentifiable forks in the road. We guessed at each fork and only made one mistake. At the end of the third fork we thought we were very lost, but we decided to walk until we met someone or found something that could tell us where we were. We ended walking right to the next marked path of the trail. From there we continued on our journey; we hiked up and down Mount Mairon and ended up right by Tzfat and slept on some grassy trail from 8 PM - 2 AM. At 2 AM we woke up and began while it was still dark out. We got word the day before that it was going to be 115 degrees out in the heat of the day and you can't really hike in that heat. We hiked for about three hours in darkness and then continued till about 1 when we finally made it to the Kinerret. At that point it was so hot that some of us were getting heat rash. Swimming in the Kinerret cooled us down and we were exhausted but not overheating. We finished the hike with a fancy meal at some resturant in Tiveria and then took buses home and slept for 12 hours.
The next day I visited the Art Museum of Tel Aviv. There was an exhibit by some Israeli artist whose last or first name was Natan and there was a collection of paintings from Monet, Chagal, and a few other artists.
I finished the break with a Shabbas with my dad's cousins who have a flat in Jerusalem.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Monday, April 14, 2008
Crazy Adventure
I went on a hike a few days ago with my friend Eli. We decided to go about 7 PM on a Wednesday night. We leave our apartments at 10 PM on a bus to Tel Aviv. We take a sherutim, which is like a big taxi that has special prices to and from big cities, to Jerusalem. In the middle of the drive we tell the driver to drop us off at this highway exit that Eli's friend told him about. We knew that the hike that we wanted to do the next day was around this exit. So we get out of the sherutim at this place:
Next we decide to look for a place to sleep. Seeing as it was about 12:15 AM we were hoping for a secluded forest or something to set up camp. We wandered up a hill and through this path until we found out that we were in Castel, a state park that is the site of a battle in 1948 when Israel fought for its independence. We walked towards the top of Castel, which was a military fortress, and found a nice, remote spot to set up camp. We unrolled our sleeping bags and slept for a bit. Our camping spot looked like this:
We woke the next morning and began our trek towards the hike. We got some directions from a park ranger and a random lady and started walking along a high way. After walking for some time, I saw a turnoff from the highway and we checked it out to see if we could find the hike. We were looking for Sataf, a marked hike, so we needed to find trail markers. We couldn't find anything and were a bit discouraged because we had been walking for about an hour. We were going to turn back because Eli's friend told him we maybe took a wrong turn some 4 km back, but we decided to walk for another two minutes before turning back. We walked for 15 seconds around a bend and saw a huge sign for Sataf.
We walked to the top of a mountain were the beginning of the hike began and stopped for a quick tea and cake at a restaurant that is up there. The waiter there gave us a handy map and we began our trek down the mountain towards some cool springs and tunnels. The hike was a really beautiful showcase of the Judaean Mountains. Jerusalem is actually a huge city that is built in top of several large hills/mountains. Their size is somewhere between hills and mountains, but the Israelis call them mountains. So this hike was down one of the mountains and was really amazing. The mountains all have ancient terraces from thousands of years ago. Terracing is a farming technique that levels out hills so that you can grow plants on them. Here are a few terraces and other things that we found there:
The springs that we found were really developed in ancient times. They are now tunnels that you can walk or crawl through and it's really cool. This is what the springs looked like:
In the middle of the hike we met a group of school children who were more than ecstatic when they heard that we were from America. At the end of the hike we found ourselves pretty far from town and we needed a way to get back. We asked the teachers of the school for a hitch into Jerusalem and after some conferring they decided to lend us a hand and they drove us for about 20 minutes to a bus stop. From there we went into town and ended the adventure with some shwarma.
Next we decide to look for a place to sleep. Seeing as it was about 12:15 AM we were hoping for a secluded forest or something to set up camp. We wandered up a hill and through this path until we found out that we were in Castel, a state park that is the site of a battle in 1948 when Israel fought for its independence. We walked towards the top of Castel, which was a military fortress, and found a nice, remote spot to set up camp. We unrolled our sleeping bags and slept for a bit. Our camping spot looked like this:
We woke the next morning and began our trek towards the hike. We got some directions from a park ranger and a random lady and started walking along a high way. After walking for some time, I saw a turnoff from the highway and we checked it out to see if we could find the hike. We were looking for Sataf, a marked hike, so we needed to find trail markers. We couldn't find anything and were a bit discouraged because we had been walking for about an hour. We were going to turn back because Eli's friend told him we maybe took a wrong turn some 4 km back, but we decided to walk for another two minutes before turning back. We walked for 15 seconds around a bend and saw a huge sign for Sataf.
We walked to the top of a mountain were the beginning of the hike began and stopped for a quick tea and cake at a restaurant that is up there. The waiter there gave us a handy map and we began our trek down the mountain towards some cool springs and tunnels. The hike was a really beautiful showcase of the Judaean Mountains. Jerusalem is actually a huge city that is built in top of several large hills/mountains. Their size is somewhere between hills and mountains, but the Israelis call them mountains. So this hike was down one of the mountains and was really amazing. The mountains all have ancient terraces from thousands of years ago. Terracing is a farming technique that levels out hills so that you can grow plants on them. Here are a few terraces and other things that we found there:
The springs that we found were really developed in ancient times. They are now tunnels that you can walk or crawl through and it's really cool. This is what the springs looked like:
In the middle of the hike we met a group of school children who were more than ecstatic when they heard that we were from America. At the end of the hike we found ourselves pretty far from town and we needed a way to get back. We asked the teachers of the school for a hitch into Jerusalem and after some conferring they decided to lend us a hand and they drove us for about 20 minutes to a bus stop. From there we went into town and ended the adventure with some shwarma.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
News
So living in this apartment is a lot of fun. I'm getting very close with my roommates and I've been doing some really fun things in Tel Aviv. Last week my friends and I found a flier advertising what we thought was a bassist from France leading a band of local musicians in some venue in Tel Aviv. We decided to go to the show and check it out. We show up and the place is a bit empty and there is some DJ there. We just assumed that the DJ was performing as an opening act before the main guy. We hung out and danced for a while before we realized that the DJ was the advertised act and that we were mistaken. We wanted to hangout for a bit and get our money's worth so we stayed for a while. We saw that the majority of people coming into the club were guys and that was juts adding to the already overwhelming male majority. There were butterflies hanging from the ceiling and some floral decorations too. We quickly deduced that we were in a gay club. We didn't want to leave just because it was a gay club because that would make us look like bigots so we stayed for another 10 minutes and then left.
I learned the other day that one of the guys who I volunteer with was taken directly out of prison a few months back to take part in the gardening project that I do. He's a nice guy.
I learned the other day that one of the guys who I volunteer with was taken directly out of prison a few months back to take part in the gardening project that I do. He's a nice guy.
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