Four hours of sleep after the events of past, I awoke, saying "what have I done, what am I doing, what am I going to do?" The time was 5:30 and I found an SMS waiting for me. Apparently two girls had backed out, so that meant only Rob was in the running. I gave him a ring, and he was packing up...
"They were out late. They're not gonna make it."
"Hmm. Well Ira, do you want to still go hiking this weekend?"
"Yeah, sure."
Before arriving in Israel I had dreamed of returning to the region I had visited last when I stayed here five months in 11th grade. It's called the Golan, a beautiful and distinctive region, once under Syrian control, but acquired by Israel for defense in '67. It's at the very northeast tip of the country, contains many land mine areas, but also some beautiful sights and hikes. Right after Yam el Yam I wanted to go and hike there, but Italy happened, and I couldn't find anybody to go with. Over the past week, my luck changed and I assembled a group of three, but on the morning of, the three turned into one, but this was my second to last weekend, and next weekend's Shavuot and finals and packing, so I had to get out one last time.
Robin Super, a giant of a Canadian with the heart of Fezzik joined me and together we took a bus to Tiberias, where we bought Shabbat Dinner (Pita to complement my imported Skippy's PB, and grapes). From there we took the only bus of the day to Nachal Yehudia, a nature reserve I had heard good things about. I even brought along a floaty penguin from Dayna, a one year student who had done the hikes a few years back and remembered parts that required swimming. She was right about that!
Friday afternoon we took a short trail through an abandoned Syrian village to a beautiful waterfall on the Zavitan River, and jumped off the rocks with the rest of the wild Israelis, breaking more walls than necks. The waterfalls were all hidden in gorges, so from above, the area looks dry and arid, with nothing special or noteworthy. But once you enter the gorge, it's like walking into paradise.
Friday night we had our special dinner, and talked with some others who were camping at the park with us. One family was Russian, and the husband's father was Jewish, so he used that to leave Russia for a better life. He represents a very small minority of Israelis who can immigrate even though they're not Jewish according to Jewish Law. He shared his fears with us of future governments who may take away his rights, since there's nobody looking out for people like him in Israeli Parliament.
Saturday we spent eight hours hiking the Yehudia River, jumping off of waterfall after waterfall. The highlight for me was the Paradise pool, where on one side there was a short but strong back-massage type of waterfall, and from the other a wall of the gorge where water sprinkled down, and made rainbows with the sunlight in the pool. It was extremely relaxing and slippery with algae. Also, there were snails everywhere, and snails cannot tolerate polluted waters, so the water was pretty clean.
There were places where we had to climb into pools of water, so we tried to waterproof everything and put it on the floaty penguin, but it didn't work and the thing capsized unfortunately. Whatever, though, we survived, and it was really only one time that we absolutely had to. We did look a little funny carrying an inflated penguin for much of the trail.
Hopefully these pictures will show you how pretty this place was, but they probably won't. It was like another world. Sure there was trash in spots, wild cows and their leftovers, and tremendous heat and a flat boring landscape up top, but when the secrets of the rushing water were revealed, it was totally worth it.
We took a bus back to Tel Aviv for dinner at Micky D's, thus concluding one fairly cheap but overall refreshing and relaxing weekend to wrap up my ridiculous series of life threatening adventures.
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