Nature and Security

[av8rmike]

Today was supposed to be another really packed day.  We got up early in the morning and had breakfast (as usual).  I haven't said much about the foods yet, but the stuff we've been getting in hotels has been pretty monotonous.  Israeli food is similar to most other Mediterranean nations, with more of a Jewish style.  Breakfast and dinner usually have the same foods, like salads and olives and breads and hummus, but dinner is the "meat" meal, whereas breakfast is the "dairy" meal.  (They have to be separate because of the prohibition on mixing milk and meat in Jewish dietary law.)  First destination was a nature walk through the park of Tel Dan, where the Dan River is one of the three sources of the Jordan River.  The streams move quickly, but it's what we'd call a small creek in the U.S., not a raging river or anything.  It's also a heavily wooded area, so there isn't even much to see of the river itself.  There was an old mill powered by the river, and a hollow tree labeled the "Winnie the Pooh" tree.  Natan explained how important the area was strategically, because the rivers supplied the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee), which in turn provides something like 30% of Israel's fresh water supply.
After Tel Dan, we were heading off to raft down part of the Jordan River.  It wasn't really "whitewater rafting," more like "brown water floating," as someone described it.  I ended up in a raft with Natan and two quiet girls originally from Russia (but now living in the U.S.)  We were going pretty well for a while, until I discovered I was having some kind of allergic reaction to something.  My eyes started to water and feel really irritated, badly enough that I could barely keep them open.  Once we'd finished, I found my way up to the top and to Sarit, who helped me to wash out my eyes.  After a while they started to clear up, but I had to blindly find my way across the parking lot, half-blind, and barefoot because I didn't own any sandals.  Needless to say, the day and even the whole trip weren't going too well by this time.

I rode in the bus after that, resting my eyes the whole way to Katzrin, where we stopped for lunch.  The falafel was pretty good, and since I could see better, I was in slightly better spirits.  The next destination was far up in the Golan Heights, a small group of mountains across the Hula Valley from where we were yesterday.  The Golan is of strategic importance not only for the water sources, but also for the buffer it provides between Israel and Syria, its neighbor to the north and east.  In particular, we drove up to what looked like a de-commissioned Army base at the extreme eastward point of Israel, where everything you can see on three sides is Syria.  There we learned all about the War of Independence and the Six-Day War and the uneasy peaces between Israel and Syria that followed.  I remember learning most of the history stuff in Sunday school, but I'd forgotten a lot, and it's much different when you're actually sitting on a hillside looking into another country, especially one that you've been at war with.

We were then supposed to visit the Naot shoe factory and the mystical city of Safed, but we were running severely behind schedule.  Natan decided we could push off the Safed visit for tomorrow and give us a little more time for shoe-shopping.  I bought a pair of Tevas (which would've come in handy earlier in the day) for about 150 NIS, which worked out to about $40.  The rest of the night was taken up with the bus ride back, showering, dinner, and a discussion on Israeli/Arab/Palestinian citizen rights in the country.  Finally, we had an Israeli dancing lesson and a general "disco," which I sort of floated in & out of.  I spent some time bonding with Marisa, whom I'd met at the airport, but things couldn't go far because she's married, the only one on the trip.  She wasn't having that great a time either