It’s a Small World

We had to leave by 3:47am to make our goal of watching the sunrise from the top of Masada. The gate opens at 5:30am for the sunrise hikers. There were a grand total of 5 hikers. Three horribly wide awake Jewish boys and us.

The hike is up the Snake Path, which is still the ancient path from way back when. There was just enough light to see to walk, and we puffed (excuse me, I puffed) up the hundreds of steps to the top. We made it to the top of the North Palace by the time the sun allegedly came up from behind the Jordanian Mountains. Yep, it was a bit cloudy. The view was still gorgeous, looking way out over the Dead Sea to the mountains beyond, and the occasional ray of sunshine would shine on the water. It was actually totally epic. Never have we ever had Masada to ourselves. It’s normally one of the most crowded parks, with tour groups, noisy activists, and IDF recruits walking around with their machine guns.

We were down shortly after 7am, and turned our little Kia bug North towards Galilee. We were just humming along when Heath suddenly screeched on the brakes and whipped it around. Deep in the mountains he had seen a dry waterfall that looked like a picture he had seen, and he wanted to check it out. We parked off the road by a graffitied bridge and proceeded up a dry Wadi, or wash, to see what we could see.

It was way further than we thought, and we hiked for an hour without reaching the spot. Others obviously hiked there too, as there was the occasional rock cairn marking the path around the impossible spots. It was a rock collectors heaven, and we found some interesting fossils. There were pretty blooming plants, and even the eucalyptus had blooms. I’d never seen that before and frankly didn’t even know about it.

Is there anything better than exploring dessert canyons in ancient lands? Maybe walking the old road that Jesus walked, between Korazim and Capernaum, which we did later in the day. Or standing on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, watching the lake go from glassy to whitecaps within 30 minutes.

We were tired all afternoon, and kept having to get out and walk, and once we just slept for 30 minutes. It’s so lush and wet here, I can hardly believe it. Springs just gush from the hills and flowers are blooming in profusion.

We stopped at a grocery store to grab supper and breakfast before heading to our apartment. Frankly, it’s a dump, but it has excellent views of the Sea and a lovely shower. The cheese we bought last night was totally nasty, but we managed to eat a little. Mostly we were exhausted, our legs were sore and tired, and I’m pretty sure we were both dead asleep by 8:30.