Camping in Israel - it doesn't rain!
Camping in the UK is a something of a hit-and-miss
experience. I’ve had glorious weekends
camping in Devon, when you loll around in the sunshine. I’ve had other weekends when it poured with rain
and so you sit in your tent, hoping the weather will ease up; and still other
weekends when I’ve been swaddled in layers upon layers of clothing just to
avoid getting hypothermia. I’ve had
weeks camping in windy weather when you wake up several times in the middle of the
night at the point when your tent is collapsing on you, necessitating a
midnight search for the hammer to get those pegs back into the ground. As a result, my attitude towards camping when
I got here was somewhat ambivalent. It
turns out that camping in Israel is an entirely different and rather more
enjoyable experience.
A few weekends ago I went camping in the northern Galilee with some friends in the Yehudiya natural reserve, for a day hiking the canyon where the Zavitan stream runs. It was ace. The first part was not – the usual Friday afternoon Shabbat traffic was made worse by the fact that it was Shavuot, the festival celebrating both the beginning of the harvest and the giving of the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai, so the whole of Israel was on the road heading off to enjoy the long weekend and a journey that should have lasted two hours took a good five, with an hour crawling along the 6 next to a car with two Arab boys who waved at us and offered us a half-eaten apple (nice). By the time we arrived at the campsite the sun was setting, which in the UK is a problem because setting up tents in the dark and cold and, often, rain is such a hassle. But no – it took about 5 minutes to get the tents up, not least because we didn’t actually have to peg them into the ground! What sorcery is this, I wondered? I couldn’t work out what I was more surprised by, the ease of doing this or the fact that the tents didn’t have that outer layer that is necessary in the UK to keep out the driving rain and cold.
Tents set up, we began cooking supper on our little Bunsen burner and it was at this point that we realised we had not managed to get any firewood for a campfire. This did not bother my friends who instructed me to trawl the campsite and put on my most BBC British accent in an attempt to blag firewood off some of the other campers – “People here love the British accent, you do it, you’ll be fine.” I was sceptical of this approach but they turned out to be absolutely right and a group of American teenagers gladly surrendered enough firewood for a cracking fire, although it was in the form of a pallet which the boys had to spend a good 15 minutes breaking up into burnable chunks. Bedtime came around at about 11 p.m. and as I crawled into my tent I realised that not only was I not covered in layers of clothing but it was actually pretty warm and I wouldn’t even really need the sleeping bag. I woke up to the sound of the birds twittering in the morning and spent the next two hours fighting off the mosquitoes, rather than the usual English campsite morning of desperately getting the coffee on in order to warm up.
Packing up turned out to be as easy as setting up had been and we set off on the long-awaited hike. The one we’d planned to do, through a canyon which necessitated descending a ladder on a sheer rock face then swimming across a deep pool to the other side, was disappointingly off the cards because the canyon had had several rock falls, one of which had seriously injured a teenage boy; even the Israelis, with their lax approach to health and safety, figured out that the lawsuits weren’t worth it and closed the canyon until a way can be found to make it safe without compromising the natural integrity of the park. Instead, we followed a route across the plain to the canyon edge, descending down a steep path into the canyon itself then following the stream bed along various pools and heading back up to the car park.
It was a perfect day for a hike – sunny without being too hot, a little breath of wind every now and again, blue skies and more twittering birds. We’d packed a good 6 litres of water each, as dehydration is a hiker’s biggest enemy, so were completely astonished when we overtook two girls, one of whom was wearing what looked like flip flops (on a hike!) and neither of whom seemed to be carrying any water at all. The walk along the plain brought us into view of Lake Galilee, glittering in the sunshine, and the landscape reminded me somewhat of the savannah in East Africa – plains covered with lots of yellow grass, studded here and there with low trees and bushes, a high sky and not a cloud in sight. The Galilee is part of the Jordan Valley which is itself part of the Great Rift Valley cutting down through the fertile crescent into Kenya and Tanzania. Walking through a landscape so ancient made me somewhat introspective – I’m just one of millions who have walked that same landscape, stretching back into history for millennia. Fortunately a large group of families with a very energetic dog snapped me right out of my introspection with their shouting and splashing in the water. Israelis really are noisy.
The hardest part of the hike was getting back up the side of the steep canyon, 2 p.m. by this time so the sun was high in the sky and it was sweltering. It felt good to be working hard but, delicate flower that I am, I could tell I was overheating by the time we reached the top and so emptied one of the bottles of water over my head in an attempt to cool down. We returned to the car park, bought cold drinks from the shop and piled into the car to head to Meshushim Pools, another part of the reserve and connected to the canyon we’d hiked. There is a big pool there where people go to swim and a nice cool swim was just what we felt like. This required another descent into the canyon – easier this time, with a path dug firmly into the side and easy steps to go down – and by the time we got to the pools I was desperate to get into the water. I jumped in as soon as I could but my friend Tamar (name and shame time) got about two foot in before seeing what she described as ‘enormous fish’ that started nibbling her toes and refused to go any further. I didn’t see any fish at all and a pool that size was hardly going to contain sharks so I’m determined to mock her about this for the rest of her life.
Tired but happy, we returned to the car and to Jerusalem, a mercifully shorter journey this time. My first experience of camping in Israel was really rather splendid and I’m looking forward to many more now that the weather is hot and the summer holidays are approaching. Imagine – going camping without the need to pack wet-weather gear, cold-weather gear and five hammers and fifty tent pegs per person! I never thought spending time in tents could be this much fun…
A few weekends ago I went camping in the northern Galilee with some friends in the Yehudiya natural reserve, for a day hiking the canyon where the Zavitan stream runs. It was ace. The first part was not – the usual Friday afternoon Shabbat traffic was made worse by the fact that it was Shavuot, the festival celebrating both the beginning of the harvest and the giving of the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai, so the whole of Israel was on the road heading off to enjoy the long weekend and a journey that should have lasted two hours took a good five, with an hour crawling along the 6 next to a car with two Arab boys who waved at us and offered us a half-eaten apple (nice). By the time we arrived at the campsite the sun was setting, which in the UK is a problem because setting up tents in the dark and cold and, often, rain is such a hassle. But no – it took about 5 minutes to get the tents up, not least because we didn’t actually have to peg them into the ground! What sorcery is this, I wondered? I couldn’t work out what I was more surprised by, the ease of doing this or the fact that the tents didn’t have that outer layer that is necessary in the UK to keep out the driving rain and cold.
Tents set up, we began cooking supper on our little Bunsen burner and it was at this point that we realised we had not managed to get any firewood for a campfire. This did not bother my friends who instructed me to trawl the campsite and put on my most BBC British accent in an attempt to blag firewood off some of the other campers – “People here love the British accent, you do it, you’ll be fine.” I was sceptical of this approach but they turned out to be absolutely right and a group of American teenagers gladly surrendered enough firewood for a cracking fire, although it was in the form of a pallet which the boys had to spend a good 15 minutes breaking up into burnable chunks. Bedtime came around at about 11 p.m. and as I crawled into my tent I realised that not only was I not covered in layers of clothing but it was actually pretty warm and I wouldn’t even really need the sleeping bag. I woke up to the sound of the birds twittering in the morning and spent the next two hours fighting off the mosquitoes, rather than the usual English campsite morning of desperately getting the coffee on in order to warm up.
Packing up turned out to be as easy as setting up had been and we set off on the long-awaited hike. The one we’d planned to do, through a canyon which necessitated descending a ladder on a sheer rock face then swimming across a deep pool to the other side, was disappointingly off the cards because the canyon had had several rock falls, one of which had seriously injured a teenage boy; even the Israelis, with their lax approach to health and safety, figured out that the lawsuits weren’t worth it and closed the canyon until a way can be found to make it safe without compromising the natural integrity of the park. Instead, we followed a route across the plain to the canyon edge, descending down a steep path into the canyon itself then following the stream bed along various pools and heading back up to the car park.
Pit stop, looking for the Galilee.
It was a perfect day for a hike – sunny without being too hot, a little breath of wind every now and again, blue skies and more twittering birds. We’d packed a good 6 litres of water each, as dehydration is a hiker’s biggest enemy, so were completely astonished when we overtook two girls, one of whom was wearing what looked like flip flops (on a hike!) and neither of whom seemed to be carrying any water at all. The walk along the plain brought us into view of Lake Galilee, glittering in the sunshine, and the landscape reminded me somewhat of the savannah in East Africa – plains covered with lots of yellow grass, studded here and there with low trees and bushes, a high sky and not a cloud in sight. The Galilee is part of the Jordan Valley which is itself part of the Great Rift Valley cutting down through the fertile crescent into Kenya and Tanzania. Walking through a landscape so ancient made me somewhat introspective – I’m just one of millions who have walked that same landscape, stretching back into history for millennia. Fortunately a large group of families with a very energetic dog snapped me right out of my introspection with their shouting and splashing in the water. Israelis really are noisy.
North Galilee landscape
The hardest part of the hike was getting back up the side of the steep canyon, 2 p.m. by this time so the sun was high in the sky and it was sweltering. It felt good to be working hard but, delicate flower that I am, I could tell I was overheating by the time we reached the top and so emptied one of the bottles of water over my head in an attempt to cool down. We returned to the car park, bought cold drinks from the shop and piled into the car to head to Meshushim Pools, another part of the reserve and connected to the canyon we’d hiked. There is a big pool there where people go to swim and a nice cool swim was just what we felt like. This required another descent into the canyon – easier this time, with a path dug firmly into the side and easy steps to go down – and by the time we got to the pools I was desperate to get into the water. I jumped in as soon as I could but my friend Tamar (name and shame time) got about two foot in before seeing what she described as ‘enormous fish’ that started nibbling her toes and refused to go any further. I didn’t see any fish at all and a pool that size was hardly going to contain sharks so I’m determined to mock her about this for the rest of her life.
Meshushim Pools - no sharks here, Tamar...
Tired but happy, we returned to the car and to Jerusalem, a mercifully shorter journey this time. My first experience of camping in Israel was really rather splendid and I’m looking forward to many more now that the weather is hot and the summer holidays are approaching. Imagine – going camping without the need to pack wet-weather gear, cold-weather gear and five hammers and fifty tent pegs per person! I never thought spending time in tents could be this much fun…
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