Cousin Trip - The Overview

My cousin, Robin, from San Francisco, came to visit us for a week. We had a splendid time together. We covered a lot of ground, but all of it at a pretty slow pace. We are known as the “le-at, le-at” (means “slow” in Hebrew) family because we spend twice as long at every location as the guide books suggest. Miriam and Rebekah were practically glued to Robin, often holding her hand or in her lap, talking a mile a minute, often both at once in Hebrish in their enthusiasm. The conversations veered wildly, from where we were going to what we’ve already seen, from geology and archaeology to what’s going on in the Middle East, and getting all the details from Robin about her new business of science walking tours, including what’s on each tour and editing her marketing materials. Listening to them all talk, I was amazed by how much the girls have learned and grown these few months.

Robin created a terrific blog, which I recommend to all of you. http://robinsdiscovery.blogspot.com/ She’s not only a great writer, but also is a professional multi-media person, and has worked wonders with the blog platform that are beyond me. Many of the pictures on her blog were taken by me and Jay, so you’ll see plenty of the girls. Robin also put together an excellent photo album: http://bit.ly/kqFzj3 Since she did such a great job, I’m putting just a few photos here. I plan to come back and write more detailed descriptions of what we did and thought with more photos later, but want to get something up now.

To start, Miriam and Rebekah and I picked Robin up in Beer Sheva and did a little exploring there. We’ve been there before, but only for shopping or visas. We know many of the malls there: the Big, the One, the Seven, where we stock up on natural foods, spices and halvah, as well as (incredibly expensive by US standards) clothes for the fast-growing girls. Now we know where to get falafel too.

The beginning of the falafal-a-day taste test

On the hike over, we find flint and chalk in the Zin

 The next day we hiked from our door, up to the local Bedouin tent for tea. We’d been there before. Majdelen not only remembered us, she ran up and hugged the girls. I always like doing something for a second time. The first time it’s all new and exciting and a bit strange. The second time, it’s comforting, and you can feel like a local showing your friends your favorite places.

The tent is just as remote, but we get there faster for having been there before

Majdalen made the pita from wheat she'd grown

This time we got to make our own

Miriam's turn

Our meal, including labane cheese Majdalen made from her own goats' milk

Majdalen

Fond farewells -- we'll be back

The third day we joined an archaeological dig at Beit Guvrin. We dug in a cave, separating pot shards and bits of bone from the dirt. Then we sifted the dirt, looking for anything we might have missed. Others in our group worked at clearing dirt from some stairs. When they finished, it was the first time the stairs had been exposed in over a thousand years. After the dig, we explore some of the caves, tunnels, and tombs in the area. 

Our digging site in the basement of a house

Miriam with pottery shards and bones

Sifting the dirt for anything we've missed

Burial tombs

I take a nap in the tombs

Then we headed up north, to Zichron Jaakov. I was very interested to see this town, as when we were considering coming to Israel, it was a place that was frequently suggested. I can see why. It sits up on a green hillside, a few minutes from the Mediterranean, surrounded by farms and vineyards. It is beautiful, filled with gracious old and stunning modern homes, many lovely and lush gardens and lots of Anglos. There is a main pedestrian street lined with shops and cafes.

We stayed with our new friends, Amy and David and son Eli and daughter Iris. Feels like we’ve known them forever, hard to believe we met for the first time the week before, when they come down to Sde Boker to meet their cousins and our friends, the LeBlancs from Boulder. They are incredible cooks, warm hosts, and we talked and laughed until late.

A side note about David. He is a bow maker. When he and Amy came to stay with us last week, we didn’t know them at all except that they were the LeBlanc’s cousins. At some point in the evening, we learned that he is a bow maker. A week before, Rebekah’s violin teacher had told us there was something wrong with her bow. She wasn’t sure what, but we needed to take it to be looked at. We couldn’t find anyone in Beer Sheva, but had the name of someone in Tel Aviv. Suddenly, the only bow maker is Israel is sitting in our house! Talk about the universe providing what you need! (Turns out there was a spot of grease on the bow, causing it to glide over the strings instead of catching them. He fixed it with soap and water.)

Ruins at Caesaria

The next morning, after a breakfast of matzoh brei with real maple syrup and David’s excellent coffee, we headed off the Caesaria, a lavish Roman port on the Mediterranean, founded by King Herod in 20 BCE. The water engineering was especially advanced. Two aquaducts brought water to the town. There is also a hippodrome and a large amphitheatre.

We had so much fun that we decided to stay another night. We went back to David and Amy’s. They had spent the day making strawberry jam. Yum! We had dinner out—Chinese food (our first time on this trip, definitely not the Jewish national cuisine in Israel) and Aldo’s (excellent gelato which we search out in Jerusalem and Eilat, though the original is here).

Modern charioteers

The amphitheatre is still used for concerts

Groupies Nomi and Miriam

Tourists at the beach

Amy, a bit punchy from making 40# of strawberry jam

Rebekah doing quality control

Miram, Rebekah and Eli at Aldo's

The next day we went to the Artists’ Colony where David has a studio. It is a magical place, a dozen studios in a ring around a garden. Dogs wander among the bright flowers and the artists all spend lots of time explaining their work to us. 

David explains to Bekka how the horsehair is attached to the bow

David planing a bow

Next door, a violin and cello maker

There's also a glassblower

The women in the paper mache studio are having a blast

They create very detailed characters

A sculptor carves gigantic, fanciful stone heads from Golan basalt

Then back home and the next morning Robin and I left for 3 days in Jerusalem. It was such a treat to get to spend uninterrupted cousin time together. Robin experience Jerusalem for the first time. Robin’s Hebrew, after many, many years of Jewish summer camp 30 years ago, is about as good as mine after 4 months here. We wandered around the Old City, took many photos, ate well and often, and marveled over all the contrasts.

It was a wonderful week, so full of history, water, sun, archaeology, hiking, food, friends, and laughter. It was a special delight to be able to share these experiences with my cousin.

We Visit a Partially Excavated Townsite

One of the things I like the most about Israel is the county's network of national parks and nature reserves. The Israel Nature and Parks Authority (INPA) is one of the best organized and most extensive organizations in the entire country. Most of the country's major archaeological and natural interest sites are managed by the Authority. We bought a national parks pass shortly after our arrival here. It's been by far our smartest purchase. Whenever we travel we make a beeline for the INPA's facilities.

Even though it's nice to visit the INPA's premier historical sites, which typically feature protected parking lots, gift shops, bathrooms, and well excavated attractions complete with interpretive signs, it's nice occassionally to get to a site long before it's gotten the full INPA treatment. When we do, it provides an opportunity to wander around without the usual crowds and to see the ruins in their natural state. Plus it makes us feel more like an explorer than a tourist, at least a little bit.

One such site we visited was Susita, which was an ancient Roman town perched on a hilltop overlooking the Sea of Galilee. The town was probably originally founded in the first century BC and was continually occupied until it was destroyed by an earthquake in the year 749. Susita was abandoned after the quake and never reoccupied.

To get to the trailhead we first had to drive down an unmaintained cracked and potholed road. Here we are at the trailhead.

Next, we hiked to the old town site by walking on a trail that runs between two minefields. In the Golan Heights, it's important to stick to trails that have been cleared of mines.

When we get to the old townsite we find that some parts of it have been excavated. Here we are walking on the old collonaded street, paved in the Roman style with stone blocks.

We reach the site of the old forum. One way to tell that a site has been destroyed by an earthquake is that the unexcavated columns are all facing the same direction.

These columns are waiting to be excavated.

The site is filled with lots of great unrestored architectural features that you can walk right up to.





Here Rebekah is brushing the dust off a bit of floor mosaic in order to get a better picture.

Until the 1967 war, the Israeli army maintained a base here. It was abandoned after the war, but with lots of furnishings and equipment left in place. You can see that it was designed with some sensitivity to fit in with the ruins.


Here we are, walking further down the collonaded street, which probably also served as an open air market.

Here's a partially reconstructed column with an ornately carved capital.

Here is some writing Lynn found carved into the stone block paving the street.

This old house on the side of the cliff must have featured some view.

We love visiting ruins before they're completely excavated.

We Visit an Abandoned Syrian Village

The Golan Heights is an area at the very North of Israel that borders with Syria. It's steep and mountainous and provides an excellent view of the Sea of Galilee and the surrounding area. When it was still part of Syria, the Syrians would occassionally rain missiles and sniper fire down on the Israeli settlements in the Galilee. As a result, in the 1967 war, the Israelis quickly moved to capture the Golan Heights. Not long afterwards, the area was annexxed to Israel. Some of the local people remained and continue to be grudging citizens of the Jewish state. In other cases they left, leaving behind a few remote outposts. It's certainly tragic to see a place where people once lived and then abandoned. Such ghost towns do make for interesting pictures and here are some we took when we visited one. In the case of this old village, the roofs of some of the oldest houses are gone and all that remains are the old rock walls surrounded by thick vegetation.

This house was perched on the edge of the cliff, providing excellent views from its windows, which I will show below.

As I noted, these old abandoned homes make a good setting for interesting pictures.


Here is the view from the windows of the cliff house pictured above. Through them you can see the hills of the Golan with the Sea of Galilee in the background.

This area also features lots of water which leads to thick vegetative growth with lots of flowers.

Here are the remains of a collapsed reinforced concrete roof. Notice how the steel reinforcement bars are twisted up like spaghetti. Those pockmarks in the lower left look like bullet holes. Who put them there? With all the bullets that have flown around the Golan it's impossible to say.