Birds and Our Search for Food
Safed
In the morning we walk up to the citadel in Safed. Very little remains of the fortifications and it is very disappointing with lots of garbage and graffiti. I don’t understand why its been left in such a state.
On the way back a lovely man stops us and speaks to us in perfect English. He is obviously well educated and well travelled. At the end of our conversation he kisses Em’s and my hands and shakes John’s and Vince’s.
Em steps in dog poop on the way to the hotel, but she denies it…we all saw.
Northern Galilee
We hop in the car and head into northern Galilee. The countryside is hilly, verging on mountainous with sandy to rocky soil and scrubby bushes and short trees. There are also a number of vineyards as well. One can imagine Jesus and his disciples wandering around here.
The roads are very windy, leading up then down which makes Emily nervous. Signs say “Dangerous Curves”, “No shoulders”, “Slippery when wet”.
We drive to the town of Metula which is surrounded on three sides by Lebanon and has a lot of construction going on and is rather dusty so we move on.
We are having problems finding a place for lunch so we finally stop at the Israeli version of an Enroute and have falafel and shwarmas for lunch. The food is quite good.
We fill the gas tank. It is expensive…$2.50 CAD per litre.
Hahula Valley Nature Reserve
Our next stop is the Hahula Valley Nature Reserve. I am surprised to walk into the Steven J. Harper Visitor Centre. Yes, our past Prime Minister. There is a”twinning” of this place with Manitoba but I’m not sure how Prime Minister Harper became connected with it.
The Nature Reserve is known for their cranes…and there are a lot of them.
We rent a golf cart and go into the reserve following a path. It is awesome!!!
We see thousands of cranes, white pelicans, iridescent blue throated kingfishers, egrets, a purple heron, spur-tipped lap wings, ducks, coots and more. Click here for a short video.
We also see coypu which are large rodents brought into Israel in the 1950s for their fur. When due to the warm weather, their fur was not deemed to be thick enough, they were released and became an invasive species. Click here for a short video. They are quite cute.
We even see water buffalo.
The afternoon ended too quickly.
In Search of Food
The road back was narrow, windy with drop offs. Scary. We are racing the sun in order to get food before sabbat (Sabbath) starts because everything in Safed closes down at sunset Friday until sunset on Saturday.
Vince and John drop Em and I at the hotel and go to look for food. The sun has not set yet but everything is already closed.
Vince and John have no luck finding anything open but they do pick up some passengers. At one point they do a u-turn to drive back up a large hill. An out of breath Orthodox Jewish boy of about 12 years old flags them down and points up the hill, waves to a younger friend who runs up and both open the door and hop into the back passenger seat. The older boy says “ta da” which is Hebrew for ‘thank you’ and the younger boy says ‘thank you’ in English.
After a 5 minute drive up the winding road they direct Vince to pull over in front of a synagogue and scamper out saying thank you again.
We watch the sunset from Em and Vince’s balcony. For dinner we munch on various leftovers we have accumulated.