After breakfast and a view of the Kibbutz from the hills behind it, we went to the Golan Heights Winery for a tasting. The winery gets grapes from a handful of kibbutzim and is really quite modern and industrial. Their high end wines, Yarden, were nice and I’ll look for it as an alternative to the standard icky sweet kosher wines we’re used to.
Katzrin was the next stop, a 3rd century Jewish village including the ruins of a synagogue. Olive oil was this village’s main industry. While we were there, an IDF tank unit pulled up, so we all went and got a closer look at the tank. Keep in mind this place is 15-20 miles from Kiryat Shmona where the ketushas landed a few days ago, so the military presence is fairly obvious.
Next we had a look at Syria from Mount Bental. This is the place where the Yom Kippur War started. This is where less than 2 dozen Israeli soldiers were when Syria invaded in 1973 on Yom Kippur. This hilltop is the perfect vantage point and you can see when you’re up there why it is necessary to keep it. Along the path are a few pieces of art made of debris from the war.
On the way to lunch, we view the Hula Valley while driving along. One of the things we passed was a large crusader fortress. One thing that’s hard to understand until you see it that just about every piece of ground contains important archeological sites. As you drive along, you see ruins after ruins just sitting in the fields. Israel doesn’t have the funds to work on all of them, so they sit and wait.
In addition to many crops, in the North there are many fisheries. Lunch was at a restaurant connected with a fishery. Fresh fish is not so appealing to me, but they did take care of me well with a fried cauliflower dish with a sweet dipping sauce. And of course, many salads. The place itself was beautiful with outdoor seating and a little cement stream they had running through it.
After lunch, we went kayaking down the Jordan river. Okay, they called they kayaks, but they were really fancy, blow up boats. I can’t remember ever having been boating before, but I did much better than expected. Certainly Gwen and I did much better than the Orthodox boys who were busy confirming stereotypes. Although Gwen did fall out of the boat at one point. It was a trip though. There were some mild rapids and the river was only 15-30 feet wide. More like a creek really. Apparently I was the only one lucky enough to see some guy jerking off by a tree as we went down the river. He seemed to be having some difficulty with that. I’m guessing he was hoping to shock some poor innocent Orthodox girls and all he got was a bunch of jaded Americans and Orthodox men.
After boating, we stopped in Kiryat Shmona to pick up some groceries for a light dinner back at the hotel. Yes, Kiryat Shmona is where the ketushas fell. It was no problem. Everyone was going about their business. Oh, and you can get big bottles of Gold Star beer for about $1.50. We pool our snacks and enjoyed them on the patio of the kibbutz while Mitch played guitar and some people sang.
Oh, I forgot our visit to the Na’ot sandal factory outlet. Probably because almost all of them were made of leather so no use to me. Too bad, they had some cute styles.
(I’m back now, but it’ll probably take me a day or so to catch up on posts from the trip. I’ll also be sliding back into some of the posts to add links to photos. Once everything is uploaded, the whole gallery will be here.)