hiking up north

this past weekend, my friend kornit invited me to join her and a group of friends on a hike through nahal yehudiya, which is up in the golan heights. the hike is beautiful, and as you hebrew speakers might have guessed, it includes a lot of water hiking [the word nahal in hebrew means stream]. we started up above the stream, then hiked down and along the stream. during a few points, the trail literally goes through pools of water, necessitating a swim (not that anyone minded on a hot summer day!). it's only a 5km trail, but it took us a while, mostly because we kept stopping to jump in the water. also, the hike back up the trail from the stream is pretty excruciating - it felt as though we were hiking straight up!
because of all the water, i didn't have my camera out all that much (it was a bit of a pain to keep unwrapping it from the layers of plastic bags i wrapped it in to keep it dry), but below are a few of the highlights...mostly scenery. for more people pictures (taken by effi, one of the group members i was hiking with), go here. in the meantime, enjoy!

looking down at the stream at the start of the hike:

on the trail, heading down the side of the mountain towards the stream:

one of the water crossings. the first one was equipped with a metal ladder, but this one, later on in the hike, only had hand-holds. you can see the close-up of effi as he gets ready to descend (the 2nd picture). kobi is already across the pool and climbing out of the water, trying not to get bitten by the fish!

kornit enjoying the hike:

the rock wall over one of the pools we stopped at. it kind of reminded me of petra (only not pink). pretty cool nonetheless:

if you look really closely, you can kind of-almost-maybe see the kinneret (the sea of galilee) between the hills. only part of the reason it's hard to see is my fault. the water level is so low that the sea is about to disappear:

these last pictures aren't from the golan heights. when we got back to the tel aviv area, i was dropped off, and as i crossed a bridge over the highway, i looked back and saw the sun setting over a field in back of me. i'm a big fan of the sun and the clouds...

that's it! effi's pictures will give you a better sense of what the hike was like. and yes, when you come visit israel, we can go on this hike again...