Israeli Adventure: Part 2

Friday, January 6, 2012 - The Friday of Failure

On Friday morning, we woke up around 9 a.m. (which, to my confused body, was actually 1 a.m.). Joanne and I, along with her roommate Esther, grabbed a cab and headed downtown to the Avis car rental place to pick up our weekend rental. While we waited, an angry American and a crazy German with a lisp accounted their tales of horror about working with Avis, but we refused to let that get us down! We were determined to have a wonderful day. (This attitude would later help us find the humor in what a waste Friday would turn out to be.)


Apparently - out of the 1035 picutres I took - I didn't actually snap a good picture of our rental car, Mavis-from-Avis. But here's essentially what she looked like.

Soon we were off, with Esther behind the wheel, Joanne riding shotgun as navigator/DJ extraordinaire (we couldn't get the radio to work out in the desert, and we didn't want music in Hebrew anyway...so, little white girl punks that we are, we had to listen to iTunes on Esther's Macbook instead. #WhiteGirlProblems), and me as backseat driver, just taking it all in.

Jerusalem is situated high on a mountaintop in the Judean Mountains, so as you drive out of the city, you descend from an altitude of 2,474 feet  down to sea level in no time flat. It's enough to make your ears pop airplane-style and for my atmospheric-pressure-sensitive Camelbak water bottle to start spraying water everywhere.

At the bottom of the mountain, you find yourself out of Jerusalem's cool, breezy climate and right in the middle of the arid Judean Desert. Though mostly brown and barren, the rolling hills populated only by the occasional bedouin shack or flock of sheep are really quite beautiful.

Educational moment: "The Bedouin are part of a predominantly-desert dwelling Arab ethnic group traditionally divided into tribes or clans." These family units live in tents/shacks in the desert, and in many cases, remain essentially stateless nomadic herders. 



A bedouin dwelling in the Judean Desert

 

Beautiful day in the Judean Desert

While driving through the desert, we were technically in the West Bank, which is under Palestinian Authority. However, because the West Bank takes a pretty good chunk out of Israel, the clever Israelis built highways through the middle of the West Bank that are safe and legal for them to use. Otherwise, it would take too many extra miles and hours to get everywhere. Taking our rental car out of the state of Israel would have been a big no-no, but since we were on an Israeli highway in the West Bank, we were fine. Strange, right?!

Along the drive, we passed by Jericho, an oasis city in the midst of the desert which is the oldest city in the world! As I mentioned, that land was under Palestinian Authority, so it wasn't safe for us to go there -- but I saw it from the car! To the east, we could see the mountains of Jordan in the distance. We passed by bedouins herding flocks of sheep, and saw a few donkeys and camels as well. We also passed by lots of agricultural areas, seeing date palm orchards, vineyards, olive trees, vegetables, citrus fruits and more. Fresh water is a problem in Israel, but for the time being, they seem to have enough to irrigate all these crops.

Educational Moment: "Only 20% of Israel is naturally suitable for crops; however, Israel is able to produce 95% of its own food requirements, supplementing with imports of grains, oils, seeds, meat, coffee, cocoa and sugar." 



Setting up a roadside market of fresh produce

 The further north we ventured, the greener the surroundings got... and the darker blue the sky. We were driving into rain. Bummer. We made our first stop at Beit-She'an, which according to the guidebook, is a "gloriously rich ruin, complete with bathhouses, pagan temples, and public theaters. It is one of the country's most notable sites."

We must not have been in the right Beit-She'an, because all we found was a ghost town. After wandering a bit, we did stumble upon the ruins of a Roman theater from around 200 AD. The guidebook recommended visiting the visitors center (closed) to get info & a map, and going to the box office (also closed) for tickets to the evening sound-and-light spectacle. Double fail. We saw zero humans around until heading back to the car, when an Arabic man who clearly spoke little to no English stuck his head out of a building and greeted us by saying, "What." (Not a question.. a greeting.) At that moment, it started to rain. And we knew it was time to leave Beit-She'an.



Jo and I at Beit-She'an... #fail

 From there, we continued north to Nazareth - the town where Jesus grew up! What you should know: Nazareth - a city of 65,000 - is haphazardly thrown on rolling hills with little hope of ever being successfully navigated. To illustrate my point, here is a roadmap of Nazareth:

Please keep in mind, none of these roads really have names, let alone street signs.

Needless to say, we got lost in Nazareth. For, like, the entire day. Good thing our rental car had unlimited miles (kilometers?) because we drove all. over. that. city. 

The one small success in Nazareth was lunch. We stopped at the most ghetto-tastic hummus shop, and wowww.. was it good! And crazy authentic. The server didn't speak English, so he just correctly assumed that we wanted three plates of hummus. Probably the best hummus I have ever eaten. We also got fresh pita and a personal space heater on which to warm said pita. Like I said, ghetto-tastic.

After lunch, we were determined to find the Basilica of the Annunciation, which is a Roman Catholic church built over the ancient grotto where Mary lived and where the angel Gabriel told Mary she would conceive a son and call him JESUS. This is when we got horribly lost.

During our directionless wandering, we accidentally stumbled upon Nazareth Village, an area which aims to reconstruct Jewish rural life as Jesus would have known it. And as fate would have it, the last tour of the day had left about 20 minutes prior, and we weren't allowed to explore on our own. Joanne and Esther convinced the guy to let us take a peek, so we were allowed 5 minutes on our own.




Jesus's kitchen

We then continued our aimless driving through Nazareth, stopping many times for directions. The language barrier proved to be a problem, and many of the likely-Muslim Arabs we asked seemed unclear about what a "basilica" was. (And there are lots of churches in Nazareth, so we couldn't just say "church.") After directions that included hand motions, sound effects, and instructions to "go straight all the time, and then left," we were no closer to finding the Basilica.

FINALLY - we found the Basilica! And ironically enough, it was literally just blocks away from where we had eaten lunch. Yeesh. Looking at the clock, we realized we had only 20 minutes before we needed to hit the road to make it to our dinner accomodations in time, so we didn't even go in the church. We did admire the gorgeous mosaics of the Mother and Child in the courtyard, which had been contributed by countries all over the world.

We decided we would have to backtrack to explore the Basilica the next day. Staying optimistic, we reminded ourselves at least we'd know RIGHT where it was this time!

Luckily, we finished the day on a very high note. Driving further north, we reached the house of Joanne's friend Oz (pronounced Oh's) who lives right on the Sea of Galilee. I mean, you can see the Sea from his front porch. Gorgeous.

Since it was Friday night, Oz had prepared an amazing Shabbat dinner, including Israeli wine, challah, all kinds of salads, and delicious fish he had caught in the Sea of Galilee earlier that day. Since I was feeling the effects of jet lag, after dinner we chatted, watched a movie, and curled up for a good night's sleep...realizing that really, Friday wasn't such a failure after all.

Up Next: Sea of Galilee and the Jesus Trail!