Road Trip to North Israel

Israel is geographically a very small country – especially when compared to a country like Canada…in fact, compared to Vancouver Island it is small. Vancouver Island is about 32,000 sq Km and Israel is about 20,700 sq Km. That makes BC about 45 times as large as Israel….wow. That was news to me! And there are only 7 million people living here…the population of BC and Alberta together. Given the amount of time Israel is mentioned in the news I always felt it was a lot bigger! Having said that, it’s really nice for us as we can rent a car and really see the country, from top to bottom.

We started with the north and went to a few places that our friend Amir recommended. Some lovely B&B’s in remote areas (with hot tubs to boot!). We went to the Galilee area and saw the Golan Heights and Israel’s tallest peak of Mount HarMeron at 1208 meters high. There was snow on it - brrrr. Who wants that!?!

Unfortunatly, like all countries, there are the not so beautiful areas and we found one accidentally when we took a wrong turn. Seems there are communities here that are built on land fills that could use a bit of a spruce up.

On the way we drove through the town of Tiberius and past the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus is said to have walked on water. This sea is over 680 feet below sea level (note the true Canadianism of mixing meters and feet in one document), the lowest fresh water sea in the world, second to the lowest salt water lake, the Dead Sea, which is on the list to be seen in February when we plan to go to Jordan.

It was nice to get off the boat, sleep in a real bed for a change (with head room!!). But, as usual, also nice to get “home” and back to the boat when we were done.

 The highlight was a long walk in a bird sanctuary which got us out of the car and back to nature. It took us about 2 and half hours and was over 9 Km long. The wind was warm and it was very relaxing.