Monday morning,
once everyone woke up and got ready, we walked to St. Gabriel Greek Orthodox Church:
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| Vibrant art, fancy lamps |
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| Burning incense |
and then back to the Church of the
Annunciation to tour the inside.
The
architecture, like most other churches I’ve been in so far here in Israel, was
impressive.
The doors, with their 3D
figures, seemed to come to life before my eyes.
Some images were a little creepy, such as the one below:
Becca and I like
to linger and photograph just about everything in sight, so we quickly fell
behind Amanda and Koichi. One of my
favorite parts of the church was the stained glass windows; they were rich and
vibrant, contrasting beautifully with the low-lit room inside. The ceiling was an impressive bright white
dome structure that seemed to stretch endlessly above. Walking down the stairs, I came to a fenced
off room; just beyond I saw an altar and a winding staircase in the
background. This area is thought to be the
place where Mary and Gabriel had their conversation. As I looked around, I saw many Catholics
crossing their chests reverently, while others posed in front of the fence for
photographs. Becca and I made our way
through the area and up another winding staircase, which brought us into the
main sanctuary. A priest was at the
front altar; some people were lined up in front of him, and more were scattered
about, watching from the pews.
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| Ok this picture has nothing to do with the day I'm writing about, but this little area was my thinking spot at the Abu Saeed Hostel in Nazareth and wanted to include it here |
Once we made our
way outside, we walked through a small Arab market near the church.
We came to a mosque, called the White Mosque
(for purity).
Koichi and Amanda were all
set to go inside once Amanda had her head covered, and I saw Becca get her head
covering out.
I didn’t have one, except a hat, and I
had no intention of going inside, but Koichi gave me his Bedouin head covering and in I went.
I removed my shoes, looked to the right, and
saw this door:
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| Main prayer area...NOT the area behind the door above |
I’d never been in
a mosque before, and I will never go in another.
Not entering the door in the picture above, I walked onto the main carpet area, and
before I knew it a man came in and yelled at Amanda and I in Arabic.
We were both thrown out; Amanda because her
legs were uncovered below the knee (we presume) and I because I was in a men’s
only area.
I have so much more to say,
but this entry is not about that...so,
moving right along.
Once we walked
through the little market, we sought a place to get lunch. Amanda and I settled for yet another falafel
(best one I’ve had yet), while Becca got some schnitzel (covered in sesame
seeds…bleh) and fries. Then we walked
back to the hostel, grabbed our gear, and started the four day hike/walk to
Capernaum.
Before I write
about our hike, I need to explain the backpack situation.
Walking on foot for four days poses a
challenge when knowing what to pack.
The
backpack I have with me is not meant for backpacking 40 miles, but I had to
make do, and I did, but eventually it caused problems.
Inside my bag I had a pair of running pants
(jeans take up too much space), capris, Band-Aids, camera, along with other
little necessities like a toothbrush, contact solution, etc.
I knew we would need snacks along the way,
especially when in areas that didn’t have stores or shops.
I am very fond of clementines and almonds, so
I had those along with a few apples; these were all placed in plastic bags and
tied to the outside of my backpack, as you will see in the picture below.
Most importantly, I packed water; 3 liters a
day is the recommended minimum here in Israel when outdoors.
Also some type of head covering; I brought a
hat, the others brought their Bedouin head coverings.
Since I am not able to consume the tap water
here, I had to take quite a bit of bottled water with me; 4 liters to be exact,
thus a two liter bottle rested in one pocket on the side of my pack, and the
other two liter bottle rested in the other side.
Needless to say, this made for a heavy load
that I was not happy about; my backpack weighed close to 40lbs when it was all
said and done.
The belt strap helped
more than I thought, allowing some of the weight to rest on my lower back and
hips, but still the majority of the weight rested on my shoulders; by day 3
this became very problematic.
I bought
water along the way when I could; I consumed an average of 3-3 ½ liters a
day.
Now on with the hike.
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| The ridiculous bag on my back...and drinking some amazing chocolate milk |
We had been told
by friends who had gone before us that the beginning of the hike was pretty
intense. For those of you who remember
my whining about the stairs we had to climb to reach the Baha’i Gardens—well, this
was worse. According to our Jesus Trail
book, we had to ascend 407 stairs. I had
to look this up because I’m inquisitive and it’s what I do: a flight of stairs
has an average of 10 steps; so we climbed about 40 flights, or 1/5 of a
mile. (Notice how 40 keeps coming up??) The
positive thing about this was it caused me to pray a lot, because I didn’t
think I was going to make it. I was sure
my diaphragm was on the verge of pushing my heart out my throat with each gasp. I don’t recall stopping, just slowly climbing
in hopes I would see an end. We would
come to a turn, and when turning to look for a street, all we saw were more
stairs. Several minutes and several
chugs of water later, we were at the top looking down on Nazareth. When we crossed the street, we saw the next
phase, which thankfully wasn’t steps, but a very steep hill. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I chose to laugh. At least when my breathing would allow
it. I was beginning to regret eating
that falafel, as I’m not sure it had time to digest.
In order to save money, we had decided before
the trip to walk to Zippori and stay the night there, instead of walking
further to Cana and paying more for a place to sleep. With the exception of the very beginning,
that day’s walk was to be an easy one, with Zippori being roughly five miles
from Nazareth; but that meant a lot more walking later.
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| Posh Arab house outside Nazareth...there were a lot of beautiful homes throughout the hike |
Once we left
Nazareth, the path took us through rural areas.
The view, what we could see, was beautiful.
The visibility was very limited, as the sky
was white with dust.
We thought it was
due to construction going on in the immediate area, but it lingered until we
reached Zippori.
The dust was getting in
my eyes at times, and we could feel it cling to our skin.
We would later learn that what we were
experiencing was a large concentration of dust from Egypt and Libya.
I’ve been wanting to go to Egypt, but with
all the unrest there currently I can’t, so it was nice to know a little bit of
Egypt came to me.
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| Egyptian dust |
You may be
wondering, how did we know how to follow the trail? It was interesting. Yes, we had a Jesus Trail book with maps and
info, but there are markers all the way to Capernaum. These markers are white and orange, and look
like this:
They could be
found on rocks, trees, fence posts, or on the guardrails on highways; I felt
like I was playing Blue’s Clues...I may have hummed the tune a time or two. If the marker was painted with a left or
right angle, then we knew we were to turn that direction; if our trail merged
with another (there are many trails in Israel and they each have their own
colors to distinguish from one another), then we looked for an orange dot. This may sound easy, but if you get caught up
too much in the scenery, you can miss your clue. We might have done that. A couple hours into the hike, while walking on
a dirt road passing by beautiful green fields and olive tree groves, we ran out
of markers. We continued to follow the
road, thinking we had the map figured out…we were wrong. We ended up off the dirt road and onto the
side of a highway. I felt something was
really off, as we still had yet to see a marker of any kind. To our right, on a dirt road running parallel
to the highway, an older man in a beat up white pickup stopped to see if we
needed help. He tried to explain that we
were walking in the opposite direction we needed to be going (a man on a
tractor told us this previously, but we smiled and kept going the wrong
way). He finally offered to give us a
ride to the Zippori National Park, which was right where we needed to be. So again, Koichi sat in the front seat, and
the three of us who remained climbed in the bed of the little truck. It was fun to be honest, and the breeze felt
great. The ride was bumpy, and we almost
lost Amanda, but she miraculously remained in the middle and not on the
road. Oh, and we might have passed the
guy on the tractor again. He looked at
us, smiled big, and raised his hands as if to say “why didn’t you listen to me?”;
we smiled and waved. Once we arrived at
the entrance of the park, the driver offered for us to stay at his house free
of charge (everyone is soooo hospitable here), but we had reservations at a
hostel in Zippori already. And to be
honest, I don’t think us three girls felt comfortable with the idea.
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| My feet getting a short rest while being driven to the national park |
Amanda and I
toured the park while Koichi and Becca stayed at the gate to sit and rest. We saw various excavations, and several
ancient mosaics. I love mosaics, and
this picture is my favorite:
After touring the
park, the four of us met up again to walk to Rish Lakish, a family-owned olive press (I got to tour the facility with Becca...pretty impressive), where we would be
staying for the night. Located in Zippori, which is the ancient city of Sepphoris, is traditionally thought to be the hometown of Mary's parents. It was inhabited as far back as the 7th century B.C., and was once on a major trade route, being situated halfway between the Mediterranean and the Sea of Galilee. Josephus called it the "ornament of the Galilee", but it was destroyed by an earthquake in 363 A.D.
The family that
owns the little guest house at Rish Lakish was so warm and inviting. We had dinner with them, which unfortunately
for me was vegetarian, but Israeli salad was on the menu and I can eat my
weight in that any day of the week.
Passover came to an end that evening, so after sunset we induldged in
some pita bread with my favorite dip—Labneh.
I was appalled to find out the main ingredient is yogurt—I don’t eat
yogurt. But Labneh doesn’t taste
anything like yogurt; I thought it was cream cheese. Amanda and I remained at the kitchen table after
dinner, while Becca watched the news in Hebrew with
Mr. Noymeir, and Koichi pet a dying cat on the couch. Mrs. Noymeir, her sister and I had interesting
conversations after dinner. One of them
was on the topic of how money donated from France, Germany and the UK , with
the intention of going towards non-profit organizations and education in the
West Bank, is filtered through Islamic extremist groups who prefer Jews be
wiped off the map rather than settle for a two state solution. After talking for a while, we all said
goodnight and made our way to our guest house.
Once inside, we realized we had uninvited visitors: large black bugs, a
black centipede-wormlike thing, and a gecko on the wall. One of the windows didn’t have glass, it was
just an opening in the wall. While
telling Koichi a story, I used my hands to gesture how large something was, and
he screamed. I turned around to see a
cat sitting in the opening in the wall; the timing of its appearance and my
part in the story gave him a jolt. I didn't sleep more than three hours that night, and I recall hearing him yell out a few times during the night due to various critters and whatnot...it was entertaining :) Keep posted for part 3!
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