Weekend 6: The South

By my sixth weekend in Israel, I had seen a large part of the country—Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, the Dead Sea, the West Bank—but there was one huge area that I had not yet explored: the South. Most of the major population centers in Israel lie in the middle and northern parts of the country; the South consists mainly of a large desert called the Negev, and I wanted to see it.

A couple days before the weekend, my good friend Edith wrote me and said that she had read my blog and was going to be my travel buddy sometime whether I liked it or not. I told her that I wanted to go somewhere south that weekend, and on Thursday, we met up at the Tel Aviv Central Bus Station.

Knowing that food in the desert is as scarce as open restaurants on Saturdays, we decided to stock up before leaving. I found some large subs selling for only five shekels each and purchased four of them. Edith got a box of cereal and some chips.

One nice custom in Israel is that if a bus is full, they’ll just keep letting people on and make the losers sit on the floor. Somehow Edith and I ended up there with them for our ninety-minute ride to the city of Be’er Sheva, which looked like a good jumping-off point to get into the desert the next day.

Another practice I’ve observed in several countries outside the US, Israel included, involves loud usage of cell phones in public places. Americans certainly engage in this practice, but foreigners often take it a step further: they’ll have conversations on speakerphone so everyone can hear both sides! Moreover, many people will use their cell phones as sound systems to play loud music for everyone. Hence, on our bus to Be’er Sheva, we listened to a kid on one side of us playing cell phone music the whole time while the woman on the other side had a loud speakerphone conversation. I always enjoy noting cultural differences and often find ones that I like, but this isn’t one of them. So, if you’re one of those non-Americans that I’m talking about and you use your cell phone in this manner, please turn off speakerphone and get headphones for your music. Nobody thinks you’re cool.

Upon arriving in Be’er Sheva a little after midnight, we checked to see if any buses continued south. Everything had stopped for the night, so we had reached our final destination. Between the two of us, we knew several people in the city, but they were all out of town. Apparently other people like traveling too.

Despite its status as the “Capital of the Negev,” Be’er Sheva notoriously lacks affordable accommodations as well as accommodations in general. As Edith and I strolled through the streets, we passed people hanging out, an Arab party, a cemetery enclosed by a barbed-wire fence angled inwards at the top (to contain zombies, I believe), and eventually arrived at a hotel on a shady Russian street. The building was clearly abandoned. Continuing on, we found a small park with, much to my delight, a homeless man asleep on the grass.

Many people believe that the homeless have no skills, but this is not true: they are experts at finding the best free places to stay. You can’t lie down in just any old trashcan; you must worry about safety, rules, drunk people messing with you, and obvious requirements like comfort and quietness. Homeless men are masters of finding ideal locations. I suppose most of us could be as well if we made it our full time jobs, but until then they have us beat.

Edith and I wandered a bit more and returned to find that the man had vacated his spot, and we set up camp in his place. Edith had brought a sleeping bag, and I packed a sheet, so we made our beds and went to sleep.

I awoke only briefly in the night to the sound of some stray dogs playing loudly nearby, and when I looked around, a lone man in the empty streets called out “hakol beseder?” (everything okay?). I nodded and lay down again.

As the sky grew light around five or six, we rose from the dewy grass, packed our belongings, and returned to the bus station.

Figuring that we should save our rations and purchase food while we could, we examined the bus station options and found—toast! Those of you who haven’t spent time in Israel do not know what “toast” is. In English, it refers to a slice of toasted bread. Here, “toast” is a bagel or other similar large round bread horizontally sliced and filled with ingredients such as cheese, olives, mushrooms, tomatoes, onions, tuna, hard-boiled eggs, and spices, cooked for several minutes in a panini press. The resulting hot and invariably delicious sandwich makes a satisfying meal and has an average cost of three dollars. I purchased a toast, and Edith got a calzone-pastry sort-of-thing.

As we sat eating and waiting for the buses to start, we talked about where to go. One distinct feature of the Negev Desert is Makhtesh Ramon, a 40km long crater (good guess, “makhtesh” means crater in Hebrew). We decided that we wanted to make it our first stop, so we boarded bus 60 headed south to Mitzpe Ramon, a town along the rim. Knowing that we wanted to end the day in Sde Boker, a town between Be’er Sheva and the crater, we asked the bus driver when the last bus out of the Mitzpe Ramon would run. He told us 1:35PM.

When we arrived midmorning, I woke up and stumbled off the bus disorientedly, fixing my dry contacts. As soon as I could see again, I realized that the bus had dropped us off on a road literally running along the rim of the crater, and my eyes caught sight of the enormous hole. It was huge! I still remember clearly a trip to the Grand Canyon when I was in fourth grade, and this reminded me a lot of it. We walked to the edge and gazed into Ramon Crater’s vastness. I wanted to be in it.

A short way down the road sat the official visitor center, which we appropriately decided to visit. After a few minutes of basking in the air-conditioning’s amazingness, we made use of the bathrooms to change, brush our teeth, and fill up our water bottles. There was a sign saying “visitors must pay to use restrooms,” but the woman at the counter never asked us for money. Instead, she told us that hiking to the bottom of the crater and back by 1:30 would be impossible. “We’ll show her,” I thought.

Before leaving, we started to look at the typical visitor center informational signs and models on display were told that there was a charge for viewing them. I’m used to the lonely people in American visitor centers who live for the occasional guest interested in their displays, and I could not bring myself to pay money to see one (of the displays, not the lonely people). We did have time to read a panel about the formation of the crater: Makhtesh Ramon is not a meteor crater but was instead somehow formed by natural processes on Earth (which makes it infinitely less exciting). The visitor center gave a ridiculous explanation concerning the ground folding upwards under an ancient sea and leaving a crater in the crack. The correct answer can of course be found on Wikipedia, however, and involves water eroding a soft layer of rock and causing the ground above to collapse, producing the giant void that we see today. I still chose to pretend it was made by aliens, though.

Although I normally don’t take advice from old ladies about the feasibility of my plans (nor do I normally receive it), I knew that given our time constraint, we should still plan carefully. People often run into trouble when hiking into canyons because starting with the downhill presents an inherent problem: you can easily travel much further than you should, and upon turning around, realize that fatigue and lack of water prevent you from returning.

Seeing that my phone read 11AM, giving us 150 minutes to make the trip, I allotted fifty for the descent and a hundred for returning to ensure that we’d make it on time. We were both in good shape and carrying three liters of water each, so I figured we’d be alright.

The hike down was easy and pleasant. We enjoyed spectacular views of the chiseled landscape as we watched the crater floor grow closer. Promising myself that we’d turn around at 11:50 even if we weren’t at the bottom yet, I hoped that we would make it down in time.

We did. After a high-five and discussion about how great we are, we sat atop a small hill of black gravel, a strange island in a sea of reddish-brown rock. While lying in the torrent of radiation that is the midday sun, we realized why nobody else attempted to hike at this hour: it’s really hot. We drank water, thankful for our ample supply, and Edith watched while I ran around on the rocks like a little kid.

As we faced the crater wall on the way up, we discovered how deep we had gone: very. The sun beat down on us while we climbed the steep trail and stopped frequently for water. As we struggled and worried about making it back on time to catch the bus, I reminded Edith what all her years of soccer practice were for, and she reminded me that there was ice cream in little store at the top. We pushed onwards and made it with twenty minutes to spare.

I wanted to return to the visitor center and brag to the woman, but instead we just used the restrooms and refilled our water before getting ice cream at the nearby shop and relaxing at the shaded bus stop.

At 1:35, we caught the much-anticipated bus that would take us to Sde Boker and told the driver that we wanted go to Ein Avdat National Park, which supposedly contained natural springs and great trails through the desert. We figured it’d be a good place to spend the night and hike around the next day, and the driver said he’d let us know when to get off.

When the time came, Edith and I exited the bus, saw a sign pointing down a side road to the Ein Avdat Entrance, and walked for fifteen minutes before arriving at the gate. A ranger then explained to us that we were at the “Upper Entrance,” in the South, and the trail is one-way and you can only start hiking at the “Lower Entrance,” in the North.

Ok, I don’t know WHO told this guy that he’s working at an ENTRANCE, but he’s not! If you can only leave through there, it’s an EXIT! Why would they ever print all the maps and signs and call this gate an “entrance,” only to turn down the people who try to enter there? It wasn’t even a translation problem; Edith speaks fluent Hebrew and did all the talking.

And what’s with the bus driver who dropped us off there? We clearly told him that we wanted to hike through Ein Avdat, and surely, he knows a bit about the five or ten stops that he drives past every day. Why would he direct us through the decoy entrance?

Even more frustrating, as we trekked back out to the main road, we saw another bus 60 passing by! The first driver lied to about when the last bus left! We subsequently saw two or three more of them pass in the next hour. Why do these people seem to know so little? Are they even real bus drivers?

We started walking the four miles down the road to the real park entrance, when a van stopped and a door opened, revealing a family inside. Edith and I climbed in with what turned out to be one of the nicest families ever. They lived on a kibbutz (farm) in the area and had been out someplace with their kids, one of whom was an adopted Ethiopian. They gave us some apples and water and dropped us off at the next Ein Avdat entrance.

When we saw that there was an alternative trail off to the side, we decided to save the main hike through the canyon and springs for the next day and instead take the optional route, especially since it turned out that the entrance to the main route was actually still a fair distance away.

The trail brought us through a desert full of huge rocks, hills, and dunes that I will remember as one of my favorite places ever. The last two years have led me to realize that I have a strange love for foreign deserts. The hot sun, rich blue skies, and bright beige sand surrounding us that day kept me constantly entertained. Several times, I told Edith, “I really want to go run up that dune over there and see what’s on the other side,” and she was a great sport and always let me go.

At one point as we hiked through a dry streambed, I looked back and saw what appeared to be the remains of a vehicle in a ravine that led to the top of the canyon. “Edith, what’s that up there?”

“It’s a car,” she stated.

“Oh… just checking.”

I could not resist the urge to get a closer look, so together we climbed up to see it. Sure enough, it looked as if someone fifty years ago had tried to drive a car into or out of the canyon (we couldn’t tell which), and it had gone horribly wrong. Or else they were trying to cover up a murder or something, in which case they were probably successful.

We never once saw another person on the trails, although we did see a few ibex (mountain goat-type animals) and lizards. The place was so beautiful and fascinating that we spent the whole afternoon exploring.

As sunset approached, we talked about where to spend the night. Edith had inquired about camping in the area and was told that there was a sort of parking lot along the road where people parked RVs but that sleeping in the national park was not permitted. We determined that we were probably still technically on national park land, but I really didn’t want to leave this amazing place and pay money to sleep in some parking lot, so I suggested that we just hike off the trail a bit and sleep on top of a hill. Edith noted that the wind was picking up and suggested that if we don’t return to the actual campsite, we instead seek shelter at the bottom of a hill. This sounded like a good compromise to me, so we set off to look for an ideal spot. With plenty of food and water and maps of the area, what could go wrong? The only dangers were scorpions, snakes, and the Arabs that everyone warned us about. We figured we’d probably be ok though.

Hiking down the trail a bit and looking behind the hills on either side, we eventually found a perfect little spot hidden from the trail and between two dunes. I used my foot to brush the sand around and flatten out a sleeping area, and we settled in and made our beds.

Growing hungry, we grabbed some food and water and climbed to the top of a hill to eat dinner and watch the sunset. As distant walls of sand shrouded the sun’s last rays and the desert began to grow dim, we descended to our belongings, brushed our teeth, and lay down.

The stars began to appear one by one, then many at a time, until they were too numerous count. We watched meteors and satellites and listened in the darkness to the cold wind pass overhead as we lay in the soft, sandy bed in our narrow, sheltered valley.

A beam of light skimmed across the tops of the dunes in front of us. “What the hell was that!?!” We froze and brought our conversation to a whisper.

“Why is someone hiking through here at 10:00 at night?”

“Could it be a park ranger looking for trespassers?”

“Is it a Bedouin protecting his land?” We had heard about men who rob people in the desert, or worse yet, kidnap them.

The beam disappeared, but we noticed the hilltops seemed not as dark as they had before and were left with an eerie glow. I assured Edith that we were well-hidden and that anyone would really have to look to come upon us. We lay down and tried to relax.

Fifteen minutes passed. The light returned. It swept across the dunes, stopped, continued, and again disappeared. Our hearts pounded as we listened for footsteps. “Edith, if we hear anyone coming towards us, we get up and run the other way and hide. Do you have your valuables on you?”

“No! I don’t have any pockets!”

“Give me your wallet; I'll hold onto it. Just be ready to leave quickly if we have to,” I told her. Our minds raced as we ran through the possible scenarios. If it was a park ranger or soldier, we would turn ourselves in and apologize for sleeping there. If it was an Arab trying to rob us and we didn’t have time to escape, we’d try to fight him as long as he didn’t show a weapon. If he was armed or there was a group, we’d give them our money and hope they let us go.

“Maybe we should pack up and go back to the campground,” Edith suggested.

“No, we’ll be much more visible hiking on the trails with a flashlight than we will be if we hide here,” I replied. We lay still and quiet and listened; we heard no sign of movement. I decided to scamper to the top of the dune in front of us and look for the source of the light. “If we can’t hear them walking, they won’t hear me climbing,” I reasoned.

I reached the top, poked my head up, and peered across. Five floodlights shined from posts on top of a cliff far in the distance. They were stationary and looked like they turned on every night. I turned to see my own shadow in the orange light on the dune behind me. Having solved the mystery of the ambient illumination, we still did not know about the moving beam of light. I gazed at stretches of trail visible from my vantage point, looking for any sign of motion. Seeing none, I returned to Edith and told her what I saw.

We felt slightly better to know about the source of the stationary glow, but we still did not know from where the moving, flashlight-looking beam had emanated. “Maybe it’s an automated searchlight,” we reasoned.

The light reappeared twice in the next five minutes and scanned the hilltops. It can’t be automated; there’s no set interval. We continued to lie and look and listen.

To this day, we don’t know exactly where the light came from. Israelis have since told us that soldiers, rangers, and Arabs are all definite possibilities. The most reasonable that I can come up with is that perhaps the parking lot at the distant trailhead lay at the perfect elevation for cars to shine their headlights over the desert and clip the tops of the dunes that we lay beneath. I still don’t know why there would be any traffic at that hour though.

Regardless, we eventually fell asleep and awoke at dawn, safe. Edith lay in her sleeping bag while I rose to climb the dune from which we had watched the sun set the night before. This time facing east, I watched it rise, casting a reddish glow over the infinite expanse of sand and mountains.

I returned to our little camp below as Edith began to get up. We noted how much better we felt in daylight again, consumed a quick breakfast of sandwich and cereal, and packed our bags. The hike out passed quickly, and we reached the road by 8:30AM.

A twenty-minute walk brought us to the site we had sought since yesterday afternoon: the REAL entrance to Ein Avdat: the “Lower” one, where you are actually allowed to enter. We paid a small admission fee and went in.

The canyon was indeed very scenic but somehow did not quite compare to the previous day’s hike. Tall walls of rock rose on either side of the trail, which followed a stream, fed by natural springs. Knowing that we had all day, we strolled leisurely along the path, admiring the birds, tadpoles, and novel bits of greenery.

I greatly enjoyed traveling with Edith for several reasons: she’s easy going and doesn’t mind my spontaneity, she’s a good companion and fun conversationalist, she’s a great athlete and physically able to keep up with my pace, but one thing that I particularly enjoyed was her ability to speak Hebrew. Having been born in Jerusalem but grown up in the States, she’s fluent in both English and Hebrew, and she happily endured my constant barrage of questions. “I hear this word a lot; can you tell me what it means?” “How would you conjugate this verb?” “What’s the Hebrew spelling and the English transliteration?” “How do you make hummus?”

We stopped to sit by an algae-filled pool at the base of a waterfall (we refrained from swimming) and again under the shade of some trees, where she gave me as much information as I could retain. Her lessons have served me numerous times since.

A steep staircase and set of ladders led us up the huge canyon wall (the ladders are the reason it is a one-way trail—they say they are too dangerous to go down). We stopped to rest in a cave that supposedly once housed Byzantine monks.

The day grew hot as we reached the top of the canyon and left the park through the familiar gate that rejected us the day before. Yes, definitely an exit, not an entrance.

We reached the main road around noon and knew that buses would start in the early evening. Knowing that the other entrance had a small air-conditioned visitor center that we could hang out in, we decided to try to hitchhike there. We agreed that Edith would do all the talking, in Hebrew, and that we would decline if the driver looked too suspicious.

After walking for a long time and seeing only the occasional northbound car (why was everybody heading south?), we began to grow frustrated. Nobody would stop for us. We even tried taking off our hats and sunglasses to look friendlier. Eventually, we came to a shaded bus stop on the side of the road and took shelter. We ate lunch and drank water while resting and examining the crude artwork on the small concrete structure.

We started walking again, and at last, a car stopped, containing a single female driver. We got in. Although I couldn’t understand the conversation, she and Edith talked at length, and the woman ended up taking us all the way back to Be’er Sheva.

She dropped us off at an Aroma, an Israeli chain similar to Panera Bread. After thanking her extensively, we entered the air-conditioned oasis. We still had a bus station sandwich, some cereal, and warm water left, but we happily purchased delicious “sabich” sandwiches—an Iraqi eggplant and egg specialty—with cold water.

Glad to be back to civilization, we ate and talked about what to do next. “I kind of want to get ice cream from McDonald’s,” Edith said.

“Sounds good to me, let’s go!” The nearest McDonald’s lay a thirty-second walk across the street. We stopped at the door to let the security guard check our bags and went in to order. I watched as the middle-aged Russian woman prepared our cones, perfectly spiraling the vanilla soft-serve along the rim and up to a swirly point.

“What? There’s no ice cream inside the cone! It’s all on top,” I complained to Edith.

“That’s how they do it here,” she informed me. “It’s a national regulation, so you get less ice cream.”

“Oh… those Jews,” I thought. At least it only cost seventy-five cents (unlike the rest of the food, which was mad-expensive—some value meals cost more than ten US dollars!).

We sat inside and enjoyed our ice cream before heading back to the bus station and finding a sherut to Tel Aviv.

We arrived in the city at five, two hours before the buses start running. Walking through the nearly-empty bus station, I saw Filipino women selling kebabs of meat. I approached them and asked what it was—they were selling pork! I bought two pork kebabs, wondering how they managed to sneak it into the country, and felt like a bad person as I enjoyed the delicious meat that I had not tasted for a month and a half.

We got a taxi to Edith’s place, which was not too far away (she lives right in the city), and hung out around there until the buses began again and I could head back home out to Kiryat Ono.

My sixth weekend turned out to be a great success: there was a region that I wanted to explore, and I returned home quite confident that I knew what was there. We made it out alive, had fun in the process, and most importantly proved previous weekend’s calmness an exception to the rule and not a new trend.

Weekend 5: MIT Israel Seminar

My fifth weekend in Israel differed from the previous ones in a few major ways. First, it lasted five days. In addition, it was extremely organized, complete with lavish accommodations, and entirely free from danger. Weird, right? Don’t worry, it wasn’t anything I planned. It was the official MIT Israel seminar.

All thirty of us in Israel for the summer met up with the program director and with a tour guide, armed guard (all tour groups in Israel must have an armed guard, by law), and a bus driver to travel around the country together. While the best part of the weekend was getting a chance to meet and hang out with all the other MIT students in Israel, the five-day all-expenses-paid seminar also allowed us to travel to several parts of the country and see some sights that we might not have otherwise seen on our own. The trip was perhaps “tamer” than some of my other ones, but I suppose it’s still worth telling what we did.

We had been given a bit of information beforehand, something along the lines of: “You will be picked up Thursday morning at 8AM. Wear shoes you can get wet.” Sure enough, on Thursday morning, vans brought all of us from our homes in Israel to a centralized location in Tel Aviv. One of Tel Aviv’s city engineer’s led us on a walking tour of some neighborhoods, but we were all too busy talking and catching up to pay much attention. We then hopped on our convenient tour bus to travel to the next location, where we found out what the shoes were for: our next stop was Mey Kadem to see some ancient Roman aqueducts.

Normally aqueducts are depicted as long bridges supported by arches, but these ones were carved into rock underground. We climbed down into them to follow the tunnels, which still contained a few feet of running water.

Continuing the Roman theme, we traveled to Caesarea, on the coast north of Tel Aviv, to see the ruins of some ancient Roman buildings including a large theater, swimming pools, and bathhouses, all located next to a beautiful, modern coal power plant. Apparently one popular service provided at the bathhouses included covering your body in olive oil and getting a full-body shave. This was for men only.

We then checked in to our hotel down the road, and I realized how much I had missed having nice hotel rooms—a lot, but not enough to change my “no more than ten dollars a night” policy, I guess. During the free time before dinner, my roommate, Chris, and I walked outside to see if there was a swimming pool and instead found the ocean. As we swam, groups of guys trickled out until there were around a dozen of us out there. I’m not sure where the ladies were. They probably wouldn’t have liked it though, since all we all got stung by jellyfish.

At the delicious hotel dinner, we noticed a group of frighteningly large blond girls, which we determined to be a visiting Russian basketball team.

In the evening, we returned to the site of the ruins to find the stone theater we had seen earlier illuminated and full of people. It has been restored a bit and is used today as a concert venue. We saw popular Israeli musician Idan Raichel and his group put on an amazing performance, made even more enjoyable by the outdoor atmosphere and the view from the ancient theater overlooking the ocean.

The next day, our bus brought us to Jerusalem. The first stop was Yad VaShem, Israel’s Holocaust museum. It was extremely well done and told the story effectively and surprisingly unbiasedly. After lunch on a hill overlooking the city, we drove to our next hotel and listened to a speaker talk about political activism among young Jerusalemites.

Friday evening, of course, marks the start of the Sabbath. We walked to Jerusalem’s old city to watch Jews pray at the Western Wall, the most holy site in Judaism. It was packed. When we returned to the hotel, a huge Shabbat dinner awaited us. At dinner we talked, and a few groups of people agreed to meet up afterwards and go out at night.

Word spread fast, and when the time came, almost all of us ended up meeting in the lobby. We called an army of cabs to transport us and had a fun night out in the city with all the other disobedient Jews.

The next morning, Chris and I awoke early, consumed a delicious and much-needed breakfast, and went back to sleep, much like many other people.

We heard a speaker during lunch, and then went out to get a tour of the Old City, which brought us through the Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Quarters. I had seen most of that on my own, but it was nice to hear someone explain the history and the significance of all the places.

In the afternoon, we listened to a Jewish and a Muslim man, both of whom had lost children in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, tell tragic stories about what had happened. They talked about a project they helped start to get bereaved families on both sides of the conflict talking in hopes of reducing violence.

At night, we were free to go out and get dinner on our own. I went with a group of people to an Italian restaurant, and afterwards we returned to the hotel and hung out.

In the morning, we awoke early to listen to several speakers. Readers, let me tell you something: if anyone ever asks you to speak to a group of students, keep in mind that students are very tired, especially in the morning. Thus, you have to SMILE and entertain, engage the crowd, ask questions, and above all, make sure that your speech is INTERESTING. Also, if nobody laughs, there’s a good chance they’re not enjoying your talk. If you cannot accomplish this simple feat, please politely decline the invitation to speak. Seriously.

Needless to say, a few of the morning speakers did not comply with my guidelines and remain a blur in my mind. One woman that stood out spoke passionately and enthusiastically about the Holocaust and its impact on Israeli history and Israeli identity. We also met with Israel’s chief scientist, who told us about the nation’s infrastructure and energy supply.

That afternoon, we traveled to Haifa, a coastal city in Northern Israel. There we toured a huge and magnificent garden complex owned by the Baha’i religion, which was started in Persia 150 years ago and combines aspects of many modern religions, like pouring vast amounts of money into austentatious tourist attractions.

Next, an architect led us around Haifa’s German colony and explained the significance of various aspects. Interestingly, there aren’t actually any Germans there anymore. I guess things got awkward.

Dinner that night was one of the most memorable. We ate a traditional meal prepared by the Druze people, an Arab minority religious group. We returned to the hotel that night and enjoyed the large roof deck.

On the last day, our morning began with a trip to the Technion, Israel’s MIT, to hear the head of Israel’s water department talk about… water. Coincidentally, he’s an MIT alum.

Next, we visited a biogas plant and learned how they take cow poop and turn it into methane. Yum.

The final part of the seminar was also one of the most fun: we drove to the Sea of Galilee, also known as Lake Kinneret, where a young Jesus once water-skied. There we met up with a group of Israeli students from Oranim College, had a picnic, and spent a relaxing afternoon swimming and hanging out on the beach. When the seminar came to an end, vans drove us all back to our homes around the country.

Overall, the weekend was a good time. It was nice not to have to worry about transportation, meals, or deciding where to go or what to do, and I think we all enjoyed the chance to get to travel and hang out together with everyone in one place. However, I definitely returned home looking forward to getting back the normal swing of nomadic immersion and living on the edge.

Weekend 4: Palestine

After last weekend’s exhausting trip around the Dead Sea, I decided to take it easy this weekend. Don’t worry, it didn’t happen.

At work on Wednesday, I tried to come up with another cool place to go that would be simple and easy to reach. I had heard a lot of talk about a guy from Nazareth and thought that perhaps Nazareth would be a good destination to have in mind. There are even direct buses from Tel Aviv, but that would be too easy.

I wanted to go to Jerusalem for a few things and figured I’d spend Thursday night there. Geographically, Tel Aviv is on the coast, Jerusalem is inland southeast of there, and Nazareth is all the way in the north. Between Jerusalem and Nazareth lies the West Bank (Palestine). Whatever, I’ll just cut through there, I thought, no big deal. It’s probably faster and more interesting than going all the way around. The latter half would prove to be true.

After work on Thursday, I caught the 400 bus from Bar Ilan to Jerusalem. The bus never made it. About halfway there while climbing a hill, we slowed down and stopped. The driver had us all get out and stand on the side of the road. About half the people made it onto another bus; I was in the unlucky half. A few of us did make it into a passing sherut though (taxi van) and arrived just before sunset.

I walked towards the Old City and found the market I had visited during my first trip to Jerusalem three weeks before. First order of business: return those ripped shorts from last weekend. I found the guy who sold them to me, pulled the deteriorating article from my bag, and told him that I wanted a new pair. He examined them and obliged, saying that he’d only do it once. I bought a pair of nice athletic shorts from him out of appreciation.

Continuing around the market, I noticed the toy selection. In the US, stores sometimes sell toy guns—plastic pistols that kids use to play cowboys and Indians or cops and robbers. In Israel, the toy gun selection consists not of pistols but of M16s and AK47s. I’m not sure what games the kids play.

After browsing the market extensively and exploring the nearby streets, I continued on to the Old City. In the darkness of night, I sought the Muslim Quarter, which I knew housed the cheapest hostels. The one I stayed at last time, Al Arab, cost only thirty shekels but felt unclean to the point where I questioned the safety of lying on their beds. I decided to try Hebron Hostel, which ended up costing forty shekels a night but had clean and comfortable accommodations.

Hanging out with the other guests that evening, I met two women who worked in the West Bank city of Nablus. I knew Nablus was one of the biggest Palestinian cities and thought it’d be a good place to see on Friday as it lies right on the way from Jerusalem to Nazareth. I asked how to get there, and they told me I had to go through the city of Ramallah, which falls in line between Jerusalem and Nablus. Sounds like a plan.

I awoke early on Friday (10:30) and as my first mission, headed over to the Armenian part of town to visit the Jerusalem’s Armenian Museum. No success—the museum was closed for renovations and had no estimated reopening date. Oh well, might as well head to Ramallah then.

To get to Ramallah, one takes the Palestinian buses that leave outside Damascus gate of the Muslim Quarter, so I walked all the way back and located the correct bus. The buses are small, holding maybe two dozen people, and they’ll stop anywhere to let passengers on or off. We drove for a while, and I looked out the window until eventually we stopped and everyone got off, so I did too.

Upon exiting, I saw a small restaurant with a man making little “pita pizzas”—pita breads with cheese, mushrooms, and olives on top. I had seen these before but not tried them, and noticing that it was lunchtime, I walked over and purchased one. “I’ll heat it for you, ok?”

“Sure.” Big mistake. He popped it into the microwave for way too long before setting it down on a table in front of me, its cheese bubbling beneath the saran wrap that enveloped it and turning it into one oozing, pulsating package. I waited for it to cool and ate it, but I still found the thought of plastic melting into cheese unpleasant and won’t soon order another.

As I walked down the road, I realized that I never really had to go through any security to get into the West Bank this time, and I was confused. I asked a foreign-looking woman if I was really in Ramallah despite not going through security on the way in. “You are, and don’t worry; you will on the way out.” I looked forward to seeing if she was right.

Ramallah wasn’t too interesting, at least when I was there during the Friday midday call to prayer. All the Muslims do their thing where they shut down all the shops and restaurants and crowd into Mosques, so I walked around a fairly dead city. One interesting thing I noticed was the number of fake franchises. I first saw a “Stars and Bucks Café” and thought it was funny. Subsequently, I ran into both a “Kentucky Fried Chicken” and a “Kids 'R' Us” that were clearly not the real things. This was something new for me.

When I’d had enough of Ramallah, I started telling people that I wanted to go to Nablus and got them to point me in the direction of the bus station, and proceeding in this manner for a few minutes brought me to a large building with big yellow vans traveling in and out. This station was the first place that I ever had any trouble with an Arab. Here’s what happened.

I asked someone where the buses to Nablus left from, and he told me to take the elevator to the second floor. A kind man then saw me heading toward the elevator, which was tucked away out of sight, and he led me over and pushed the button for me.

I thanked him and entered when the door opened. He followed me in and stood half in the doorway, cornering me and at the same time preventing the door from closing. He then began saying a bunch of stuff in Arabic, getting progressively more aggressive, and he started reaching for my shorts. I semi-expected him to laugh and say “nah I’m just messing with you,” but he persisted.

Unsure of what to do, I yelled “YALLA!” at him (Arabic for “let’s go!”) and pushed him out of the way. He stood back as I turned the corner and took the stairs.

I was glad that I passed that challenge, but at the top of the first flight of stairs, I realized that the stairwell had no lights. After verifying the walls’ lack of switches and seeing that even my sharp night vision failed to penetrate the darkness, I decided that the previous moment’s experience should dissuade me from venturing into the strange building without the ability to see what waits a meter ahead of me. Fortunately, although I take pride in traveling light, Kyle Knoblock comes prepared. I retrieved a flashlight from my backpack, illuminated the stairwell, and pushed onward.

Climbing several more flights of stairs brought me at last to a door leading into a parking garage where Palestinian men and families clamored into and out of yellow vans. I said “Nablus” to a driver and he pointed to a vehicle. I got in.

The ride took us through scenic countryside, and I sat amused watching the passing fields, trees, mountains, and villages of the West Bank. Occasionally we stopped and dropped people off until the last couple exited at an intersection near a few small buildings. The driver looked back at me as if to ask what I was doing. “Nablus,” I told him, and he continued driving.

A couple minutes later when the density of buildings increased and the surroundings gained an urban feel, I saw that we had arrived. We pulled into a parking lot.

I knew the ride should cost around twenty shekels, but lacking change, I handed the driver a fifty. He thanked me and waited for me to leave. “Can I have my change?”

“What?” He pretended not to understand.

“I know it doesn’t cost fifty shekels.”

“Yes, fifty shekels.”

“I saw the people before me get out, and they only paid you fifteen!” We went back and forth for another minute. When he saw that I was not about to let him get away with overcharging me, he gave me twenty-five shekels back. I left to explore the city.

Nablus turned out to be a large city with a lot of life for a Friday afternoon. Buildings reached no more than five or ten stories into the sky, but there were tons of them, all white or beige and slightly rundown, their rooftops crowded with satellite dishes and water tanks. The whole city sat in a valley and baked in the afternoon sun.

One thing that I notice about myself is that upon seeing big rocks, towers, mountains, and the like, I feel an overwhelming desire to climb them. Normally I’m with people who don’t feel the same urge, so I have to resist. However, on this day I was alone. Thus, when after a few minutes of walking the streets I looked up into the surrounding hills, I immediately thought, “I want to be ON that.” I saw no reason why I couldn’t be, so I walked to the nearest edge of the city and began following the streets uphill.

Roads snaked upwards along ledges and past numerous houses and apartment buildings. Palestinian children played in the streets and watched me as I passed.

As the buildings fell behind me and the streets turned into paths, I followed one to its end and began climbing on my own. The terrain was rocky and steep, and the mostly-harmless grassy plants concealed occasional prickly ones. A few scrubby trees stood on top.

My only real worries were venomous snakes and spiders, the latter having given me some trouble in the past. Thus, I used the proven be-careful-and-watch-where-you’re-going method, and everything turned out alright.

Hiking onwards, I noticed that white, out-of-place rocks began lying in straight lines, piles about waist-high and toppling over. As I looked down on the ones beneath me, I saw to my amazement that they formed rectangles. I was hiking through ruins, ancient buildings that had sat on these hillsides since the days when man and dinosaur walked hand in hand. They now go unnoticed by the inhabitants of the city below. Examining the ground confirmed my suspicion: pieces of brown ceramic pottery lay in the soil. The ground also produced a few seashells, signs that these hills, like much of the surrounding area, had been underwater long before their human occupation.

When the top was in sight, I realized that an old, rusty, barbed wire fence along with some concrete barriers enclosed the entirety of it. I wondered what was inside. Not going to be stopped, I circumambulated the region until I found an open passage.

The summit evidently used to be more interesting than when I found it. I could tell that the fence once contained something important, but at present, only trees and cement blocks stood inside. I was alone.

Standing on a rock overlooking the sprawling Palestinian city, I listened as an echoing Arabic chant erupted at once and emanated from all of Nablus’s mosques, filling the valley with sound—time for afternoon prayer.

I walked to the other side of the hilltop and saw a road below that led up a nearby hill, its peak laced with cell towers. I decided to descend to the road and follow it up.

Half an hour later, I approached the top of the neighboring hill only to find a gate—an open one nonetheless—next to a warning sign and a fence guarded by several watchtowers. I had discovered a military base. There are indeed times when I decline opportunities to explore unknown places and sneak into areas where I shouldn’t be, and this was one of them. After surveying the area, I began to walk back down the road.

Not more than five minutes later, I saw a green army vehicle cruising up the road below. It slowed as it approached me and a soldier got out. “Blah blah blah blah blah?”

“English?”

“What are you doing here?”

“Well, I was in the city down there, and I hiked up here to see the view.”

“You were down THERE? The people is very bad. Where are you from?”

“I’m from the United States.” I showed the solider my passport and answered a bunch of questions about my trip through the West Bank and my work in Israel. He talked to the other soldiers in the jeep, made a phone call, confirmed that I had not entered or taken any photos of the base, and ten minutes later announced that I was free to go.

Seeing that the late-afternoon sun would set within a couple hours, I began to hurry down the mountain. I passed the barbed wire, climbed over the ruins, dodged the prickers, and eventually reached a cliff that I had climbed on the way up. I glanced around to find a better way down and saw an old stone mosque-looking building perched on the ledge in the distance. It looked worth checking out, so I jogged over.

When I reached the crumbling building, I examined the rough exterior and walked around to find that it lacked a wall and was quite open and empty. The dome on top and alter inside told me that it indeed was once an operating mosque. After exploring the rooms inside and peaking at a basement chamber and an area carved into the hillside, I decided that I really should try to get back to the city and find a bus to Nazareth.

As I emerged and began walking away, I heard voices behind me. I kept walking, slightly faster. Men started yelling in Arabic from what sounded like a hundred meters away; I don’t know what they said, but I figured it would be best not to acknowledge them. Confident that they wouldn’t deem me a non-Muslim as long as I didn’t speak, I continued until I knew I was a safe distance away and then looked back. Three men sat on top of the dome of the mosque I had just emerged from. More confused than anything, I scampered down a safe portion of cliff to a landing and from there made my way down to a road that took me back to the residential areas.

I followed the streets down the mountain and felt secure, finding myself again amongst children and families. Realizing that I didn’t know where the bus station was or even exactly how buses across the border worked (I had heard that they don’t go directly to Nazareth but instead to a city called Afula, slightly south of there but outside the West Bank), I grabbed a passing cab.

To my surprise, the driver spoke a bit of English, and when I told him I was from the United States, he gave me a friendly “welcome to Palestine!” I explained to him that I wanted to go to Afula and asked him how to get there. He responded that I’d have to cross the border at a city called Jenin (pronounced “Janine”) and said he’d take me there for ten shekels, which seemed too good to be true.

It was too good to be true. Fifteen minutes of driving brought us to a “bus station” (parking lot with some yellow vans in it), and he directed me to the van to Jenin. Whatever, he was a nice guy, and the taxi ride there was still much cheaper than one of the same distance in Tel Aviv, let alone the US, so I paid him and said goodbye.

I climbed into the indicated van and confirmed with the three passengers that it was indeed heading for Jenin. For some reason, we sat in the parked vehicle for forty minutes before leaving, but the other three didn’t say anything so neither did I. At last, the driver entered and we took off.

The short trip to Jenin passed uneventfully, and when we arrived, I paid and got out. “So, now I’m here,” I thought as I looked at the streets and buildings surrounding me. Wondering what to do next, I approached a circle of men sitting in front of a nearby shop. “Ingleezi,” I asked them, hoping that they spoke English. They all pointed to one man. “Do YOU speak English,” I asked, although the answer was fairly obvious.

I told him that I wanted to go to Afula and had heard that there was a border crossing nearby but that I didn’t know how to get there.

“You cannot go to the border now—it is dark! The border is closed,” he informed me.

“Oh… so, are there any good places to stay around here?”

The man consulted his friends and concluded that there was one hotel nearby, but he said it was expensive—on the order of forty or fifty dollars a night. I agreed that that was too much, and he went to talk to some Arab policemen sitting in their parked car. After a minute, he told me that they knew somewhere and to get in with them.

The last time this happened, I ended up in a Chinese jail, but somehow I felt that this would be different—there must be at least two thousand miles between Jenin and the nearest Chinese jail! I got in with the police and traveled around town for a bit. We ended up at a marketplace full of vendors closing up shop, and they pointed to a little alley running alongside it. I thanked them and left to see if we were really at a hotel.

An awning and a vine-covered lattice cloaked the passageway through which I walked. At the end, a staircase wound up the face of a building. I reached the top and entered to find a huge, open, nearly-empty tile-floored room with a kitchen in one corner and a woman at the stove. A man sat on the floor smoking and watching television. The woman smiled and welcomed me in.

Using the internationally-recognized hands-together-on-the-side-of-the-head pose, she asked me if I was looking for a place to sleep, and I enthusiastically confirmed that I was. She led me down a hall and using an old-fashioned skeleton key, unlocked a door to reveal a spacious room with two beds, a window overlooking the market, and a bathroom complete with a shower. I asked her “bikam,” how much? She answered “arbi’een” and I proudly held up four fingers to demonstrate that I understood (it happened to be close enough to the Hebrew word for forty). She nodded and I handed her the money. Ten dollars for a private double with a bathroom? Amazing.

I registered at the front desk (the kitchen counter), looked around the small place and determined that I was the only guest, and stepped outside onto the patio where I had entered. I noticed a spiral staircase going upwards and asked if I could climb it. The woman seemed to approve, and soon I was standing on the roof overlooking the small city as night fell upon it. Men still cleaned the market below, people filled the street, and the lights of a neighboring mosque’s tall minaret shed a green glow.

Having obtained lodging and stored all but my valuables in the room, my next goal was to find food. I took a photo of the front of the hotel (the marketplace and the awning) in case I needed help finding it later and set out to procure some supper.

I walked down the road a bit until three guys around my age came up and started speaking Arabic to me. I greeted them and asked, “Ingleezi?”

One of them responded that he did in fact speak English. His name was Zahir, and he said that he and his friends noticed me wandering around and hadn’t seen me in Jenin before. Evidently they don’t get many tourists there. I told them the story about why I came to Israel and why I came to the West Bank and what I’d been doing all day, and I mentioned that I was trying to locate a good place to eat.

They told me that they wanted to take me to their favorite spot, and I followed them on a winding route that led us to a busy restaurant. They said that the best thing there was the chicken shawarma (sliced meat cooked on a rotating spit), which sounded good to me. One of the guys went and did all the talking for me, and I watched as the owner prepared a large pita bread, known as a “laffa,” shaved off a bunch of meat, and rolled it all up with hummus and vegetables.

When I took out some cash to pay for it, Zahir told me not to worry about it and that it was all taken care of. I insisted that I had money and tried to hand it over, but nobody would take it. They then told me that I could stay and eat or else walk with them to go meet up with some friends. Of course, I chose the latter.

I ate my shawarma as we walked down the road. It was the best I had ever had.

On the way, I noticed that Zahir seemed to know everyone in town and greeted people as we passed. Occasionally we’d stop to talk briefly with a group, and Zahir would announce that I spoke English and was a visiting American, which never failed to please.

Eventually, some guys joined us, and we had seven or eight of us walking together. We started leaving the main part of town and heading towards the less densely settled outskirts. We stopped at a stand on the side of the road and purchased black coffee in little pink Dixie cups from an old man. They said it was the best coffee in Janine, and it was indeed pretty good. Again, nobody would accept my money.

At last, we reached an intersection where a road vanished off into the distance, surrounded by fields on either side. One corner boasted a bit of grass, a tree, and some rocks arranged roughly in a circle. “Sit,” said one of them happily. Realizing that we had reached our destination, I had a seat on one of the rocks and everyone followed suit.

The next couple of hours formed some of my favorite memories of the summer so far. The guys were all around twenty-two years old and had just completed their degrees at a handful of universities around the West Bank. At first, they rattled off various American bands and artists that they listen to and movies that they like, eager to make connections. We ended up talking about a wide range of topics, communicating in a mix of English, Hebrew, and Arabic, and I learned a lot. Discussing politics, they explained how they see themselves as Palestine, not as a part of Israel. Talking about college, they told me about their studies and social lives at school. I particularly enjoyed discussing girls with them and the conversation that ensued when one of them jokingly claimed that another had twenty girlfriends.

“Haha alright are you guys even allowed to have girlfriends,” I asked.

“Yes, of course we are!” they answered.

“Really, so do people have many relationships during high school in Palestine?”

“Well, we’re only allowed to have one girlfriend… then you have to marry her.”

I suspected as much. They also told me that they love American girls and the clothing that they wear. I asked if a girl could wear that sort of clothing in Jenin, and they told me that guys would like it but that society as a whole wouldn’t accept it.

While we talked, people came and went, including a few Palestinian police officers who were in their mid-twenties and knew a bunch of the guys. Lots of police seemed to be patrolling the area with huge guns and some of the thickest body armor I’ve seen. I asked why there were so many around; the answer had something to do with Hamas. At around midnight, we left the corner hangout spot and walked back into town.

Zahir asked where I was staying, and I showed him the photo I had taken. I told him I could probably find my way back ok, but he said that a few people were going that direction anyways and that they would accompany me to ensure that I made it back without trouble.

As I opened the door and entered my room, I found my belongs untouched. I unpacked on one of the beds. Then, I did something that I had not yet done on a weekend in Israel: I took a shower.

While the warm water poured from a pipe in the wall and fell to a drain in the floor, I thought about my good fortune and the hospitality shown to me in this small city whose existence I was unaware of that same afternoon and whose ground I had considered myself stranded on. I would visit again any time.

My sleep that night was interrupted briefly by the 4AM call to prayer broadcast by the neighboring mosque, and I awoke in the morning around 9:30 when the marketplace below grew busy. I had to check it out and spent a couple hours shopping and exploring before buying another shawarma for lunch. It cost only ten shekels, less than half of what it would in Tel Aviv.

A bit before noon, I bid farewell to Jenin and caught a taxi to the border, where I experienced the most intense border crossing of my life. Picture a large warehouse containing a maze of uncovered rooms with eight-foot high walls so that you can look up and see walkways overhead where armed soldiers patrol. Each little room has two or three doors, a bench, and above it a camera, speaker, and microphone. An unseen being watches your every move, and a voice guides you through the complex, instructing you where to wait, which door to open, and which room to enter.

The border crossing took nearly an hour, which seemed a product of the rarity of a tourist wandering around in that part of the country. It was not crowded at all; I think I was the only one there most of the time, but I couldn’t be sure since the setup prevented me from seeing other people. The voice led me through a series of seven small waiting rooms, telling me when to pass from one to the next. I could hear locks click automatically each time. At one point, it instructed me: “open the door to your left—yes that one. Now, walk in. Do you see the door in front of you? Ok, open it and enter the room. Now place your backpack on the ground and unzip each compartment. Leave it there and go back two rooms.” I was allowed to return ten minutes later to find my belongings spread around the room and was told to repack them.

The last step included interrogation—three guards simultaneously questioning me about everything from specific tourist sites I had seen in Jerusalem to the name of the professor I worked for to what I planned to do that evening. In the end, I passed and the guards permitted me to leave.

The situation on the other side restricted passage to Afula as much as the crossing itself. I exited to find a few Palestinian families seated at picnic tables and a large parking lot. There was no bus stop. I saw a taxi parked in the distance; it was empty. Every few minutes a family would trickle out of the crossing and head for the parking lot, and I asked a few if they were going to Afula. No success.

The sun grew hot, so I returned to the shaded picnic tables. I asked a group of men there if they spoke English. They didn’t, but they seemed to understand Hebrew, so I explained that I wanted to go to Afula and that I needed a bus or taxi and that there weren’t any there. A voice from behind me responded in English. I turned to find a short headscarf-clad Muslim girl that I had previously failed to notice. She told me that she and her mother were actually waiting for a taxi and that they could drop me off in Afula on their way.

We talked for a bit, and a few minutes passed before a taxi pulled into the lot. As we got in, I asked where the two of them were headed, and the girl told me that they were actually going to visit relatives in Nazareth.

“Nazareth!?! You know, I think I’ll just go with you all the way there. I don’t need to go to Afula.”

The taxi dropped us off in Nazareth just minutes away from the site I had been seeking all weekend: the Basilica of the Annunciation. The colossal church marks the spot where the angel Gabriel supposedly revealed to Mary that God had knocked her up. It is the largest church in the Middle East.

The Basilica of the Annunciation was indeed huge and beautiful, but it could not compare to the journey there. I looked around, watched part of a Spanish mass, and left around 3PM.

Next, I wanted to visit a place called Nazareth Village, a tourist site that claims to reconstruct the Nazareth of two thousand years ago and that Lonely Planet purports to be “well done and worth a stop.”

I looked at my map and saw roughly how to get there, but of course many streets were unmarked. After walking for a bit, I stopped in a store to ask for directions. “Oh, he can take you there,” the owner said, referring to one of his workers. A few minutes later, we were in the car together.

After driving for a bit, the guy said to me, “You want big church, right?”

“No,” I told him, “I already saw the big church. I want Nazareth Village.” Somehow, the owner had failed to communicate to him where I wanted to go, and this man barely spoke English. I knew enough Hebrew to say everything to him, but I did not know the most important part: the Hebrew name for Nazareth Village. He drove me back to the Basilica of the Annunciation, and when I reaffirmed that I did not want to go there, he stopped at a store to ask for directions. In the end, we made it to Nazareth Village around 4:00.

I went inside to the ticket counter. The man looked confused. “I’d like one ticket,” I said.

“No, we are closed for today,” he replied.

“What? You don’t close until five.”

“Yes, but we have no more tours. You can visit the gift shop if you like.” I entered the tacky, overpriced store and immediately noticed an open door leading outside that bore the label “Builder’s Walk.” I had no idea what it meant but wanted to find out.

In retrospect, the door was the park’s exit, where groups finish the tour and are forced into the gift shop. At the time, I found myself outside alone in Nazareth Village, so I went on my own tour. The buildings and farms looked authentic and were well recreated, but I’m sure a tour guide and actors populating the village would have improved the experience. I suppose my unauthorized trip was worth the zero-shekel price tag, however. I avoided a guard and escaped undetected.

Ready for the weekend to come to an end, I found a van heading back to Tel Aviv and a bus home from there. I arrived at my apartment around 9PM, the earliest yet. Although the past two days had been long, tiring, and very eventful, I returned well-rested and decently clean for the first time. Life just keeps getting better.