Thoughts On [insert religious topic(s) here]

When I woke up a few hours later, I realized I hadn’t had any water since dinner and was very dehydrated. Unfortunately, we didn’t have anymore water in the room (it was all in the car) and I didn’t have the strength to walk to the store to get some. I didn’t want to wake Jac’line so I just forced myself to sleep until about 7 AM. When I woke up, she had been up for a while, so I asked her to get me some water and breakfast. She kindly nursed me back to health and hopefully, I’ll be good to go for a while.

We left the hostel at 8 AM, heading to the Mediterranean coast, and north to the Lebanon border to the small town of Shlomi. The GPS really got broken in today. The maps I got for Israel are AMAZING! I can zoom in to the level of alleyways and see every possible route to get around traffic or along the coastline. For example, we were able to completely avoid the morning traffic of Tel Aviv by driving on a highway that went around the city, a path that would have been much harder to do with a standard map.

Around 10, we decided to stop in the town of Beit Yanai to have coffee on the shores of the Mediterranean. We pulled off at a café right on the beach, about 50 feet from the ocean. After a cappuccino, we walked down the beach, enjoying the breeze and the freedom of being on our own in Israel. I had to get in the water, and I had worn my board shorts for such an occasion, so I went in for a second, just enjoying the refreshment of being in the ocean.

Pilings off of Beit Yanai Beach

As we drove further up the coast, we had to again cut around the busy traffic of Haifa. So, we went up and over Mt. Carmel. I can’t even begin to describe the awesomeness of driving over the mountain, seeing the Galilee on the horizon and the Mediterranean behind you. The drive also gave new perspective to the sheer distances that groups and individuals travelled in our biblical stories. Most trips of significant distances involved going over at least one mountain and sometimes five or six before you reached the destination.

Once through the mountains, we were still on the outskirts of Haifa. Our brains were still slightly fried from the last few days and the navigating today, so we just went to McDonald’s and got a quick bite to eat for lunch. This was at about 2 PM so we were still making good headway on getting to the hostel before dark.

Going up the final bit of coast before the Lebanon border, Jac’line saw some cars on a road closer to the coast than we were. Her response was, “I want to be there.” Enter GPS… After a bit of zooming and looking at the available options, we were driving down the beach in 10 minutes. Wow! The Mediterranean is gorgeous, especially when there is almost nothing separating you from it, and few people around. We pulled off at a point and walked down to the beach. We found a cave on the shore and sat in it, watching the tide come in and the sun slowly go down in the sky.

The cave that Jacline and I sat in earlier today

We decided to get checked in to our hostel before it got much later. Jac’line let me drive the car along the beach road, then we switched and she drove to the hostel. Since I’m not officially on the paperwork for the rental car, she is not comfortable with me driving it too much, but we’ll see.

The hostel we are staying at is quite an upgrade. It’s actually cheaper because we were paying a premium to be in the Old City at Jaffa Gate. Here are the obligatory pictures of our abode for tonight.

I’m looking forward to taking a shower in an actual shower.

We left the hostel to go see the sunset on the beach. We also went looking the lens cap to one of my lenses that I managed to lose at the beach earlier in the evening. I set it on the hood of the car and forgot about it. I’ve been shooting for almost two years and this is the first piece of equipment I’ve ever lost.

When we got to the beach, we headed towards the Lebanese border and stopped about half a mile before it, looking up at the military towers in the distance. As we were sitting there, a few warships were off the coast, running practice drills and firing shells into the sea.

Jac’line decided it was as good a time as any to call my dad, so I had an opportunity to talk to him as ships were firing in the west and the border with a hostile country was being patrolled in the north. All this as the sun cast a pale orange glow over the mountains in the east and a cool breeze was blowing in off the sea. I’m beginning to appreciate the beauty of Israel found in the atmosphere of the land itself.

We drove south on the beach to where we were sitting earlier in the evening. The lens cap was nowhere to be seen, but the sun was about to set so we went out to one of the rocks and watched the sun set as a fisherman pulled in his catch to our left. It’s so refreshing to be out of the bustle of the Old City and moving at our pace, enjoying the country of Israel for all it has to offer. I can see how ancient people could have felt the divine presence in this land.

Sunset on Betzet Beach

As the sky was getting dark, we drove into Shlomi looking for some dinner. We pulled into a flower shop and asked the owner for a suggestion. She spoke little English, but offered to lead us to her favorite restaurant in town after she closed her shop. We sat out front as she closed it down, and then followed her to a Lebanese restaurant. We ordered chicken skewers and mixed salad. We were given enough food to feed four people. It was a grand feast. The food was wonderful; the Lebanese spices added a great flavor to the food. We ate till we were stuffed, headed back to the hostel and went to sleep.

I’d consider it a complete day: Waking up in Jerusalem, morning coffee on the Mediterranean, lunch in Haifa, calling Dad from the Lebanon border, sunset on the Mediterranean, and sleeping less than a mile from the border.

Shalom,

Mat