go north, go sea, go lan!

Although we were sad to see Caroline go, there was no downtime. Monday evening, Chelsea and I, now accompanied by Hayley, packed our bags and boarded a bus heading north, starting our upward expedition, basing ourselves out of Motzkin (a suburb of Haifa). We awoke early the next morning (okay, 7:30…it was a vacation!) and headed off around 8:30 to make our way to Tsfat, one of Israel’s most mystical city. We spent the afternoon exploring the winding streets, endless art galleries, and beautiful synagogues, seeing the filming of one of Ben Snouf’s music videos and stopping for a Yemenite lunch along the way. As the sun began to set, the three of us set course to Tiberias, on the Kinneret (the Sea of Galilee). The plan was that from here, we would see the Kinneret and go up into the Golan heights. The snag in the plan was that it had been intermittently raining throughout the day, and was pouring the entire bus ride from Tsfat to Tiberias. A rainy Kinneret might be a full one, but it is not a good climate for hiking. I assured the girls that God would see to this: it would rain the entire bus ride, cease for the two hours after we had arrived to Tiberias so we could find a hostel, get some food, etc, and then rain all night again so that the morning would be clear.
Believe it or not, even though the weather reports had predicted a week of rain, I was 100% correct. Spooky.
In Tiberias, for dinner we found a great little shwarma stand (only 15 shek!), and some interesting people to talk to before heading in for the night.
The next morning, we packed our things, prepared ourselves for our day of hiking, checked out (storing our bags) and went off to the bus station to go to Katzrin in the Golan. We found out the that the next bus wouldn’t leave for Katzrin for a couple of hours, and the last one coming back would be at 2 pm. This wasn’t going to work well at all. After talking with some taxi drivers, we ruled out taking a cab, too (they wanted nearly 400 shek!) Being the adventurous girls we are, I remembered seeing an Avis center in town. Bingo!

We moseyed on over to inquire about acquiring a vehicle, and after jumping through some hoops because none of us were 23 (meaning we had to pay the young driver fee, and were not eligible to buy the extra insurance) and none of us had our passports (so we also had to pay the tax that tourists are exempt from) we hopped into our little silver car and hit the road. Or more precisely, while the girls went to get our things from the hostel, I asked the Avis guy every possible question about Israeli driving laws possible, from right on red to legal BAC limits, merging, speed limits, gas regulations, you name it. That’s right: I was the driver.