Goin' to the Golan

On Thursday, we had scheduled an early agricultural tour on Kibbutz Sha'ar HaGolan, where David was a volunteer shortly after the Yom Kippur War (he got there right at the new year in 1974). After an hour's drive down the east side of the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee), we arrived there just on time and drove past this bicycle storage with a wonderful fence of recycled bikes.

With a little difficulty we found the young woman who was to give us the tour, and she essentially placed herself at our disposal for as long as we wanted. We started by touring the living areas of the kibbutz, one of the few that have still not privatized. The difference between it and Kibbutz Gal On was quite striking, although probably not all of the difference was due to the still-cooperative nature of the community. Nevertheless, the grounds were immaculate, and the community buildings such as the dining room (below) were still in full operation.

Inside the dining room on two walls facing each other across a series of tables, were two tapestries made of of individual cross-stitched blocks about a foot square contributed by each family on the kibbutz in celebration of the 50th (?) anniversary of the kibbutz. The kibbutz was founded in about 1936.

 

We then drove out to the fields, very close to the Yarmuk River, which forms the border with Jordan.

The kibbutz is part of a large experiment being conducted about how to reduce water used for banana growing, so many of the plantings were covered in mesh of various designs. The water consumption, yields, and other parameters of each field are being compared in a multi-year experiment.

After showing us an informative, but rather silly, movie about kibbutz agriculture, our guide showed us the way to the archaeological museum and left us to visit that on our own. The Yarmuk excavations have uncovered the oldest pottery sherds in Israel, dating back to about 700 BCE. Along with arrowheads, grinding tools, and pots, there were many carved stone and clay figures used as cultic objects by these early inhabitants.

From the kibbutz, we headed up a steep and winding road to the top of the Golan Heights. As Avi had explained to us a couple of weeks ago on our first visit to the Kinneret, this is a very flat mesa formed by lava oozing out and covering the rock below. After a stop for lunch and a bit of shopping in the artist colony of Moshav Ami'ad, we headed for the Gamla Nature Reserve. Having seen enough archaeological ruins for one trip, we skipped the archaeological site and instead took a nature walk.

Not exactly a cool experience, this walk started out through fields of small lava lumps, which made the going somewhat difficult even though the terrain was level. In one area, there were a bunch of dolmens, which are about 4000 years old. These consist of large stone slabs set on top of two upright slabs to form a sort of table beneath which bodies are thought to have been buried. The entire structure was probably once covered with earth, which has since eroded or blown away

The goal of our hike was the Gamla waterfall, the highest in Israel, at 51 meters. This is the view from the top of the fall, showing the strikingly more lush vegetation.

And here is the entire length of the fall from the north rim of the canyon.

Most exciting for us was a good view of the vultures the area is famous for. This guy got quite close to us before we were ready to take his picture, but this is the best we could do. Based on some models in the vulture observatory, we concluded that he was one of the Egyptian vultures. Either he and his mate, or perhaps two others, entertained us for quite a while with their effortless soaring, going many minutes at a time without flapping their wings.

We hoped for a glimpse of the really enormous Griffon vultures, but the only ones we saw were these two taxidermied examples, which were victims of a terrible poisoning in 2007, in which an estimated 20 vultures were killed. This mother and her chick died within minutes of each other as the naturalists watched helplessly.

As we were hiking, we kept hearing explosions that we assumed were live fire exercises at the nearby tank range. An interesting country where you pass signs like "Caution: Tank Crossing Ahead." Anyway, as we were leaving, we were chatted up by a young Israeli who asked where we were from and if we weren't concerned about the explosions. We told him what we assumed they were, and he said, no, they were Syrian forces battling the rebels. We weren't sure whether he was pulling our leg until we talked to Dina that evening and found out that the nearby (about 20 miles by road, closer as the vulture flies) town of Kuneitra had been captured by the rebels and then retaken by Assad's forces. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss!

We headed back down to the Kinneret and into the town of Zfad (or Safed) to see if we could find dinner. Zfad has become a nexus of kabbalistic and Hassidic Judaism of late, and everywhere you look, you see black hats, payis, and tallit shirts. But it also has an old city surrounded by walls, and the remains of a citadel originally built by Josephus Flavius and remodeled by the Crusaders, if memory serves. It was also the site of one of the decisive battles of the War of Independence, so you see lots of memorials to the 42 or 50 (depending on the sign you're reading) fighters who lost their lives in the battle. Also, a memorial crediting the notoriously inaccurate Davidka mortar that supposedly "scared the Arabs to death and caused them to abandon the town," in the words of a memorial on top of the Citadel.

 

Zfad turned out to be an impossible city to navigate around, much less park, but eventually we found a spot and explored a bit on foot. We found a reasonable dinner and breathed a huge sigh of relief when we not only found the car again, but also found our hotel.

 

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