Freedom=Going out into the world with just a backpack and an open mind.

Thursday is when it all began. We had a mandatory young judaea event in a basement in Tel Aviv that was boring and pointless. To be honest,I don't even remember what we did. All I remember was holding on to my backpack and tent, anxiously waiting for the night to begin. The whataya-call-it  event finally finished around 6ish, and me and six people walked down to the train station and took a bus to Haifa, then a bus to to Naharia, then a cab to beach nearby. We finally got there about three hours later and it was pitch black. Then I realized we forgot to bring water!!!! And we were literally stranded because no one was around and we had no transportation. We set up our tents (luckily we had 2 flashlites) and started gathering wood to make a fire. My eyes slowly adjusted to the dark and in the distance I saw 2 fisherman sitting on the edge of the rocks. Me and Eli (a boy from California) walked over to them and sat with them for while and they gave us their extra bottles of water (whew) and some walnuts. We made the fire and started cooking. We heated up corn, peas, and carrots from a can, everyone else made chicken and I had a can of white beans with tomato sauce. We ate really well and hung out by the fire for a couple of hours talking and listening to the ocean. Then I went to sleep in my tent but slept with my head outside of the tent so I could fall asleep looking at the stars( I even saw two shooting stars!!!!!) Apparently we were close to the border of Lebanon and I was awoken by two Israeli policeman at 6AM. They asked for our IDs and searched our tent. (Security is really tight right now.. ) I woke up very smiley because the water was glistening and beautiful and we were alone on this amazing beach with just the sound of the ocean to distract us. We made a fire and cooked shakshuka ( eggs with tomato sauce), cleaned up the area, packed up, and started walking down to the nearest town which was about 3 kilometers away. We got to a gas station and stocked up on canned food and fruit and then waited at the bus stop for about 45 minutes. We traveled down to Tiberias and then took a cab all the way up the mountain, through a kibbutz called Arbel, and got dropped off at a campsite(or so we thought....) The plan was to tent out at the beginning of the hike(The hike is called Abel) and then wake up and hike in the morning. After the cab drove off, we walked up to the campsite and it was locked up and closed!!! We were at the top of the mountain, deserted, with nowhere to go and no transportation. We had tents and food though so if worst came to worst we would just camp out on the side of the road. It was only six but the sun was setting already and we had an amazing view from the top of the mountain.
We were debating what to do and where to camp when a huge, empty tour bus came right up to the gate of the closed campsite where we were sitting and Reverend Dave and his tour guide walk out and save the day. He came to check out the spot because in the morning he was planning to take his christian group there to watch the sunrise. We asked him if he could drop us off at a legitimate campsite and they drove us down to Tiberias and dropped us off in a really neat part of town. There was no campsite near but we saw a really cool light/water show that a hotel put on for all the guests. We walked for about a mile and found a beachy area on the kinneret between two hotels and pitched our tents. For dinner we made rice,eggs,beans,onions,peppers, all together in a pan (surprisingly it actually tasted good..) and fried bananas for desert.:) There were cats running around and I fed them tuna.I stargazed for a while and drifted off into a happy, wholesome sleep...:) I woke up to the water again and I seriously have never felt happier. Nobody was awake and I took a morning swim and then ate cookies for breakfast and brushed my teeth in the kinneret.:)) We cleaned up our campsite and then walked through Tiberias untill we found a cab that took us back up to the mountain we were at before so we could go on our hike. We each had to carry all of our stuff plus three liters of water on our backs through the hike( soooo happy I have the nice hiking backpack..I hardly felt the weight)The hike was INCREDIBLE!!!!!!!! First, we went to a beautiful lookout of the kinneret. (See pictures on my facebook.. coming soon) then started descending down the mountain. We had to hold onto cables while we walked across a thin strip of the mountain (it was pretty scary..) and walked for about an hour untill we came across all these natural caves. We climbed through and up them and I even conquered one of them by peeing in it.:) We walked an hour further and came across an old fortress from the seventeenth century!!!! It was build by Ali Beq, the son of of the Druze emir Fahr ad-Din as a military stronghold. At the entrance of the cave there were 3 goats and they came right up to us and my friend Eli was petting them. I gave them water and the started following us around. We walked up to the top of the fortress and ate lunch looking over the entire mountain, an Arab village at the bottom, and the kinneret. You could hear the call for prayer coming for the mosque.There were some gun shots coming from the Arab village, and a young Israeli couple that was also eating lunch with us explained that during a wedding the Arabs shoot their guns into the air. Extraordinary view. We continued descending down the mountain for about an hour and a half and started to see the Arab village. There was an Arab on a horse rounding up around 100 cattle! And a little further I saw some Arab children chasing a group of goats. We walked through the village for a while and we were exhausted and our feet all hurt so we decided to chill on the kinneret for a while. We layed on the beach, made a fire, cooked some pteteem(an israeli noodle dish), went for a swim, watched the sunset, dried off by the fire... It was all amazing and so refreshing. There was a hippi family down the beach with a big ol trailor and they were singing and playing drums by a fire so we went over to join and we hung out with them for about an hour and then had to start our long, three hour journey home. I got back last night around 11, jumped into the shower, and went to sleep with a big ol happy smile on my face. I love adventures.