Day 4: Shimon bar Yochai to Ginosar and the Sea!

It feels so good to say that after four days we made it to the shores of the Kinneret. Today was an absolute scorcher that saw Brandon succumb halfway to dehydration and head back to Jerusalem at the first road crossing. We basically sprinted the first two hours of the trail today to get ahead of the schoolchildren going in the same direction. The terrain became very difficult as we had to scramble up from the bottom of the riverbed of Wadi Amud to the ridge above. Bradley made the trip easier by telling me harrowing adventures of people nearly dying on cliffs such as these.



We met a beast of a Dutchman named Metzger around halfway through who "grew up on the Bible" and was very fascinated with the State of Israel's redemption after the Holocaust. He told us he was hiking 40 km a day on the Shvil and this was his 11th time visiting Israel after working on a kibbutz in 1974. He also has the quote of the trip so far. When asked whether he had been on adventures such as this one before he replied: "I like walking. I do it often."



The rock formations and cliffs were amazing though, with the sign telling us that this wadi was home to prehistoric man and structures and strata all the way up to present times.



Today was incredibly hot though. In what was surely a preview of the Negev, we had to stop for an hour in the shade to escape the heat due to general woozyness.



But oh my how the payoff was worth it. We broke off from the main trail to wind to the Sea of Galilee at Ginosar, through banana plantations and wheat fields.







And finally, success!



-Jeremy

P.S. All pictures should be up on my facebook account soon but I think I'll open a flickr one as well for those who don't like creepy social networking sites.