In the morning we donned our maroon Israel Outdoors shirts and boarded the bus, eager to explore the Golan Heights. The drive from the hotel in Galilee was exquisite; there were lush green fields, pretty forestry, magnificent hills… and then a dirt road so rocky and uneven that it nearly flipped the bus. Our driver, Apollo, always the most soberly awake person on the bus, deftly maneuvered us so safely that it was imperceptible to us how safe we were. Naturally, at every lurch, tilt, and pull, we all looked at one another with that silent expression that says oh-so-much about how not nervous we were. Andrew’s words from Day 3 came drifting back to me… “We’re not lost…” Ah, yes, Apollo had earned well both our confidence and his tip money on this trip.
When we arrived on unmoving land, a handful of people thought about kissing the ground but decided against it. It was very gravelly and might get stuck between teeth, after all. Looking out over these somewhat rocky hills, one can see patches of Eucalyptus trees here and there. These are the locations of the Syrian bunkers that existed before Israel took the Golan Heights. The Syrians planted them at a suggestion given to military officials by an Israeli spy, Eli Cohen. Because the trees aren’t native to the area, Israeli forces used the trees to discern where the Syrian forces were stationed and turned a three-month, several-hundred-thousand-casualty prediction into a two-day, under-five-hundred-casualty siege. Since this acquisition, border lines for the Golan Heights have changed a number of times and it is still a highly sought portion of Israeli territory due to its fertility and location.
The Eucalyptus trees were kind of cool, though, and great shade-providers during our brief history lesson with Ran. Even cooler, however, was the hike itself. The Golan Heights include steep hills, mountains, streams, and waterfalls, all of which adds up to fantastic views and fun hikes. There were a couple of sweet observation points at key locations throughout the hike so everyone got some nice pictures there.
I kept to the front of the group for most of the hike so that when Ran stopped to let everyone catch up, I would have time with the mostly unpopulated area for some nice nature shots with my camera. The contrast of a deep, cloudless blue sky against the rocky and grassy hills compelled my finger to hover over the shutter at every step. The area is so big that at some points I could look across a valley and see trails of other groups hiking the Heights, too.
We came to rest at a rocky cave set into one mountainside. The deep interior smelled like rotting corpses dipped in moldy hotdog water, so we mostly sat on the boulders just inside the shade. Here it only smelled like a dank cave – not entirely unpleasant – and it was cooler than the Israeli heat on the mountain.
Scattered across rocks and boulders, some sitting, some standing, Matan lying across a large boulder as though it was a leather-upholstered sofa, the group sat and quieted down.
Guy told a story of two cousins, the younger one a spendthrift and the other wisely conservative, who had inherited a large sum of money with express instructions to live each breath like it was their last. They were to eat the tastiest foods, live in the dreamiest locations, enjoy the best company possible, and experience all the best moments in their time left on Earth. One cousin seemed to understand the point implicitly; the other needed to learn it the hard way. You can guess which was which.
Ultimately, the younger, having spent his money on food, tourism, and partying, thus running out of cash, sought his cousin’s help. He was taken through the desert to his cousin’s modest home, and on the trip he was seldom permitted even a few sips of water or a break for rest. They savored a meager meal of bread and cheese, and made it to their destination ready to drop from exhaustion. The spendthrift slept for a long while, and on waking, the elder cousin asked him why he needed help. The younger man explained that they were supposed to use the inheritance to experience all the best things in life.
“When you were walking through the desert with nary a drop of water, how did it taste when I gave you my canteen for a small drink?”
“Definitely the best water I’ve ever had. Even compared to that ultra-nutritious stuff they bottle and sell for sixty shekels a pop.”
“And when you ate that bread and cheese, what did you think?”
“I had hardly eaten all day; of course it was wonderful! I might have enjoyed eating our camel after that trek!”
And how did you sleep last night?” the elder asked, full knowing that his cousin had slept for ten straight hours.
“I haven’t felt this well-rested in ages.”
“But you slept on a mat, in the desert. Not even a bed.”
“Who needs a bed when you’re that tired?!”
The elder raised his eyebrows and waited.
Comprehension dawned like the rising sun on his cousin’s face. “Oh. Ohhhh… I see. I don’t need to spend all my money to experience the best things. It’s—”
“A matter of perspective,” Guy finished for the wise cousin, concluding his story.
It was a well-spun tale, but in the middle of a hike in the beautiful Golan Heights towards the end of a trip touring through Israel and seeing all the most famous and gorgeous sights, enjoying the company of wonderfully companionable people, Calvin asked me how the heck we were supposed to properly appreciate the moral. I told him it was for the people complaining, aloud or silently, about any of the hotel accommodations or the food. This was a free trip to the homeland filled with fun and friends and fantastic times. Enjoy the things you have to their fullest extent, including this story, you silly id.
We trekked out of the cave and continued through the heights, ending our tour with a climb up the steepest slope we had encountered on this trip. I relished the physical activity and did hiking’s equivalent of skipping up the side. At the top we high-fived each other, took a break for water, and boarded the bus.
Upon the bus, Andrew discovered the backpack he’d just taken off was heavier than it had been when we left for the hike. There were rocks inexplicably stuffed into various pockets.
“ALAN!”
This was not the first time we’d heard the Dave-Seville-esque cry in indignation spill forth from one of our group leader’s lips. Alan had made a habit of inserting rocks from various locations into unsuspecting hikers’ packs.
“When we get on that plane to the States…” Andrew’s voice may have trailed off, but it said all it needed to in the first half of that sentence. “I don’t understand how he does it,” he told me and Joel when we took our seats. “I didn’t even notice and there are seven or eight rocks in here.”
I knew the explanation. “He’s a rock ninja.” Thus, Alan’s true super villain identity emerged. Who knew how many pounds of rocks future unsuspecting pack-carriers would find in their unwitting bags? I let the image of Alan dressed in hiking gear and a black ninja hood float away from my disturbed brain.
A minute or two after our headcount, just after the bus had begun moving, Dan made his way to the front of the bus to the sound of cheering from the back. He stepped over a few bags and bumped into a few unattended knees before taking a seat on the edge of the front chair next to Shai. A moment later, his voice came over the bus’s loudspeaker; he had somehow negotiated temporary custody of the microphone from Ran, a feat Andrew and I were able to accomplish on a previous day only after everyone had disembarked. (For those wondering, we obtained the mic to drop the sickest beat ever recorded on a Birthright bus and received the enthusiastic applause of a few stragglers who hadn’t yet stepped off. I know, I know, you’re sorry you missed it.)
Dan began reading from a book he’d brought to the front with the careful enunciation of a practiced bedtime story pro: “…I decide that since I am clearly a more important person and have greater immediate need, I can cut the line; I just have to give everyone else something in return…” We had not lost our yen for storytelling; Dan gradually gained audience members as he continued reading until finally the entire bus was eagerly listening to the voice on the loudspeaker.
“She grabs me and plants a sloppy, drunken kiss on me,” he read. “‘Do things to me so hard I forget my name.’ You don’t have to tell me twice.” A pause. “Mmmm, uh… hold on.” Dan’s change in inflection indicated that he might now be reconsidering how appropriate his choice of reading material might actually be, given his audience. He looked up from the book and addressed the bus directly, his voice full of apologetic sincerity with more than a hint of the South. “Uh… this is gonna be a little harsh for the NASCAR fans, but ‘I slam into her like Dale Earnhardt into the wall at Daytona.’”
A few questions spilled out of the raucous laughter. “What is that? Why are you reading it?” It was Tucker Max’s book, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, and he was reading it because Aimee had shared the hilariously tactless novel with him earlier.
“We, uh… we’ll get right to the good stuff,” he said. Half a minute into the ‘good stuff’, the bus stopped. No, not stopped. Lurched is a better word. The bus lurched into a sudden stop.
“What happened?” came the collective chorus.
“Did we get stuck?”
“Did the driver hit something?”
“Or someone?”
The doors opened and Ran left the bus to check out what was going on. A minute later, Alan followed him. Only God knew why.
The bus began moving without them. Apollo used his immeasurable skills to jerk and rock and rev the bus out of its jam while Ran made hand motions and shouted information through the doors to him, and while Alan stood outside the bus filming this episode. When the bus came loose, they returned to its interior and we progressed to our next destination: the Golan Heights Winery.
Having been to several wineries before, this winery was cool for three very important reasons. First, they gave us a free professional bottle opener simply for visiting as a souvenir. Second, they gave us a tour of the bottling facility, which not every winery does. Third, and most importantly, it was in Israel and the wine, despite being very, very tasty, was kosher. For my whole life I had been under the mistaken impression that Manischewitz was the only kosher wine, and thus that all kosher wine was unbearably sweet. I can’t tell you how many Shabbat kiddushes could have been improved if we had used a kosher cabernet instead of whatever Manischewitz ™ calls that bastardized grape juice. Oh, happy day.
After the tasting we visited the winery’s shop, where Jess and I spent the majority of our time debating what to purchase. There were many varieties of yummy kosher wine and it was difficult to choose. Ultimately, we selected and departed, bringing the rear of the group back onto the bus.
The bottle, housed snugly in a travel box, sat on my lap for a while. I leaned against the window and fell asleep.
A few minutes later I was jostled awake. I was sitting next to Joel and had apparently nodded over into his personal shoulder space. I promptly shifted my position and dozed off again.
After a few minutes more I felt Joel’s elbow in my rib. I muttered a half-sleeping apology, “Sorrhmh,” and drifted back to sleep, this time repositioning myself to ensure against any further intrusion and thus protecting Joel’s clearly endangered manliness. Adjusting the wine box so that it sat between my knees, I strapped one arm around it at my waist to keep it from falling and placed the other one alongside it vertically, the hand resting on its top so that I could sleep on it. Anchored this way, I assumed it would be safe to go to sleep again. Later I would find that Joel had taken the opportunity to snap a few photos of me ‘cuddling’ my wine. In truth, it really was good enough to be worthy of my cuddles.
We stopped for lunch at a nearby shopping center (while others went to a steakhouse - one of the few in Israel - for their own adventure) and continued on to rafting on the Jordan. Before the rafting could commence we had to get changed, so after disembarking we “eyfo-ha-sherutim?”ed our way to the restrooms.
The staff at the rafting place sat the group in front of a video screen about safety rules and procedures. Raise your hand if you paid attention to this common-sense video.
…
All right, then. Moving on. We swaggered over to the rafting equipment and formed rafting groups. Andrew and I claimed a 2-person kayak. Several groups opted for the 5-person boat. Each group was set into their raft and launched down a slide onto the river. It wasn’t churning; there was a definite current but it was smooth and relatively slow, so that only minimal steering seemed to be required when observing from the land.
On the river, Andrew and I fought to get control of our kayak-raft. I asked him if he wanted to ride up front or in the back. “Stam,” he replied.
“What’s that mean?”
“It’s… kinda like ‘whatever’ in English, but more than that. Like, you could use it to mean ‘just kidding,’ or just to express that something isn’t a big deal. There are other uses, but…” he shrugged. I took that to mean that it basically was a word that bespoke the meaning expressed in a shrug, and shrugged back. We boarded the raft.
He manned the front, guiding our progress, and I tried to provide force and stability from the back. “Okay, this shouldn’t be too hard,” I said. “It’s not like it’s a class-five whitewater experience, here.”
“Yeah, it’s not rocket-surgery,” he agreed.
We nosed the riverbank. “That was not the intended direction,” I proclaimed, batting a tree branch away from my head. “Let’s try a new tack.”
This time I started steering and we made much more progress.
“Hey, this is better!” Andrew said.
Our newfound speed paired with a change in the direction of the current to set us on a course aimed directly at another boat. The boat seemed to be sitting still in the water.
“I think they’re stuck,” called Andrew from the front.
“No use slowing down,” I said. “Maybe we can jostle them free.” A beat. “Ramming speed!” Calvin added with glee. I couldn’t help it. Really.
We drove our paddles into the water with the swiftness of the coursing river, with all the force of a great typhoon, with all the strength of a raging fire*, and crashed into the raft in front of us. Mysteriously (as the dark side of the moon), it barely budged an inch.
*"I'll Make A Man Out Of You". Wilder, Matthew & David Zippel. Perf. Donny Osmond. Mulan Soundtrack. Walt Disney, 1998.
“Sorry,” we called to the girls comprising the boat’s stranded crew. As we careened off their raft and back into the current, I reached a paddle out and with it found the rock they were stuck on. I lodged it in and tried to use it as a lever to shift them back into the water. It went over much better in my head.
Meanwhile, Andrew was chatting them up. “So, where are you guys from?”
“California,” they said.
“Dude, they’re like sixteen,” I admonished in a hushed voice. “And their boat’s free, let’s get going.”
“I was just being friendly,” he assured me, and we paddled on ahead. Around the next bend, just as we had finally gotten the hang of the direction thing, there seemed to be a party taking place. On the shore.
“This… is a rafting course, right? As in, a river path on which you travel inside these inflatable boats you’re provided, correct?”
“Yeah,” he concurred, clearly as perplexed as me.
“Then... what’s going on over there?” I pointed to the right bank of the bend where three rafts sat beached and empty of people. Their riders, several of whom we recognized, had joined a spontaneous riverside party. As we drew up next to them, a lot of things happened at once.
We parked our raft and walked up to find out what was going on. Jesse, Liron, Steven, Amy, and Paul stopped to hang out with some random people on the beach. Matan, riding with Robby, tried to steal their boat and float it down the river, but Dustin chased after him and retrieved it. Alan got a little seasick and was not happy about it. Jesse’s group returned to their raft, and we decided we’d had enough off-river excitement and did the same.
This time, we implemented a genius idea and switched seats. It actually worked out better than we expected, because we made considerable progress in the first several paddle strokes.
We caught up with Matan and Robby and they started splashing us. I relished the cool water in that heat and thanked them while deftly helping Andrew maneuver us around and beyond them.
We caught up with Tair and Ran and Ran started splashing us. This I would not tolerate idly. The dude had been so straight-laced this entire trip, clearly trying very hard to maintain his professionalism, and because I happen to be riding with one of the other staff members it means I’m open game for his splash work? Not happening. He had started this, so I knew there would be no wake-up call assignment as penance for my swift retaliation. This was to be the kind of merciless retribution I learned from the torah.
Andrew and I slid up close and I used my paddle to latch on to their raft near where Tair sat. Andrew swept his paddle across the surface of the water, slicing up a smooth arc that splashed down in a barrage of thick globules of river. Despite Tair’s protestations, Ran continued to splash, so I whipped our raft around giving me a clear shot at him from the front. I leaned out of the raft and cut my paddle across the river in a backhand swipe that would have made Roger Federer beg for reprieve. “Okay, that was satisfying,” I admitted aloud. I was pretty sure we were done with the battle now.
“Anna overturned our boat!” a drenched Ran exclaimed.
“Huh?” Andrew asked.
“She’s crazy. You’d never expect it. She flipped us. So we were already all wet.”
“Anna?!” I asked. “Seriously?” I tried to picture Anna flipping their raft and realized, if she was determined to do so, it wasn’t a strain on the imagination. “When?”
“Just back there,” Tair pointed.
“Wow.” Andrew was gaping, clearly stunned beyond verbalization. “That’s incredible – not… that that’s a good thing, just – never mind. ”
“No, no, I agree,” Ran said.
We shrugged, waved, and moved on. A stopping point appeared out of nowhere.
“Do you think we’re supposed to be getting off there? ‘Cause I see people taking rafts…” I said.
“I don’t know. Maybe?”
I looked ahead. We were on the opposite bank and the current had picked up. “There’s no way we’ll make it over there to find out, anyway.”
“Well, we’ll follow this up and eventually we’ll get where we need to be. And if not…”
“Stam.” I shrugged.
Andrew’s face exploded into laughter. “Yeah! Yeah, that’s exactly the kind of situation where you’d use that word.”
We started beatboxing to pass the time. It didn’t escape our awareness that there were no longer any rafts from our group passing by. Just when we had given up caring, we saw the landing area ahead on our left.
After returning our raft, we waited up near the transport bus which would take us back to the main site for the rest of our group to meet up. “Did you pass those Puerto Rican guys splashing everyone?” Andrew asked Tair.
“Yeah. We did.”
I had a horrified thought and piped up. “Alan and those guys haven’t come back yet, have they?”
“That’s what I’m worried about. If those guys get splashed by the other guys, there could be… problems,” Tair said succinctly.
Andrew asked, “Did a raft come back covered in blood yet?”
“Ha. Ha,” replied Tair.
Calvin flipped on the computer in my brain. I watched a succession of CalvinTube clips wherein Dan, Alan, Shai, Avichai, and Stern baptized their paddles in the blood of the Puerto Rican dudes. Something about these mental clips was not kosher.
“One of us should probably stay and wait to make sure they get back okay.”
Tair volunteered and we returned to the main area where our group’s bus was waiting.
After I changed, I followed a small spattering of people back to the bus. One of those people was Joe.
Joe made it to the path leading to the street where the bus was parked. He made it to the street. Then another bus came whipping around the corner and into the parking lot on my left, barely missing Joe. After the episode on the mountain, the last thing he needed was to be run over by a bus. Naturally, he went ballistic.
“What the *!@# are you doing?! Are you paying any *&$#ing attention?!” He paused, then took a deep breath and calmed down.
“Dude, are you okay?” I asked, catching up.
“Clearly, I am not welcome in the Holy Land,” he proclaimed, his hands outstretched in resignation.
Nancy and I patted him on the back and we boarded the bus.
When dinner ended it was time for one last party night. The bar/club next to the hotel found itself inundated that evening. We danced, we schmoozed, we carried on, we went home happy*; overall it was a great success.
*Hercules. Dir. Ron Clements. Perfs. James Woods, Tate Donovan. Walt Disney Pictures, 1997.
Calvin would like you to know that Day 9 was brought to you by the letter D, for Disney Movies, and the number 12.
