Israel – Second Day – First Day riding Motorcycles

Israel

Well, I got off to a bit of a rough start this morning–something I’d eaten in transit didn;t agree with me and it finally caught up to me in the wee hours. We had a terrific dinner last night

and I shared my meal with Tamar, Eytan (our Israeli host’s wife) and she was fine, so most likely it was something I ate on the plane. (Would YOU trust salmon served on an airplane? Maybe I should not have…)

OK, so I actually went back to bed for a bit and the little snooze and emptying my stomach several times made me relatively good enough to so, so I marched back downstairs in my gear ready to ride.

Food has been an issue today (turns out I barfed up the two most popular dishes in Israel, the ones I shared last night, so there was no eating them in any shape or form. I settled for mint tea for lunch and nibbled at dinner, and I’m sorry to say I was so tired I forgot to take pics. Wait, I did take one:

How many tour guides does it take to figure out where breakfast will be the following day?

But you probably want to see some scenery. Here is without a lot of descriptions because I am overtired and have to hit the sack (we’re 10 hours ahead of Pacific time). We had fantastic roads, too much history to comprehend in one day (thanks Avi Ben Yosef for filling my brain with too much history to remember!), and great company. I’m going to bed exhausted and happy.

_G8Q4113 — This is Avi giving us the brain dump on all the historical and biblical importance of this area. He’s a 23-year professional tour guide for the state of Israel and we are fortunate enough to have him along.

_G8Q4134 — Avi reading us a passage from the Bible (on his iPhone no less!!!) and pointing out to us where the events took place in the countryside below us. How cool is that?!?

_G8Q4173 — We stopped at a nature preserve and watched an interesting movie about bird migration. Here’s a random sighting of an otter in the marsh (we also saw GIANT catfish, turtles and white herons). See? Combining my two loves as usual–motorcycles and animals.

_G8Q4163 — Explanation of the surrounding area and significance of this nature preserve

_G8Q4210 — Typical road sign in three languages–Hebrew, Arabic and English fo us tourists 🙂

We are staying the night at a Kibbutz, which is an Israeli collective community. We’re about 2 kms from the Lebanese border. It’s a beautiful yet precarious place to live. More about the Kibbutz tomorrow.