My two weeks on the Sea of Galilee are coming to an end. The wind came back a little at the end, but remained far below expectations in terms of strength and frequency with 5 out of 14 days. There is hardly a place in the world where this would be less bad. There was always something to do, even those with a cultural aversion and those who don’t like hiking will be flattened by Galilee’s varied possibilities.
Nazareth is once again one of the big disappointing highlights. I don’t have to do anything! I visit the Church of the Nativity anyway and drown in tsunamis of selfie-taking pilgrims. Apart from a beautiful Arab bazaar in the narrow old town and new craft alleyways strictly separated by trade, there is nothing interesting to discover.
With the Gabon waterfall, I finally find nature without an entrance fee. The descent into the 150 metre deep canyon on the Golan Heights is also quite intense in the morning. The water cascading down 30 metres is the coolest in all of Israel and very welcome on the scorching way back up the canyon.
Two Americans who have never been abroad accompany me. For me as a frequent traveller, Israel is often intense and difficult in many ways. Even with many words, the two traveller virgins don’t manage to make me understand how this country affects them. At the edge of the hiking trail are old, bullet-ridden bunkers from the Yom Kippur and Six-Day Wars. Barbed wire fences on both sides warn of the minefields that still lie behind them today.
Frank Woelky, born in 1973. Kitesurfer since 1998. Since 2006, I have been combining kitesurfing and web design on trips lasting several months off the beaten track.