Israel, Days 8-9: Kibbutz Gonen, the Sea of Galilee, and Kibbutz Ashdot Ya'akov

We began day 8, Sunday, with a trip from our stay at Kibbutz Gonen, located at the foot of the mountains in the Golan Heights, to the Golan Heights region.

These flowers are all over every kibbutz or moshav we visit. They're beautiful year around, which seems marvelously outrageous because we'd never have anything that could live outside all the time during the month of January.

We spent our day winding our way up the mountains to get a glimpse into Syria from the top of some high ridges. We heard briefly about the fear of the Israeli government that when the Syrian dictator, Assad, falls there will be a flood of Syrian refugees who leave the country for Israel. They're working furiously to protect the border so when/if it does happen, there will be no problems with illegal crossings.

We then stopped at a coffee shop at the peak of the mountains in the Golan Heights to talk about the war of 1967 and the continued mortar attacks against the kibbutzes along the border with Syria. The Syrians used to sit on the top of the mountains and fire rockets and mortars down the hill and they tried to blow up as many houses and civilians as they could, so the Israeli army, in 1967, decided to invade Syria (along with the West Bank, and the Sinai peninsula. They whole point of the invasions was to conquer land with which to trade back in exchange for peace and recognition of Israel as a state.

The sun cuts through the clouds making for a spectacular scene. It almost didn't look real to me!

After some time spent in the Golan Heights, we worked our way down to the southern tip of the Golan Heights, to the upper Galilee region. There we stopped at the small town (now a tourist site and excavation area) of Capernaum. The city's name interestingly means nothing, there is no work for it in any language. It was an attempt by the Romans to name the city based off of its Hebrew name, they just added letters and switched the meaning of the word so that it now means nothing.

Capernaum, or known to many orthodox/eastern Christians as the Capharnaum. The place where Jesus centered his teachings.

This is the city where Jesus met Simon (Peter). Jesus' main center for teaching the bible was here and he first met Simon here. The city sits right next to the Sea of Galilee (which is really just a lake--smaller than many lakes in Minnesota). The Sea is the only fresh body of water in Israel. It provides fresh water to all of Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, and parts of western Jordan. The legend is that Jesus walked on water here, when really, the lake is so shallow when it first starts out that one could walk the length of a football field and it would only be up to your knees.

We didn't spend too much time at Capernaum, so when we started going again, we stopped at the part of the Jordan river that is south of the Sea of Galilee, it looks much more healthy than the northern part of the stream. The lake acts like a natural barrier to much of the muck the river picks up on it's way down stream.

Another radiant beam of sunshine. When you don't see the sun for 4 days of vacation, when you do see sun it's amazing! :)

After seeing some live Jordan River baptisms, we decided to head to our hotel for the night which was Kibbutz Ashdot Ya'akov.