Sep 30 – Sea of Galilee Cruise and the Golan Heights

Our first stop was for our cruise of the Sea of Galilee.  

Turns out the supplier is “Worship Boats” and, yes, we were in for a service.  The entire rest of the guest was on a tour together doing the Holy Land.  So, they went out about 10 minutes from the dock, stopped, and held a service on the boat and the boat’s captain sang several songs.  Then 10 minutes back.

There was no cruising involved…not what we thought we had paid for. But we did make it out enough to get some photos from the water.

From there we went to the Hula (Huleh) Valley to visit the Agamon Hula Reserve.  This area of the valley was originally a large lake and wetland but was completely drained in the 1950’s to make way for agriculture (and get rid of mosquitoes).  However, it was eventually decided to re-flood part of the valley to restore some of the ecosystem.  

Now some 500 million migrating birds pass through these wetlands every year.  Unfortunately, we were there mid-day so there were few birds. 

But the ride around the reserve in our golf cart was a nice change from archaeological ruins. 

We saw the Syrian border in the distance.  

We saw the Lebanon border several places on our drive today, driving right along the fence on the Israel side.

We saw a UN Peace Keeping Forces base in the distance (and two Canadian soldiers were eating lunch at the restaurant where we stopped for lunch).

We had lunch up in the Golan Heights...huge amount of food.  And this didn't include the chicken and falafels we ordered.

Then we headed out for more driving in the Heights.  

One of the viewpoints had an old, abandoned tank from the Six-Day War.  All Israeli police and soldiers travel everywhere with their fire arms (our guide is also a police officer and was carrying his police revolver while we traveled).    

We drove a windy road that took us right up along the Jordan border.  And then down into the Jordan Valley...

and the Sea of Galilee.

This is a photo at our very interesting Scots Hotel.