Walking The Land

I spent 22 years of my life in a big city, never knowing how much I adored hiking. It didn't help that I lived in a country blessed with an abundance of beauty, excursions in nature was just not high on the list of things to do in Istanbul. I guess because there was so much to be done in the city that it was not a necessity to wander away? It took me coming to tiny little Israel to find out just how much I loved being outdoors. Things may have changed since I left, but I still don't think that Turks have an appreciation of the land like Israelis do. In fact, I find Turks fail to appreciate and properly utilize many of their country's resources, but that's a subject for another post...

These days I try to go on a hike at any opportunity I get. It's such an exhilirating feeling to walk in nature, a real treat for the senses. I have trouble deciding which one I love more sometimes, hiking or baking. All I know is that I refused to give up on either of them last week even though I was feeling a little under the weather, thus ending up spending the last 4 days all couped up in bed. 2 hours of sleep a night cause I was all stuffed up. Hey I have to earn that idiot badge somehow, right?

I joined a group of Anglos to hike in one of the most beautiful spots around Jerusalem called Wadi Qelt. The flowers were in bloom and we had a short, but very pleasurable walk. Here is a picture of the wadi from a distance:

It was after the rains so there was quite a lot of water in the wadi and the random pools along the way:

At some point we came across a mother and baby goat, with some in our group claiming the baby had just been born:

Afterwards we saw a few more goats coming towards us:

And before we knew it we were surrounded by a whole herd passing us by on our right and left.




We came ridiculously close to them as evidenced by this picture:

I was half expecting one of them to turn around and grab my camera to prevent me from intruding on their privacy! Thankfully we managed to move on and we then saw something that made my heart skip a beat:

Yes!!!! That's right!!! It's the adorable, wonderful, one and only-turtle!!!! Or tortoise if you want to be precise. Of course I had to stop and talk to the cute creature and make sure he was ok (he was). I would have taken him home but it's illegal in Israel to keep turtles as pets. Apparently their place is in the wild. So I took millions of pictures instead. :) To be honest, I could have stopped hiking at that point. I had gotten all I wanted (and more!) from my day out. But alas, that was not to be. We had a little more ground to cover:

Just so you can see how clear the water was:


No travel post is complete without a cultural touch-here's someone in our group who decided to make Turkish coffee during one of our 5 minute breaks. I myself am not a fan and would never dream of shlepping a burner for coffee alone, but I admire the people who do. Kudos for making it (almost) the proper way!