My Legs will Never be the Same
Part of my tour guide course involves hiking some of the better and lesser known trails of the country. You see, hiking for Israelis is as natural as breathing. Here, you don’t ask, “Have you hiked the Golan’s Yehudia canyon?”. You ask how many times you’ve hiked it and which trails you have taken. You ask how old you were when you first climbed the ladders up the rock cliffs guarding the Negev’s Tzin river bed. It’s just what we do. Now,I’m not the strongest hiker but when you’re thrown together with 44 other people, you lace up your boots, hit the trail and pray that you don’t make too big a fool of yourself.
Well, clearly, I did not pray quite enough.
- Best Way to Cool Off on a Hot Day Even in July it’s Cool
I did enjoy several beautiful trails that included natural pools and small but refreshing waterfalls, I didn’t completely reach the “not making a complete fool of myself” goal . I fell more than once, stopped to catch my breath as the thirty-somethings whizzed past me and reverted to sliding down rocks on my butt when I could not longer imagine hyper-extending my legs to make it down the next piece of rocky trail. OK, I’ll be brutally honest. Pride be damned. Even the obese 60-year-old and the not so obese 50-something year old flew passed me as I cursed and sweated my way along the 5 kilometers of trail but, as my legs and lungs were about to surrender, I made it the end, dropped to the ground and poured a liter of water over my head to get the energy to stagger back to the bus.
So while I nurse my very aching muscles, hope you enjoy the pictures.
