2011 - 1st Journey, Day Four

DAYS 3 & 4  (April 29 & 30, 2011): 

Boating on Sea of Galilee, then Magdala-Megiddo-Capernaum-Hazor-Dan-Caesarea Philippi-Bethsaida-and a host of other places passed along the way

“Up at six, breakfast at 7, be out front by 7:45 (or some similar time).” This is the hypnotic chant we hear at the end of each day. So it’s up at six, breakfast at 7, and out the hotel door to climb aboard our time machine every morning. Then, the centuries begin to whirl by. “Look here at that” the guide proclaims.  “It’s been here since the Xth century when thus and such happened, and then 200 years later this happened, and only 150 years after that, some other thing happened.”

Filling the hours of each day on the tour are the centuries of God’s dealings with mankind.  It’s overwhelming. It’s enlightening. Sometimes it’s funny when some one of our group’s comedians makes a wisecrack, but mostly it’s just awesome.  There before our eyes are the evidences and proofs, the physical remnants of Bible history – right THERE. But look quickly and listen carefully because there’s another one right over HERE!  The mind is boggled and the flesh grows a bit weary as we walked or climbed and scrambled over the rocks and stones (there IS a difference) among the hills and valleys of Galilee.

Boating on Sea of G. with Arbel Cliffs by Magdala in background:

 

Sea of G. coast with Arbel Cliffs and Magdala in the distance:

 Megiddo as viewed from the Plain of Jezreel:

Entrance to Megiddo:

1st century foundation of synagogue at Capernaum (black basalt row of rocks) with 4th century synagogue built on top (white stones):

Sea of Galilee north coast with Arbel Cliffs in distance:

Northwest coast of Sea of Galilee (Plain of Gennesaret):

View of the Sea of Galilee from western shore looking east:

 View from Hazor:

Entrance to Jeroboam's city of Dan:

Jeroboam's High Place where he placed the golden calf:

Caesarea Philippi viewed from the east:

Caesarea Philippi viewed from the west:

Sea of G. viewed looking southeast:

  
 So, “I was plumb wore out” yesterday and couldn’t summon the strength to tackle a blog. Then at 4:50 this afternoon I found myself exiting a bus onto a sidewalk in Tiberias, a city perched on the steep hills along the shore of Galilee’s Sea, and dedicated to the Roman Emperor of the same name. Overheated and weary, yes, but mentally and spiritually rejuvenated too. What should I do with the next two hours before dinner? Backup the video files? Import the photos (typically 300 to 400 each day)? Write a blog? Check out the unanswered e-mail? WHAT?

Sea of G. looking south from Tiberias atop Leonardo Plaza Hotel:

Well, after all, I AM on vacation (sorta) and if I close one eye and squint with the other the Pharisee in me can see his way clear enough to cite Peter’s example in John 21:7 as the Biblical precedent to (you guessed it) GO FOR A SWIM!  But where?

There’s no beach access from the hotel, so ok, I’ll take a short hike.  But when I get a couple of hundred yards away from the hotel and down to a  very tiny beach squeezed in between some buildings I find a family of four already there.  The wife is covered from head to toe with some traditionally black floor length garment with her head (except only for the face) swathed in a black veil of some sort. Thinking I might touch off some international incident which you’d hear about from CNN instead of in this blog, I decided not to peel of my shirt and pants less than 100 feet away from such company.  So, it’s back up to the main street, turn left, and hike about a mile to a place where I can see for another quarter of a mile that every property is fenced and there’s just no way to get to a beach.

Now what to do? Well, there WAS that bridge you walked across, Larry. Take a closer look. So I turned around, walked back to the bridge and found a city drainage ditch which was about 50 feet wide at the top and maybe a dozen at the bottom. The sides are sloped at a 45 degree angle and paved with some nice flat, white stones which similarly pave the bottom. There’s only an inch or two of water flowing in the trench but, hey, it can only go the Sea, right? 

So, step between the building and the handrail of the bridge, around the eucalyptus tree, pick my way down the slope and step from stone to stone for maybe a hundred feet before all the beautiful paving you can see from the bridge ends. What I now view is 5 foot high vertical walls of concrete and a six foot wide floor of the same material between them. At the 5 foot height there is a 24” shelf and then vertical walls of buildings for several stories on either side. It now looks a bit like one of the trenches on the Death Star and turns to the right up ahead so I can’t see anything after that. Nothing to do but press on, right?

Another 200 feet or so and around the corner, sure enough, The Sea of Galilee! But first, tumbled boulders about the size of Mini-Coopers. I can handle that. So, make like a goat and VOILA – water! But some guy who apparently owns a small waterfront house is about 50 feet away with one of those “What’s the deal with him?” expressions on his face. So since I can’t turn right onto his property I’m confronted with the 12’ high wall on my left.

The concrete channel had given way to a very beautiful stone wall. Sitting atop a row of Mini-Cooperesque foundation boulders at the water’s edge this wall is composed of rounded stones about the size of a human head and mortared vertically into a most appealing but formidable challenge.

Hugging the wall and holding on to the few inches of stone protruding through the mortar I was able to stay out of the water as I moved another 50 feet away from the shore and out into the lake before the wall turned 90 degrees north (left) so as to now parallel the shore. It got a little tighter at that point, but crabbing my way along I discovered that the wall had become a sheer breakwater for the resort above.  This breakwater ran straight for a couple of hundred feet before gently curving to the right and then to the left again, thus producing a small and quite beautiful little cove with a set of metal stairs coming down from above and continuing down into the water for probably five feet or more. Tractor tires hung by ropes from the ramparts above my head proved that this was the means for the hotel/resort patrons to access boats. My own private paradise, since I had seen from the street before I worked my way down here that the resort was closed – not a soul.

The rock wall I was hugging and the empty resort above:

But perched so precariously as I was on only a few inches of rock at the water level, and with my back up against the wall, it wasn’t a very comfortable place to get out of my clothes so as to reveal the swim trunks underneath. The ladder was angled away from the wall by two 4” metal pipes, so, by teetering on these pipes and reaching overhead to grab the stairs I was able to swing out away from the wall and then crawl between the parallel handrails to gain purchase on the stairs.

At last! Pulling off my pants and shirt and wearing a big baggy pair of red trunks with pockets I descended the ladder and entered the water. Now, at one point in my journey along the wall I’d stopped for several minutes to watch a catfish (which was maybe 24" to 30” long) lazily snorfling the surface of the water. As I very quietly and slowly used either the breaststroke or paddled along on my back without any splashing I soon realized that I could see several places all about me where it appeared maybe half a dozen other fish were doing the same thing.

Unbelievable! I’m floating in the Sea of Galilee, swimming with the fishes (not SLEEPING for you Godfather fans). The sun is shining, the water is warm, and from here I can see the entire length of the Sea from the point where the Jordan enters in the north to where it leaves (about 12 miles from it’s entrance) in the south. All the undulating hills of the eastern shore are before me and not one single human being could be seen or heard. Just me, the Sea, catfish, and my God.

All good things must come to an end though, so after maybe 15 minutes I climbed the stairs, pulled on my pants and shirt (I’d walked and swum with some water shoes), re-negotiated the handrail, the pipes, the wall, and the trench before clambering up the slope to the bridge and emerging onto the heavily trafficked sidewalk. Of course, the trunks had immediately soaked through the paints so I had to walk a mile through the very quizzical glances of quite a few people before finally gaining the hotel and entering the lobby.

Thinking I must look like I’ve pretty spectacularly wet my pants, I’m making a bee line through the lobby when I hear one of our tour group members say, “Larry!  Larry, what happened to YOU?” Now I must admit that I looked like a guy who’d just been assaulted by an angry mob armed with water balloons. I explained my own preposterosity (is that a word?) and got back to my hotel room only to hear Harold Comer declare that I looked like a fugitive convict.  I’ll let you be the judge from the following picture which he snapped, but HEY, what did YOU do today?