[Hitch]Hiking

My Hebrew language course finished at the end of September and my graduate classes didn't start until the end of October, giving me a month free from classes. I hadn't had this much time off in years (and years and years!), so I decided in addition to celebrating Jewish holidays with Israelis and meeting the President that I would go hiking. The Negev hiking trip was so successful that I got one of my friends from that trip, Moriah, and we set off to find a trail through the Jerusalem Forest.

I read online that the trail goes right out from the Hadassah hospital parking lot in Ein Karem, so naturally we thought it would be super easy to find. Wrong. After a long ordeal of awkward hand gestures and asking five different security guards in Hebrew if they knew where the trail to the Jerusalem Forest was, we finally found it (I wrote about this in an earlier post). In case anyone wants to hike in the Jerusalem Forest, it's really easy to get there: just go to Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital and go to the back parking lot (it is the biggest one). Go out the exit, walk down the road about 200 meters, and the trail is on your left (it sounds simple, but it actually took us a really long time to find out where the trail head is!).

Moriah and I were gung-ho and so excited to be hiking since it had cooled down considerably the past few days. But guess what? That day was one of the hottest days of the summer! We were dying. Naturally, we decided that walking to somewhere with water would be the best choice, and so took a trail that passed two springs.

I know, impressive, right? :) It was so hot that I crawled in that little hole to feel the cool air drifting up from the underground spring. Moriah laughed at me, but I was ready to keep crawling back in and explore the cave instead of hiking in the heat!

The views were pretty awesome, though, despite the heat. This is looking back at Ein Kerem Hadassah hospital.

The trail also cut through a lot of peoples' orchards and olive groves (I'm sure it was nice for the owners to have a trail maintained by the city that went up the mountain to their trees!), and this beautiful little garden on the side of the hill. It might not look that cute until you look around and see that it is all barren hills and olive trees except this little patch of land!

 

We found a couple of old houses (we weren't sure if they were legit or just built by the government to add excitement to the trail!) along the way, which were pretty sweet. The one below was a teeny house but had what looked like a watchtower next to it. I can definitely imagine someone spending the night in this structure, looking out over the valley and watching for enemies who might come in and destroy their trees.

Because I thought the weather would be much cooler than it was (we were hiking early in the morning in the forest! Shouldn't it be cooler than hiking in the desert?), I was sorely unprepared in the way of water. I took just one liter with me, and it was gone long before we finished the hike. By the time we came out on the top of the mountain across the valley from the hospital, both Moriah and I were exhausted. There was no way we were walking the 6 or 7 miles along the trail back to the hospital. So we started thinking about our options.

There was a road right next to the trail head that lead back to Jerusalem, so we decided if worst came to worst we could just walk back along the road. "Or we could hitchhike," suggested Moriah. "Yeah," I said. "But I've never hitchhiked before, unless you count the time my car ran out of gas at midnight on the freeway in Utah and some guy picked me up off the side of the road and took me home." Moriah had never hitchhiked either, but people do it in Israel all the time (it's not as dangerous or uncommon as it is in the US). But I'm not quite as adventurous as my sister, who sleeps on benches and in ferry station showers, and I was hoping and praying that we could find another way back. I had these horrible visions of being stabbed and thrown down the side of the mountain.

Anyway. Moriah and I were sitting on a bench discussing our options when three girls came up and asked us to take a picture of them. Happily I obliged, and then, in a subtle hint, asked if they knew if there was a bus back to Jerusalem. "Sorry, we aren't from around here," they said, and walked away.

Well, it was worth a try, I thought. And then. AND THEN. One of the girls turned around and called back, "Hey, do you need a ride back to Jerusalem?"

Yes! YES!!! Moriah and I tried to hide our excitement as we grabbed our stuff and ran to join them. "Sure," we said nonchalantly, as if we were just planning on strolling back if we couldn't find a bus. "That would be nice. You girls heading that way?"

They dropped us off right in the center of town, and Moriah and I couldn't thank them enough. And as the car pulled away, Moriah and I both decided that we could totally claim that as hitchhiking...