Israeli Mom

We had such a wonderful day today, just had to post and share our family adventure with pictures!

We went to the Carmel ridge, a beautiful place with green Mediterranean forest, peaks and valleys, empty stream beds (during summer) and limestone caves. No wonder it’s been inhabited by people for the past 200,000 years or so, starting with the Neanderthals.

We did a 4 Km long route, which took us through the Siphonim stream bed, up unto the mountain and the Siphonim cave, down the valley again, and again up the ridge and back down to the banana plantations next to which we were parked. And yes, it was a lot of climbing, especially for the kids, but I’m proud to report that we all made it - the two of us, the kids and Grandpa Amos who came with us. In fact, the kids were great when it came to rock climbing (there were huge boulders on the way). Only later in the day, when it was getting too hot, Dan was getting tired, which really slowed us down, but still, we made it back to the car.

Here are some pictures (you can click to see the larger version) -

Ron looking excited over his latest discovery - a mother Rock Hyrax and its baby were out on the rock just a few yards from us. A bit hard to see in this picture, but I did get closer for a better shot.

They were beautiful to watch so we spent a while staring. Rock Hyraxes are fairly common in the Carmel (and in other places in Israel too, where they are protected within large nature reserves in rocky terrain). I really like them, sort of huge furry Guinea pigs, really. Their latin name is Procavia, actually, so they are related to Guinea Pigs (although it’s said that their closest living “relative” is the elephant).  We were able to see quite a few, perching on the rocks, but these really let us come up close.

Note the rocks that we had to climb - it was like this about half of the time, so quite a lot of rock climbing today!

We finally got to the cave and had a short break there -

The view from the top - that blue bit there at the horizon is the Mediterranean Sea.