An oasis in the North (mosquitoes optional)

September 27, 2010 - 11:55 AM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, Environment, General, Holidays, Israeliness, Life, Travel 

We just spent the weekend in one of Israel’s most beautiful camping spots – Hurshat Tal.

Close to the border with Lebanon, it’s as close as you can get to the pastoral camping sites immigrants from North America are used to. Landscaped lawns and a well-kept campground occupy featuring ancient oak tress, natural pools and and a huge artificial lake of icy cold, refreshing spring water (and a couple impressively fast, long water slides off on the side), take up about 100 of the 190 acres of the national park.

During Succot, as well as the other weeklong vacation holiday of Pessah, the park is packed with campers – wall to wall with barbecues, raucous families and revelrers. However, no matter the noise level or body compression, but 10 pm or so, everyone winds down, there’s no ‘thumpa thumpa’ of trance music which is the norm in most Israeli campsites, and everyone chills out for the evening.

Our first night was like that, with seemingly half the country crammed into the site, weirdly humid weather inducing thunder storms and mosquitos galore, and tempers flaring between Jewish and Arab campers.

Our 9-year-old and his friends, who were unable to sleep, roamed the site in the middle of the night and came running back to report that the police had arrived and had broken up an altercation between two families. It was unclear if the fracas was racially motivated, but they noted that an Arab mother was pounding on the window of the squad car as it drove away with her teenage son.

We never got the full story, and by 4 am or so, after the last thunder storm, we drifted off into a fitful sleep for two hours.

The next morning, on Shabbat, about 95% of the campers fled for home, leaving our little group of four families with virtually the whole park to ourselves. The weather broke a little with cooler, less humid weather. And the camping trip turned into what I remember from my days in Maine – a joyous nature experience.

When the weather cooperates, there’s no place like Hurshat Tal in the country, and any visitor who reaches the North (and how can a visit to Israel not include a visit there?) should block off some time to hang out there, even if it’s just for a few hours.

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In a trance on the beach

June 17, 2009 - 8:59 AM by · 4 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, coexistence, General, Holidays, Israeliness, Life, Travel 

tentWhen Israelis go camping, they tend to keep things as close to home life as possible. Meaning they’re right on top of you.

I try to go camping on the beach with my kids at least once a year, and last weekend we packed up the tent and mangal and headed to Palmachim beach, just south of Rishon Leziyon with two other dads and kids (for an inexplicable reason, some wives prefer to stay in the solitude of a lone house rather than with their family in a cramped tent).

Palmachim is an ideal destination because there’s a spacious grass/dirt area just a few yards away from the beach, enabling you to pitch a tent and cook without sand getting everywhere, but still close to run right in the Mediterranean whenever you want. As a bonus, the entrance fee is only NIS 20 per car (about $5 for a weekend in the sun).

One of the families with us knew the drill from previous excursions, but the other family, veterans of numerous camping trips in their native US, were making their first foray into the sport of Israeli camping. There are differences.

First of all, you need to have certain expectations, or more specifically, lack of them. Don’t expect to get any sleep – if you think you’re going to have a restful night, stay at home.
There are no ‘norms’ about shutting off the music and turning in at midnight. There are parties all night, and it’s not just boom boxes.

Israelis bring sound systems on their camping trips, booming PAs that can simulate a high speed drill or a jackhammer. On the plus side, you can look at it as a sociological experience. Camping in Israel provides a microcosm into Israeli society like no other.

Down on the beach, there was typical rave, with droning, pounding noise disguised as music, and a dozen ecstatic 20-somethings undoubtedly spurred on by some ‘ecstacy’ of their own. Unfortunately, they didn’t pass any around to the rest of us.

But no matter, because over 30 yards or so in the grove of trees near the public bathrooms was a group of also 20-something Ethiopian Israelis camping and they were playing native music at equally ear splitting levels and dancing in an exotic, sensual manner – men and women inches from each other in a hypnotizing form of chicken dance. We couldn’t take our eyes off them. That is, until a group of boisterous campers from Georgia (the country, not the US state) began doing their own ethnic dances and songs.

By around 2 am, our third family couldn’t take it any more and packed their stuff and went home. The dad had enough of the noise, the smoke from other grills wafting into his tent, the proximity of the other campers – in short the Israeli camping experience.

But I wasn’t perturbed at all by the shenanigans around me. I had gone for a moonlight midnight swim in the balmy sea with my children. We laughed, jumped on each other, and hugged, untethered by schedules, computers, TV, work and school. I didn’t hear a thing.

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