Yehudia Hike

Thursday night, I still didn't have plans for the weekend and didn't want to waste one of the last weekends I had. Some of my friends were going up north to the beautiful Yehudia hike 30 minutes outside of Tiberias, next to the Kinneret. After going to bed around 3 in the morning, we woke up at 8:00 AM to catch a 9:10 bus from Jerusalem to Tiberias. We missed that bus (woops) so we took the next one at 9:40. We were told by the Yehudia camp site staff we had to be at the camp ground before 1 PM. The staff was wrong. We could have walked in whenever and not had to pay the 50 shekel fee to sleep over. With the fees behind us, we dropped off our things and went on a little walk to kill some time. Staff told us again, we had to be back by 4, that was wrong too. But, never the less, we continued to follow rules and arrived back at the camp site by 4 PM to set up our tents. We hung out, played games, some girls took naps until it was time for Shabbat!

On the hike was me, Yael, Ilyssa, Shira and Ilana, plus Sam Forman, Gabi Remz and one of their friends from their section, Jonah. Jonah is orthodox and the rest of us like doing something special for Shabbat so we went to a quite area (a lot of section 3 year coursers had also come for the hike) and did Ma'ariv then Kabbalat Shabbat. It was beautiful. I realized the last time I did KabShab was in Rwanda, how ironic is that? We made a nice meal of caned foods for dinner then back to our tents for bed. We were all exhausted from the party, no sleeping and traveling all morning.

Saturday:

The girls (from left)- Ilana, Me, Ilyssa, Shira, and Yael

We woke up at 6:30 AM to get up, pack up and get going for when the trail opens at seven. The other year coursers woke up before us but we got out before them. The hike was absolutely beautiful. It was the perfect time of year. It had rained in the middle of the night, helping all the plants bloom more than it already had. We hiked down the valley to the stream/river/waterfall and ate breakfast.

We continued to walk and stop at beautiful spots, maybe go swimming. We soon approached the big waterfall where you would go down the ladder into the water and swam to the other side. We went down the ladder and dropped off our bags on the dry rocks. This was our time to finally break the rules. It was forbidden to jump into the water because it is extremely dangerous. Luckily, Sam and Yael are both life guards and checked to see if there were any rocks around. Jonah made the first big jump then four of us girls, Gabi and Sam followed by jumping. I was so terrified to jump, but I knew that I just had to count to three and jump! The scariest part was the second half of the jump when I kept asking myself, "WHY AM I NOT IN THE WATER YET?" I finally landed, came up from the water and thanked G-d I was alive.

The Boys (from back to front): Gabi,
Jonah and Sam.

We watched the other YC kids jump, dried off in the sun then continued on the hike. We stopped along the way at another beautiful waterfall for our canned lunch.

We finished the hike by 3:30, said bye to the Shomer Shabbat boys and hopped on a bus back to Jerusalem. I slept the whole way home and finally arrived back around 9ish and bed soon after.

It was such a fantastic, fun, great weekend! I'd do it again in a heartbeat!