Hanging in the Balance: Gamla

Today we started off with a new guide,Sara. She is a medical researcher in the endocrinology dept. She has worked on some chemotherapy including some estrogen blockers in various cancers. We tried not to talk shop. She has also been an archeologist and knows every flower and plant that grows in Israel and what it is used for.She knows her country inside out and is a fabulous guide in contrast to the one we had before .We went to Gamla in the Golan heights for some hiking .We started out hiking to a beautiful waterfall, one of the largest in Israel.The day is beautiful, sunny and about 70 degrees, great hiking weather.She pointed out a lot of new vegetation coming out after a dry summer and some fires last summer.We also went to the vulture observatory .Here in the Gamla they take care of sick vultures, mostly by poison used by farmers to try to protect their cattle and other animals from wolves and other animals in the wild.The vultures get accidentally poisoned when they eat the dead animals.The people who work at the Gamla in cooperation with Tel Aviv University have a rehab area here to take care of these sick vultures . The Gamla has the largest number of vultures in the whole middle east and they try to protect these birds from extinction.They collect the eggs laid by the females and keep them in a hatchery until they hatch since so few eggs can survive predators. They keep the babies in cages in Gamla for 3 years teaching them how to eat, then let them go. We saw several flying in the sky, but I couldn't get them on my camera, however Jeff did. The whole vulture drama was really interesting. We then hiked down another very steep and rocky path towards the ruins of the old village of Gamla which was destroyed in a very bloody battle with the Romans. The hike was 2 hours there and 2 back,but as sundown is at 4:30, we rsn out of daylight to complete the whole trip.Hiking all day was a lot of fun. We then drove through the Golan which belonged to Syria until 1967 a and they tried to reclaim it from the Israelis in 1973, but failed in a massive tank battle with leftover mines in the area . We were warned to stay on the hiking paths as last year a little boy lost his leg when he stepped on one of those old mines. After a great day full of information and great hiking we drove to Jerusalem to our next hotel, the beautiful and grand Dan Jerusalem on Mount Scopous. the 2 hour car ride was filled with political talk between Jeff and Sara.Fortunately they had similar views on Israeli politics in contrast to the last guide was a sharp contrast to Jeff's views.
It was a great day!