Thursday: Ramot Forest Hike

Hiking in the Ramot Forest

The underpass
The Ramot Forest had great scenery.
An unfinished Sukkah near the park.

An olive tree.

Chelsey tasted the olive, but apparently fresh olives are gross.

A nice house in Ramot.

The porcupine slide

We made it!

Since Israel is so hot, and because we were planning to hike for several hours, we started preparing our gear the night before. Unfortunately we had left one of Chelsey's waterbottles back at the Ramat Gan apartment, and it was looking like we wouldn't have the recommended 3 liters apiece. Luckily, our roommate Re'ut happened to ask us for a small water bottle right while we were packing, and we traded her a small one for some large ones. In addition to the waterbottles, we packed two peanut butter sandwiches each, some dried dates, and two apples, all of which fit into Chelsey's camelback, along with the camelback's 3-liter water container.

We planned to get up at 9, but being on "vacation" we pushed snooze on the alarm clock a few times. Also, I discovered that I had 20 new mosquito bites, ALL near my knees on both my legs. Ouch! Somehow Chelsey avoided the mosquitos. Maybe it's all the hummus in her bloodstream. After a bigger breakfast than usual, we went out and caught the 7 bus on King George, headed towards the Ramot Forest. According to what I found online, we were supposed to take the bus all the way until the final stop, which would drop us off right near a park at the entrance to the forest. However, when the bus reached its last stop and we got off, it didn't seem like we were anywhere near the entrance to the forest. It was time to ask for directions. Usually in situations like these, we find out that we did indeed go the right way, and simply have to walk a few minutes to get where we're going. The first person we came across was an Orthodox Jewish man named Ariel, complete with black hat, black coat, black pants, and white shirt.

"The Ramot forest? Oh you should have taken the bus a couple more stops. I'll show you where to go, I'm going this direction anyway so I may as well hike with you."

That's what Ariel said when we asked him for directions, except sped up about 1.5 times and with small bursts of speech. The pattern of speech sounded awfully close to that of rapid, under-the-breath prayer that you might hear during a silent Amidah. We walked with Ariel for about ten minutes on a dirt trail, traversing through weeds and shrubs and talking all the way, until he had to walk a different direction. He told us to continue down the path into a valley area, where there would be a highway underpass, which we would follow until a traffic light, turn, and then some more crazy directions that were difficult to decipher.

Turns out his directions were wrong. Or we just didn't exactly understand what he meant. First we found the underpass, and after walking up a stairway and coming to the side of the highway, it looked as if there wasn't a pedestrian walkway, so we doubled back and continued down the valley path. Then we came across another highway road that looked equally unpromising, so we reversed direction again and went through the underpass a second time. We were getting pretty frustrated... all we wanted to do was hike through the forest instead of through crudely paved streets just outside the forest area. We found another sidestreet and walked for a while before coming to another paved road that cut through the woody area. It wasn't exactly hiking terrain, but it looked like it might lead us the correct way. As it turned out the path went on for a few miles through the forest, and we weren't disturbed by a single car or pedestrian along the way!

The path descended for awhile, and eventually curved back under the highway through sandier terrain. At one point I saw a lizard, the third one I've spotted since being in Israel! Being the nature savvy one, Chelsey kept pointing out the striations in the rock wall, naming the different types of rock. She also seems to know the name of every type of plant as well, except for a certain small, colorful flower that gives off a sweet scent. All of a sudden Chelsey let out a scream! That made me freak out as well, but luckily the reason for the scream was a bug that had landed on her arm. Less than a minute later I let out a scream, scaring Chelsey as well. The same type of bug had landed on my arm too! We both had a good laugh about that.

Our original goal had been to enter the forest from "Gan Hakipod" - Porcupine Park. The park was named as such because there was a slide there shaped like a porcupine! When we came out of the forest we had been hiking for almost three hours, and needed a rest. However, we were set on reaching Gan Hakipod before stopping to eat. A streetsign pointed us in the right direction, down a street full of upscale houses with partially built Sukkot (huts). Chelsey found an olive tree and despite her telling me that fresh, unprocessed olives have an unfriendly taste, she tried one (and immediately spit it out). After asking a couple of people on the street for further directions, we found our destination. It turned out that we ended our hike where we intended to start it!

Lunch was tasty and relaxing, and we were relieved to have a place to rest in the shade. Afterwards, we decided it wasn't worth hiking any more, since we would most likely be backtracking and didn't want to get even more disoriented than we had been before. Plus three hours of hiking in hot weather is enough for a warmup - we figured we'd do longer hikes through a set path instead of wandering around the forest looking for a trail. Our energy drained, we found a bus back to the city center, and stopped at the Shuk for some food for dinner - chicken and vegetables in pita. Yum yum!