Life - Let It Happen

If you try and plan everything in life there’s a really good chance you’re going to miss out on a lot. I left Nazareth for the Sea of Galilee with a three day walk ahead of me. On the third day I met Peter from Holland who had done the same but was back tracking a small section to walk over a mountain he had bypassed.

In Tiberias I met Peter again and we decided to meet up the following day to check out a baptismal site on the Jordan River. The next day he rented a car and invited me to join him for a ride around Golani Heights. I have continued to travel with him since. Three days total thus far.

Peter is a museum director from the Amsterdam area whose wife and two kids granted him permission to travel for 5 weeks. He’s in-between jobs and just turned 50. Our mutual interest in hiking and travel makes for easy conversation over beers and coffee. His thick Dutch accent complimented with occasional mispronunciations of English words coupled with an overall general fascination with just about everything makes him a colorful character to travel with. He occasionally comes across as a Dutch version of Peter O’toole minus the heavy drinking.

While still in the Golani Heights we stopped at one of the many wineries unfazed by the Syrian war just a few miles away. From Tibeiras we paused in the Jewish Golani stronghold of Tsaft for some of the worst coffee I have ever had. Why we didn’t say anything I don’t know but conversation was good. Lunch along on the Mediterranean after stopping at a Mosque in Akko.  In Netanya we haggled with a desk agent named Sveltlana for a room in a tired old beachside hotel which stood up to it’s slogan of being the best location. That evening we sat out on a plaza while Peter smoked cigars and some old lady picked up our empty beer bottles. We watched old French and Russians walk by as Peter frequently commented, “Israel, what a strange Place”. After a morning swim in the Mediterranean it was an afternoon drive for an evening float upong the Dead Sea. This morning we walked in the dark to see the sunrise from the top of Masada.

I planned none of this and it’s all worked out perfectly. Life, let it happen…..