November 24, 2013

Today was a great day. I had an early start; going to sleep at 5am last night and waking up this morning at 8am. Today we were finally going to Rosh Hanikra, the underwater, all natural caves on the border of Lebanon and Israel. It was really hard waking up, but I did and dragged myself to get ready and make it outside to the train station. Paige, Gabrielle, Gabrielle's boyfriend Cody, Nate, and I made it to the train station and onto the train. It was so crowded at first and we were all standing for a while in between the two cars. Once we were on the train for a while, a bunch of seats opened up and we were all able to sit down. After being on the train for about an hour and a half or so, we finally got to the furthest north train stop in Israel. From there, we took a twenty minute cab to Rosh Hanikra. Once we got to Rosh Hanikra, we got our tickets and took the cable car down to the water and to the caves. We all walked through the grottos, the underwater caves. THey were so pretty and it was fun to stand at the lookout points in the caves and see the water splashing into the caves and water rushing in and out of them. The colors and erosion of the caves were beautiful too. The caves were all different shapes and colors (red, green, yellow, orange, brown, blue, pearly), and all different heights. Once we walked through all of the grottos, we walked around the outside of the caves, right on the Mediterranean Sea. The salt and the water from the sea made the rocks white. They were also beautiful. Although there was not that much to see at Rosh Hanikra, we had a great time walking around, taking pictures, and sitting on the rocks, watching the huge waves splash up and almost hit us!

After Rosh Hanikra, we got a little lost. We thought we were exiting the area the right way, through the old train tracks there, but we were very wrong. We ended up walking through the train tracks into another beach and all the way down the coastline. We were not able to find a way out of the Rosh Hanikra area, so we just kept walking and walking and walking and walking. We stopped a few times at different beaches and walked a little in the sand and in the water. Cody was leading the way and got us stuck in the middle of nowhere, LITERALLY. We were on an endless road, on the coast, on the border of Lebanon. Finally, after two or three miles, we hit the main road and were able to get a cab back to the main city. Today was a great day but long. It was beautiful and a lot of fun and we got our exercise. We all made it back to Tel Aviv safely and just passed out!