Bathing with Crocodiles

Can you think of any three things more incongruous? Crocodiles, hot springs and Roman ruins? I found them all together at a place called Hamat Gader in the Golan Heights.

Betty told Doobie and me to get lost because she needed to prep for Shabbat dinner that night. Doobie offered to take me to see the crocs and enjoy the baths at Hamat Gader, which are about an hour away from Kibbutz Massada in an area of the Golan Heights that used to be Jordan but is now Israel.

If you want to really see what the hot springs look like, click on the link above. The two photos I took show basically nothing, so I'm not going to post them.

If you want to know what they smell like--think sulphur. Doobie had no intention of taking a dip himself, probably because he preferred not to smell like Hell for the rest of the day. I had no such issue. There were at least three good-sized pools, and I sampled two of them--the hot and the hottest. While I dipped, he sat at a comfy table and relaxed.

The day could not have been more beautiful. Have I mentioned the Israeli skies yet?  They are the most amazing blue and clear of smoke and haze, at least the areas I visited. I marveled at them the day I landed and continued to do so throughout my stay. The only place I saw skies rivaling the smoke/haze of our California cities was upon our return to Tel Aviv. I found myself constantly gazing upward, marveling at air you can’t see.

I spent maybe 45 minutes to an hour soaking my cares away in the sulphurous water and then another 10 or 15 showering to get rid of the smell from me and my swimsuit. Betty had warned me that it was pervasive. For the rest of the day, despite the shower, despite changing out of the swimsuit, I could detect eau-de-sulphur around me. Gentleman that he is, Doobie never complained. Blanco, gentleman that he isn't, stayed even further away than usual.

Hamat Gader was my introduction to the Roman ruins that exist everywhere in Israel, and it was the beginning of my realization of the history that lay underfoot. Pretty amazing to walk on land that has seen so many civilizations come and go and leave their mark.

The baths are not the only attraction at Hamat Gader. There are crocodiles, alligators, caiman and more crocodiles as well as a few other animal species in a lush tropical setting with masses of flowers everywhere.

The fellow on the right seemed to fit my color scheme for the day. He took his time and posed for us as we walked toward the crocs.

This little fellow wouldn’t have amused me back home, but at Hamat Gader, he fit right in (since he couldn’t get to my flowers to make a meal of them).

I wouldn’t realize until I traveled to Jordan in the coming couple of weeks what a monumental feat it had been for Israel to convert what had been swampland and desert into the lush fields of banana trees, date palms, olive groves and crops of all sorts.

Those bumps sticking up out of the water are, you guessed it, alligators.

Napping in the sun

I not only cut the tail off the "white" alligator in the photo,
but it had already been lopped off by someone or something previously.

Smiling crocs. 

Doobie capped off the adventure by taking me north on Highway 92 along the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee to a spot just beyond Kibbutz Ein Gev, to see a comic "statue" of the late Syrian president Hafez Al-Assad fishing in the Sea of Galilee. Assad used to claim that he fished in the Sea of Galilee when the Golan Heights were under Syrian control.

The day away from home had begun with a quick trip to the local mall to get an Israeli SIM card put in my phone, something I have since learned to do on my own. The afternoon was capped off with a journey back to the same mall to pick up a delicious to-go lunch of Pad Thai. 

How we thought we'd manage a dinner that evening after the sumptuous Thai cuisine I didn't know, but somehow we'd manage. 

Eating seems to be the Israeli national pastime.