As I was saying, heaven.
My friend, A., and I spent most of Tuesday morning in a wayside cafe, trying to keep our four kids amused, while our husbands returned back home. Our friends’ car was heating up, so they went to change cars. Needless to say, we didn’t reach Lake Kinneret (the Sea of Galilee) that day. It had to wait for today, on the way back.

The late start only made the the place we were staying seem even more heavenly when we finally got there. The photos in this link don’t do it any justice. The bushes and trees surrounding the seven little villas this place offers have grown, since the photos were taken. The villas are now hiding among dense vegetation. There are little winding paths between the villas and a bubbling stream runs throughout. The villas are situated in a plum orchard and delicious ripe plums were literally falling into our hands. As is often the case in Israel, the proprietor turned out to have been a school friend of A.’s.

Wednesday found us in the waters of the nearby Snir River. This is one of the sources of the Jordan River that the Syrians tried to divert in the Sixties. The little river’s ice cold water and strong flow are very refreshing on a hot summer’s day. We went down the river to where it meets the Dan River. At the meeting point there is an overlooking fish restaurant. We just got out of the river, with our backpacks and wet clothes and sat down for a delicious meal (we’re vegetarians but A. and D. said the fish was very good).

In the afternoon, after a rest, we took the kids to ride horses in nearby moshav She’ar Yeshuv, where seventy-three army officers and soldiers were killed, five years ago, when two air force helicopters collided in the worst military accident Israel has ever seen. One of those killed had been in my year at school.

A funny thing happened while we were in the waters of the Snir. Bish and I both heard two booms. They were barely audible over the sound of the water. A. and her husband, D., didn’t seem to hear anything, and we didn’t tell them so as not to frighten them. We weren’t sure what it was. Maybe ant-aircraft. The Hizbullah sometimes target Israeli civilian planes in the area. It could also have been Israel firing on the Hizbullah. Whatever it was, it sounded quite far away. If Bish hadn’t heard it, too, I would have thought I’d imagined it.

But it didn’t bother us, or any of the many other people having a lovely time in the beautifully clear, cold water, surrounded by the green river vegetation, that fresh, watery smell in the air. It didn’t feel like it had anything to do with us at all.