Tales from the Holy Land: Day 47

Today began earlier than usual, because we met at 7:00 am in the San Martin parking lot for a KKISS trip to the caves at Beit Govrin and a stalactite cave. After not too long a ride, we arrived at Beit Govrin. We munched on sandwiches as our guide gave us an introduction, then he walked us through various caves and cave networks. Many of the caves were used to breed pigeons/doves for food, fertilizer, and some religious uses, while others were water cisterns and still others housed presses for making olive oil.

The caves were amazing, and the air was cool and wonderful in comparison to outside, which was already hot despite it still being the morning. We had to walk outside to get from some caves to others, and along the way we found some carob trees, and tasted the pods which turned out to be very sweet and crunchy. We spent about two hours in the park, seeing mostly the highlights, before getting back on the bus.

The next stop was for the stalactite cave. We got off the bus and walked a ways down the mountain towards the cave entrance, basically a set of doors in the mountainside. Just inside was a miniature theater, and we all sat to watch a video which would tell us a bit about the caves. It was a very dramatic film, which basically flashed pictures of the caves at us while defining (with appropriately-placed pauses) terms like stalagmite, stalactite, and others, set to very creepy and at times disturbing music. The highlight, though, was towards the end, when the narrator told us "Absolutely no photography is allowed in the cave, except on Fridays." Of course, that makes perfect sense.

The cave itself was pretty amazing. Many of the stalactites and stalagmites are still active, and the huge formations are made of many different types of water flows and everything. As it turns out, photography is allowed towards the end of the path, so pictures can be seen below, but the tour guide was very unfriendly about this and, well, everything, and throughout the tour pointed out formations which resembled various biblical, fairy tale, and cartoon characters.

After this tour we returned to the bus and headed back to Rehovot. We were on campus again by 1:30 pm, so I stopped by Clore to get my flash drive and went in to work for the afternoon. I also stopped in and gave Nitzan some more music for his birthday, which was yesterday (happy late birthday, if you're reading this, which is unlikely because you can't really read, right?), then worked more until around 5:45 pm.

I went back to Clore and changed, then Ari and I headed down to the field to play soccer! It was a smaller game this week, but that was fine; I hadn't played in a while and it was really nice to run around a bit. It ended up being me, Ari, this guy I hadn't met before named Alex, Olivia, Michael, and after about an hour, Doron (once the others finished playing frisbee). We used bags for goals, which was much easier, and had a great game.

After a quick shower, I went to Cafe Madaa with Ari, Zvonimir, Iris and Rachel for dinner. The food was typical, but things of note included that it was Zvonimir's fourth time there today, and the waitresses thought this was amusing. It was also close to closing time, so the waitresses were making complete fools of themselves behind the counter, dancing and casting spells on each other. But when they started doing the Soulja Boy dance, I was somehow recruited to join in, and, even more remarkably, Zvonimir took video of it. [Un]fortunately, he is having trouble uploading the video, so I can't share, but I'm sure it was hilarious.

After dinner, a group of us met in Clore to discuss our trip plans for the weekend, then hung out while some people started a game of Settlers of the Catan, which Clay just bought. I went to bed soon after they began, to stock up on sleep for the weekend.

Let's start with Beit Govrin photos...

A dovecote (for raising pigeons)