HULA VALLEY, ISRAEL -- To your left are the rolling green hills of the Galilee; to your right, a snow-capped mountain of Syria named Hermon.
In the flat wetland nestled between lies the Hula Valley.
A panoramic view of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives.
Today, with the beating sunshine and fluttering grasses of the wildlife park on Hula Lake, the noisy hustle a mere three hours drive away of crowds jammed around Jerusalem's Old City stone walls are unimaginable.
This refuge is where an estimated 500,000 migratory birds that annually cross Israel catch their last break before the final leg of their exhausting flight to East Africa, explains Agamon Ha-Hula park guide Nir Aspis.
"Sometimes, you hear more than you see," says Aspis, a tanned, bearded wildlife lover who's shuttling us around the park in a small golf cart. Thousands of birders come here to watch these winged creatures while they feast for their journey.
During the peak fall and winter period, it's a Club Med buffet for up to 50,000 cranes and white pelicans who touch down here each day.
Suddenly, we halt. Aspis identifies a rattling cry near us as belonging to a kingfisher, a sign the long-billed bird is only metres away.
A Roman aqueduct on a beach near the ruins of Casearea.
This month, Aspis tell us we're a shade too early for the strawberry trees that will bear fruit come June. Within minutes, however, we'll use a telescope to watch two wild boars splash their way across the lake.
It's idyllic. And who'd have known the lush hills I'm staring at on the park's edge are the famed Golan Heights?
After all, this country of seven million people -- which is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year -- often grabs global headlines for a tumultuous political situation with periodic flares. Not here, though, and not now.
The calm of this nature reserve seeps into a Prairie reporter.
I wasn't quite expecting these wide open Israeli spaces -- especially in a country that's only slightly larger than New Jersey.
Upon arrival at Tel Aviv's airport, locals inform me the entire state can be driven top-to-bottom in six hours, which for Winnipeggers, is less than a drive to Minneapolis. What you find during your cross-country travels in Israel is larger in historical scope, however, than anything alongside those flat North Dakota and Minnesota highways.
A view of the ruins of Caesarea on the Mediterranean coast of Israel.
Less than an hour outside of glossy oceanside Tel Aviv -- a hip city of modern Bauhaus architecture and beachside cafes -- I'm staring out at a wide open space yet again. This white sand and towering stone on the Mediterranean Sea has the heft of history -- it's home to some of Israel's premier archeological sites dating back to the third or fourth centuries B.C.
I'm staring at some of the most meaningful ruins of Israel's past.
In 22 B.C., Caesarea became the site of the most grandiose city the ambitious but ornery Roman emperor Herod could imagine -- using hundreds of builders and divers to build a breakwater to protect a port city named for the Roman emperor August Caesar.
Two thousand years later, hordes of tourists still come to the stone ruins of the fabled city -- much of which has been painstakingly rebuilt and maintained by private donors.
Well-coated with sunscreen, you can examine the remains of Caesarea's advanced sewer system, a theatre and an amphitheatre that bear testament to thousands who lived, fished and toiled here.
Here along a beach on the north side of Caesarea's ruins lie the grand skeletons of aqueducts built by the Romans after Herod died.
Today, the destination is a popular coastal resort and weekend home destination for well-off Israelis. In the crook of one beachside aqueduct, I walk along the quiet surf and ponder what once was.
Back in the Hula Valley, it wasn't always a haven, after the park was drained in 1951 of the swamps and pond as part of settlement plan to create farmland for Jewish farmers. In the following decades, the valley was often a contested battleground in border skirmishes -- and due to environmental disruption, many of the region's rich flora, fauna and animal life suffered.
In the 1990s, however, one part of the valley flooded from heavy rain, and the site was designated as an orthonological park to restore the region's wildlife. Nature enthusiasts soon flocked here almost as quickly as the birds. The park is now part of a burgeoning Israeli eco-tourism scene that reaps its reward from the land itself -- Israel's most precious, and valued, commodity.
The night before, we'd bedded down in a boutique hotel about 15 kilometres away on the eastern slopes of Mount Canaan. Hotel Mizpe Hayamim is loosely translated as "Lakeview."
The hotel also doubles as an organic farm, with 28 acres of pesticide-free fruit groves and herb gardens, and has livestock like cows and goats on site. These animals provide the dairy that makes each morning's sumptuous spread of cheeses and yogurt.
This elite hotel -- which calls itself a health farm -- starts at US$310 per night for a standard room, and every room tonight is full.
The hotel aims to be self-sustaining, and a property manager explains the crops are planted over a large area and with a variety of trees to stop pests and diseases from developing. Tucked into the back of the property, once you make your way down a winding stone path, you find the grave of the property's founder, Dr. Eric Yaros, alongside his wife's grave.
According to legend, it was Dr. Yaros who purchased 30 acres of this hillside in the 1920s to establish a vegetarian resort and centre. Now, 90 years later, it's still silent and picturesque. And with a heck of a view.
gabrielle.giroday@freepress.mb.ca
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