Our ninth day out was 15 kilometers, which is still almost ten miles, but it felt very short. We climbed to a nice lookout with a lookout tower, under which were sleeping three other shvilistim. I loved seeing signs of other hikers these few days. (We are hiking a bit earlier than Israelis usually do because we wanted to see all the flowers blooming, but in this later section we did start seeing some early local hikers. :))
Our way wound up and down and around, and over one hill we came upon a military camp and what I suppose was a field trip - dozens of school girls wandering around some ruins, chatting, calling to each other, posing for all kinds of photos, making flower crowns for their hair, and generally having a lovely outting. We passed them by to the other side of the ruins and enjoyed a mini picnic, ourselves.
And we saw a tortoise!!! It was so little and perfect I thought at first that it was a toy of some sort that one of the girls had lost. As I paused to take a closer look it moved, and I could hardly believe how cute and little and real it was! I've kept a more open eye on my steps ever since. :)
On one of the Tels of the day we met up with a group of disabled veterans that are hiking parts of the Shvil, and at the end of the day saw them relaxing at our same end-of-day gas station/coffee shop.
Near the end of the day we saw a flock of storks that was probably a hundred strong, way up in the sky heading north back to Europe after their winter in Africa. We watched them for a while while we walked, and they eventually gathered together and spiraled in a fantastically cool vortex way up into the clouds. Sorry I don't have pictures or a video, since they would be just little specks through a lens, but it was very cool. Maybe when you come take your turn on the Shvil you'll see them, too. ;)
We ended our hike at Beit Guvrin, and after a relaxed lunch -- oh, and we had realized that morning that at our last angel we had left my charger and K's adaptor! We had been SO good at checking and double-checking all our belongings before leaving, but somehow we'd *both* forgotten something the same day! Well, we'd made it work with my mobile chargers, K's iPad cord, and my kind of wonky adaptor. But at this stop I was able to buy a new charger, so we wouldn't need to figure out the charging issues so much each day. Now I feel very travel-cool with my Israeli/European phone charger. No need for an adaptor for me, ya know, *flipflip* I just travel so much, I have my very own compatible charger. Haha.
We hadn't been able to find a Trail Angel in this area, so we had a reservation at a guest house back, actually right near where we'd began the day, and we finished hiking early in, so we figured we could spend the afternoon hitchhiking back. But after waiting for quite some time with no luck, and seeing that there were no buses nearby, nor any Gett/Uber/Lyft/Moovn drivers remotely nearby, we started keeping an eye out for taxis. Even that took quite some time, but eventually we did spot one, hail it down, convince him to take us the ten minute drive up the road to the town he'd never heard of (yay for GPS!), and negotiated a (kind of) reasonable price.
The guest house was much more expensive than a free Trail Angel house, but it was very nice to have a whole miniature house to ourselves on the day we finished so early. We spent a lazy afternoon resting up, journaling, blogging, and gearing up for the next day, which was our longest planned day on this section: 25+ kilometers for the day. Deep breaths.
Our way wound up and down and around, and over one hill we came upon a military camp and what I suppose was a field trip - dozens of school girls wandering around some ruins, chatting, calling to each other, posing for all kinds of photos, making flower crowns for their hair, and generally having a lovely outting. We passed them by to the other side of the ruins and enjoyed a mini picnic, ourselves.
And we saw a tortoise!!! It was so little and perfect I thought at first that it was a toy of some sort that one of the girls had lost. As I paused to take a closer look it moved, and I could hardly believe how cute and little and real it was! I've kept a more open eye on my steps ever since. :)
On one of the Tels of the day we met up with a group of disabled veterans that are hiking parts of the Shvil, and at the end of the day saw them relaxing at our same end-of-day gas station/coffee shop.
Near the end of the day we saw a flock of storks that was probably a hundred strong, way up in the sky heading north back to Europe after their winter in Africa. We watched them for a while while we walked, and they eventually gathered together and spiraled in a fantastically cool vortex way up into the clouds. Sorry I don't have pictures or a video, since they would be just little specks through a lens, but it was very cool. Maybe when you come take your turn on the Shvil you'll see them, too. ;)
We ended our hike at Beit Guvrin, and after a relaxed lunch -- oh, and we had realized that morning that at our last angel we had left my charger and K's adaptor! We had been SO good at checking and double-checking all our belongings before leaving, but somehow we'd *both* forgotten something the same day! Well, we'd made it work with my mobile chargers, K's iPad cord, and my kind of wonky adaptor. But at this stop I was able to buy a new charger, so we wouldn't need to figure out the charging issues so much each day. Now I feel very travel-cool with my Israeli/European phone charger. No need for an adaptor for me, ya know, *flipflip* I just travel so much, I have my very own compatible charger. Haha.
We hadn't been able to find a Trail Angel in this area, so we had a reservation at a guest house back, actually right near where we'd began the day, and we finished hiking early in, so we figured we could spend the afternoon hitchhiking back. But after waiting for quite some time with no luck, and seeing that there were no buses nearby, nor any Gett/Uber/Lyft/Moovn drivers remotely nearby, we started keeping an eye out for taxis. Even that took quite some time, but eventually we did spot one, hail it down, convince him to take us the ten minute drive up the road to the town he'd never heard of (yay for GPS!), and negotiated a (kind of) reasonable price.
The guest house was much more expensive than a free Trail Angel house, but it was very nice to have a whole miniature house to ourselves on the day we finished so early. We spent a lazy afternoon resting up, journaling, blogging, and gearing up for the next day, which was our longest planned day on this section: 25+ kilometers for the day. Deep breaths.
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