19th day (Mr Shvil Painter's Revenge)

 Just so you know, we're getting up now at 4.45 on friday morning just to do the shvil. Are we crazy, or what?

Starting  where we left off a few weeks previous (at Beit Hanaya, not David Cherny's back porch in Benyamina), we followed the ancient Roman aqueduct as far as the village of Jizr-el Zaker. This is a village with a seriously bad name and I don't mean hard to pronounce. It really does have that run-down wild-west look about it. Dirty, unkempt streets, graffiti on the walls and a general feeling of malaise. The only good thing about walking through Jizr-el Zaker is that after approximately 250 km, where we've walked from Dan, over mountains, past the Sea of Galilee and the lower Galilee, it leads to the beach. We've hit the Mediterranean.
The beaches along this stretch of the Mediterranean are often quite beautiful, but instead of having us arrive to the coast at some pristine uninhabited shore, Mr shvil painter had us stumble out of a dirty street onto a beach strewn with rubbish and dilapidated fishing equipment. Makes you wonder sometimes. The view was sort of a mirror image of Santorini, run-down rather than quaint, uninspiring rather than picturesque. Once we escaped the slightly depressing aura of Jizr-el Zaker the seascape improved. The pristine untouched sands that we had expected now opened up ahead of us. As we progressed southwards public beaches were well groomed and clean. The Roman aqueduct accompanied us along the coast making for an unusual yet interesting type of border for the beach. Around Caesaria, people have come to lounge on the beach for a while, setting up tents under the arches of the aqueduct. Very idyllic. Very Israeli
  Along the way we had some more slice-of-Israel shvil moments. Firstly, we bumped into a camera crew setting up to film  some scenes for a television series, or so they said. They'd constructed a large open tent where the cast and crew didn't do much besides enjoy themselves in the shade.  Not far afterwards the shvil was blocked by red police tape, crossed in a way that in no uncertain terms meant that we weren't meant to pass through. We passed through. This is, after-all, Israel.
After five or six kilometres of strolling along the beach we arrived to the Caesaria National Park. The ruins of this ancient Roman port have been painstakingly  preserved. Israel has so many important archaeological sites that it's no surprise that when the antiquities authorities want to make the effort the result is quite impressive. Whilst this particular site is quite an important one, I wonder whether the fact that the adjacent neighbourhood of Caesaria, which houses some of the most expensive and exclusive real estate in the country, including the private residence of the present prime minister of Israel, influenced the degree and care of the restoration?

Yoni, our tour organiser these past few legs, made an executive decision that from here we would drive to Hadera, about 8 km away. Given that the bipedal alternative included walking past the power plant, crossing the polluted  Nachal Hadera and passing through the backstreets of Olga and Hadera, the "cheat" word was not even mentioned such was the level of agreement. We weren't exactly sure why the route took us inland when after skirting the power plant we could have happily continued walking along the beach all the way to Tel Aviv. We assumed that there was a good reason that would become apparent once we started walking through the large Hadera forest. Huh. More fool us.
Given that we'd walked a bit already and as stated ad nauseum we can't let an empty picnic table in a forest stay empty, we sat down and had our herbal tea and croissants in the entrance to the Hadera forest. Perhaps this is the reason Mr. shvil painter took us 7 km inland? Unlikely.

Eventually we put the cups away and headed off through the eucalyptus forest that reminded us of our native Australia. We'd seen very few planted forests like this along the way. A few pine forests but no gum trees as we say back home. Unfortunately Mr shvil painter had other ideas. He marked the trail outside the forest, not through it. So there we were, walking in the blazing summer sun, alongside this leafy shaded forest, absolutely sure that at any moment a path was going to lead us in. In our younger days we had an expression for girls that led us on, never to let us, ahem, enjoy fully our relationships, a ....tease. This was the equivalent when your married and 50.
After toying with us for a long time Mr shvil painter decided to put us out of our misery and led the path away from the forest. We were still in the sun, we still didn't know why we weren't walking on the beach but at least the shaded Hadera forest was no longer tempting us. We were walking now through nondescript barren farmland, occasionally turning right or left, but with the distinct feeling that we were walking needlessly in circles.
 At this point I proposed the following theory. The night before Mr shvil painter had to paint this section he had a night out on the town. He woke up next morning with a whopping headache and decided that the best way to get around the headache was to smoke a joint or two. And thus he set out to paint the shvil. That might explain walking in the sun rather than shade and walking around in circles.
After arguing which way was North, East, South or West in order to ascertain if we were heading towards or away from the sea, we took a right hand turn that encouragingly headed us westward towards the Mediterranean. Not for the last time, Mr shvil painter would spring a surprise on us. 7 or so km from the beach Mr Shvil painter now had us climbing "paths" through sand dunes. Why? Beats me. The only thing that made us feel marginally better, or at least less screwed up, was this poor group of 4 bicyclists,  all about our age, pushing their bicycles through the same sand dunes. They seemed to have a leader, the one playing alpha dog, who claimed he knew where he was going.  Now if I was following someone who claimed he knew where he was going and thus knowingly caused me to push a bike through the sand dunes, I'd probably be sitting in jail on a count of justifiable homicide, or reduced mental capacity due to sunstroke.

Eventually the sand dunes levelled out and the path led us to the same north-south train track that goes from Haifa to Tel Aviv  that we walked alongside and passed under at Benyamina in the previous walk. Once again Mr shvil painter would have us pass under the tracks to get to the other side. The difference was that this time we weren't meant to walk under the track but crawl through a rabbit hole. Garry, who is shorter and markedly less rotund than Yoni and I might just have been able to crawl through. Me and Yoni? No chance. A 21 year old ex soldier with a rucksack on his back? Even less chance. Luckily or deliberately, there was no fence separating the tracks from the path so we just crossed the tracks, as I'm certain every other shviller who gets to this point does. Actually, crossing the railway tracks recalled memories of primary school road safety lessons...look to the left, look to the right, look to the left again. No trains, safe to cross.

Right, we thought. On to Nachal Alexander, a slow picturesque creek that would lead us back to the sea. Well, sort of right. The way to Nachal Alexander led along a dead straight, open path, next to the train tracks. Bad enough in itself, but Mr shvil painter had tons of loose hot sand shipped in to make walking along this path resemble boot camp at basic training when we were soldiers in the IDF. After trudging for what seemed hours through loose sand I spotted 30 metres above this path another path, along a proper walking track and in the shade of a forest. We hadn't seen it because it had been obscured by a sand dune that rose above the sand path we were walking on. From here my theory changed. Mr shvil painter wasn't stoned. oh no, he was perfectly lucid. He'd gone into the office of the shvil forefathers and had asked for a raise. When they refused him he decide to take his revenge out on us, the poor innocent shvillers. There can be no other logical reason to shlep us away from the beach, lead real walkers through the back lots of Givat Olga and Hadera, walk adjascent but not through Hadera forest, turn us left and right in circles so as to loose our bearings, march us up and down sand dunes and then to top it off have us trudge along an open sandy trail when a shaded leafy path was only 30 metres away. Pure evil spite, that's all there is to it..
Eventually we got to Nachal Alexander and walked a very pleasant 3 kilomtres to the sea. From there we took off our shoes and socks, paddled along the water's edge past Beit Yanai beach to Havazellet beach where we met Kim, and Garry' and Kim's daughter Lea for lunch. More than enough for one summer's day. Garry the sea farer had been waiting for this moment a year and a half, where he would finish a leg of shvil yisrael, strip off to his underpants and run into the sea. Yoni and I didn't need any convincing to follow suit.