How Did The Idiot Leave Lebanon And Initiate The MedTrek in Israel?
The last site that The Idiot visited in Lebanon, not too far north of the Lebanon/Israel border, was Tyre, which Alexander the Great had trouble conquering in 332 BC.
Then he MedTrekked directly from Lebanon into Israel, right?
Wrong.
The borders between Lebanon and Israel are closed — Israel troops on one side, Lebanese troops on the other, UN peacekeepers in the middle — and it’s impossible to simply MedTrek from one country to the other.
Instead, The Idiot flew to Amman, Jordan; went through the laborious customs procedure at the King Hussein/Allenby Bridge at the Jordan River; and then bussed to Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa and Nahariya before reaching the seaside border at Rosh HaNikra.
No wonder he caught his breath before beginning the MedTrek down Israel’s coast to Gaza.
Signs and soldiers made it clear that this, and all other, land borders with Lebanon are out of business.
“Our water patrol will be happy to see you,” said an American-educated Israeli soldier at the border. “Trust me, trespassers are prosecuted.”
Despite coping with political reality, it’s refreshing, after MedTrekking on garbage-filled and mostly empty beaches in Lebanon, to walk on Israel’s comparatively clean seaside filled with Tabernacles holiday campers and bathers.
It was also a MedTrekker’s delight to visit Acre, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the Middle East, and see what changes have occurred since the Crusades.
Walk around the sea wall in Acre.
Acre is at the northern tip of the Bay of Haifa and it’s a straight shot along the sandy seaside into Haifa, Israel’s third largest city and now a center of shipping, heavy industry, high-tech (the Google offices are on the beach just south of town) and education.
During the hike through and beyond Haifa, The Idiot was joined by former London Times correspondent Michael Knipe and his Israeli wife Michal.
And they kept MedTrekking until the beaches and sun spoke to them.
Tomorrow: How Does An Idiot-ic MedTrekker in Israel Observe Sukkot, or the Jewish Feast of the Tabernacles?
Joel Stratte-McClure, an American journalist/adventurer who lived in France for over three decades, is the author of “The Idiot and the Odyssey: Walking the Mediterranean” (2008) and “The Idiot and the Odyssey II: Myth, Madness and Magic on the Mediterranean” (2013).
He is currently based in Northern California but travels regularly to the Mediterranean to gather anecdotes and add kilometers for his third book in this series: “The Idiot and the Odyssey III: Walking the Mediterranean in the Footsteps of Alexander the Great” (2018).
Follow The Idiot @ www.followtheidiot.com
