Cranes, and Ruffs, and Boars oh my!

It would appear that I made a silly miscalculation. While the bird migration is indeed underway with many thousands of cranes in the hula valley, the Hula Bird Festival goes underway next month. I discovered this while arranging for all the materials I needed (Tent, compass, ect.). All the same, I decided to continue with my trip as planned. If for nothing else, I planned to use the experience as a learning experience: a dry run to see if I had packed well, and get a lay of the land.

Section of the sky with cranes flying in from the north and south

Despite the heat of the day, it was colder than I had anticipated in the deep of night (around 3 AM). That being said, I am glad I packed extra night clothing I had originally considered excessive. It didn’t work out quite as I had imagined, hover I can’t really call any of the unpredicted events to be failures as I learned an awful lot from them.

Allow me then, to start at the beginning, and thank those who made this possible. I shall adhere to my nonuse of names and simply say: to JL, thank you for the tent, YK thank you for the compass, DK and friends thank you for the advice. Seeing as how this is not a Tarantino film, the story starts at the lovely waking hour of 6 am. Not too bad for an early morning start. The original plan called for a 4:40 wake up, and looking back I am glad I changed the plan.

The very first thing I encountered did not bode well. I have a student bus pass for the buses. It doesn’t offer unlimited trips, but does give you a discount when you font load them with trips. However, it had failed me twice so far. The first time occurred some months back and Metropoline (one of the bus companies) was very helpful and quickly and effortlessly helped me and restored everything that I had lost. Well, what I had in the name of Metropoline. It was not surprisingly they were not able to do anything about the trips I had purchased through Egged. Egged proved to be much more Israeli in their view of customer service and has been nothing short of infuriating with their dismissive disregard. I shall provide more on this later, but suffice to say, yet again my card has malfunctioned, and it appears that Egged wiped my card of all the trips that were still on it. So much for a smooth morning.

Unlike the first driver who took to yelling and telling me to sit down; the second spent a good long while on the phone with his boss trying to figure out how to deal with me, and told me when my stop was coming up (three and some hours later). I still have to get the mess worked out later on, should only take a few months I hope. But now that I have expressed my derision of Egged, I can proceed on a much cheerier note.

I arrived at the Agamon Ahula (Hula Lake)bus stop just after 11 am. This was probably not the ideal time to arrive seeing as midday is the hottest (and worst for hard hiking). It took maybe twenty minutes to make it from the main road where the bus dropped me off to get to the visitor center where I discovered that the information station was closed and was only open during the summer. I also found out, that despite what I had been told over the phone, there was, in fact, no night safari. Nevertheless, I signed up for the sunset tour and set out to hike the trail. In the brochure, the length of the trail was listed as 11 kilometers which is about 6.8 miles. When I asked one of the ladies at the tour desk how far the trail was walking, she said about 6 miles.

On that first day, it took about four hours to walk around it, and I was disappointed with the results for two reasons. I wasn’t able to linger too long at the bird blinds since I had to keep an eye on the clock to be back in time for the sunset tour, and there were large groups of noisy people. To me the groups ranged from the considerate people who when they saw me with binoculars or camera in hand grew quiet, to oblivious people who gave no thought to their surroundings and would be talking the whole time as they road past on bikes of golf carts, to slightly more irritating groups that were singing along the way, and the worst was a group of Israeli young men who road past on bikes as I was stalking a Kingfisher and shouted “Boom! There Syria! Boom boom boom!” Needless to say, in a flash of blue the Kingfisher disappeared.

Common King Fisher, picture captured later that day

I made it back with 2 minutes to pay and board the wagon for the tour. The tour was rather nice. The guide was entertaining and was very familiar with the birds. It reminded me a lot of Doc. “Oh look, the Ruffs were spooked. Maybe a falcon?” Looks around, in swoops a raptor amongst the rapidly dashing and turning flock. “Nope, just a Black Kite.” At one point we were admiring a group of sea gulls heading toward us. “Oh we are in for a treat!” He said, “looks like they have decided to land here.” after a minute they turned around and headed south. “No! Come back! Stupid birds... well you see folks, they are such indecisive creatures. They’ll go back and forth, back and forth, until eventually it gets dark and they’ll just land.” Unfortunately, I don’t think I am quite portraying the humor. We were all laughing quietly. Reflecting on it reminds me of the Shavers Creek meet the birds programs.

We got an amazing view of the cranes coming in (First image), and two different types of King Fishers landing in front of us. We pulled back to the visitor center after dark, sadly we did not see any owls. I have yet to identify an owl in the wild. I was really hoping to spy a barn owl. Personally, I think they are one of the more spooky looking birds. Judge for yourself, and tell me if you think I’m wrong.

Picture is not mine. From: here

So aside from being a bit tired at this point, and fighting with the bus, the day had gone without any difficulties. I had checked before hand with friends and maps about where was close to camp. There was a site that looked to be a mile or two away. It proved to be a bit farther than that, but seeing as it was dark by 7 pm, it didn’t matter much. I planned to sleep early, wake up early and make a small fire in the morning to make oatmeal for breakfast and be back to the park before sunrise. That was the plan; however, when I got to the camping area I wasn’t alone. It wasn’t other people, which would have been nice. It had been dark all around the camp site and I could hear rustling up in the trees and some of the bushes as I passed through the parking area. I wasn’t worried until I came to grassy area where I planned to throw down the tent conveniently close to a fire pit. Just after I crossed a tiny wooden bridge I heard a rough grunt and directed my light at a bush and caught sight of a wild boar. It quickly disappeared into the bush with several puffs. Like the brave knight Sir Robin, I ran away.

The tour guide on the sunset tour had said that wild boar were indigenous to the area and it was past mating season so the males were less aggressive; nonetheless, I thought it prudent not to take any chance it was angry at something or could smell my food. I had not prepared a backup option for camping locations. I knew of a couple Kibutzes where I could camp; however, both were further away than I would have liked. I ended up stopping at a 24 hour gas station and coffee house to ask about camping sites in the area. I was told about the site up the mountain where I had just been, and I asked about others. After a long talk with a gas station attendant, I mentioned heading north. He said that he and his boss were heading that way and offered me a lift. They dropped me off at a park they said I would be fine to camp in overnight. I set up the tent, and fell asleep exhausted at a rather early hour. I think about 9pm, though I may be mistaken. Aside from the gas station next door, it was perfect. While the gas station provided a convenient bathroom for the morning, the compressed air station woke me up with a fright numerous times throughout the night.

I ended up on a bus first thing in the morning back to the park where I got a cup of hot water to make my oatmeal, no fire needed. I then took a more leisurely walk around the park and, being there before 7 am, meant that few other people were there. I spent a good long time in the first blind and had quite a show from several different species including the pelicans circling up into the sky on there way onward. I spent less time at the second blind even though I wanted to stay longer because a large group of Israeli tourists showed up as I was talking with the lookout guide there and causally checking a few favored perching spots. I wish I could have sat there for an hour, but the tour group filled the little shack to the brim and the temperature rose dramatically. Not only that but the tour guide decided the give a lecture within the blind to the group, defeating its purpose I think. I couldn’t even make my way back to the lookout guide to thank them.

After leaving the second blind it was pretty much the end of the trail, and I returned to the visitor center earlier than i had imagined. I sat around for a little. Ate and rested in the shade, drinking lots of water before heading to the bus station. I had originally thought of staying two nights, and had enough food and clothes for it; however, after the terrible sleep the night before I cut the journey short.

So that, my friends, is the story of my first Hula Valley experience. We shall see if/how the next goes. Among the things I have learned, it is best not to have time restrictions, and having employed a car for the trip would have made life infinitely easier. Even if I had driven to a Moshav or Kibutz to camp, it would have also meant that I wouldn’t have been dependent on the buses before Shabbat. That is all I have to say about my camping expedition. Tomorrow the fall semester begins: my fourth, and final semester of graduate school. Best wishes to all.

Your traveler.