March 20th: Nature Hike at Adulam Grove Nature Reserve, Israel

Posted by Kara

Our first full day in Israel started out right away with a beautiful hike on March 20th. It consisted of two parts, the first part I'm not exactly sure what it was called, but the second part was the Adulam Grove Nature Reserve in central Israel, where we also saw the caves at Hurvat Midras. Or really just one of them.

First we walked down on the trail through trees and regular forest brush, though with some exciting plant species I hadn't ever seen before. Another interesting thing was that most of the trees on our hike were not there long ago, but had been planted there as a project of getting Israel back to the way it had been long ago.
We didn't see much wildlife on the hike, but heard a lot of birds.

 

 

There was a vinyard, we tried wild mustard plant leaves, and learned about some of the local wildflowers. Next we entered into the actual Adulam Grove Nature Reserve, where we also visited the caves. The caves were cool, but very cramped and claustrophobic to crawl through... I didn't mind at all though! The hardest part was actually the bees' nests that were right in the entrance to the cave, buzzing all over and swarming. After that, a little cave is no big deal. No pictures of the cave, really... I didn't want to ruin my camera.

 After that, it was a short hike back to the bus, where we climbed on to drive south where we would be camping out in the desert!