Exploring the Sea of Galilee

I spent three days in the neighborhood of the Sea of Galilee, staying in a hotel waaay up on a hillside, going for a swim in the lake (warm, clear, sweet water), and looking forward to visiting some of the many interesting places in the neighborhood.

On Saturday with no buses running on the Jewish sabbath, I was at a loss for a way to get around. Finally I decided to get an early start and walk as far as I could before the day got too hot to go on. Tiberias is a few hundred feet below sea level and gets very hot - and this was the summer solstice, the temperature eventually reached over 100 degrees. By a little after 7 a.m. I was sure I would have to turn back soon. You can imagine how disappointed I was to miss seeing these places when they were so close.

Just as I reached that point I noticed a little sign that said "YMCA." Aha, I thought, a Christian association. Maybe there will be someone there that can help me figure out how to get to Capernaum, Magdala, the Mount of the Beatitudes and so on, if not today, then tomorrow. So I knocked, and the door was opened. I met a fantastic person who was there for the weekend with his wife and family. He was very concerned that I was taken care of. In the end (and after a long interesting conversation), someone at the YMCA gave me a lift, but not back to my hotel - onward, to the first of the holy places, Tabgha - the site of the miracle of the loaves and fishes. There, people advised me, you'll surely meet a lot of other pilgrims and you can find transportation with them.

So I let them take me on that far, visited the church that has been built on the spot, and soon enough connected with a tour bus that had started that morning from Tel Aviv. They had extra places and the guide agreed to let me go on with them. It was a group of people from many countries - my seatmate was from Poland, and the guide was giving commentaries in English, Spanish, and Hebrew. We visited Capernaum, where there is a very old synagogue (5th century), possibly on a site where Jesus preached in an even older one; a house which may have belonged to St. Peter; and a rock called Mensa Christi which is traditionally the place where Jesus shared a meal of cooked fish with his disciples. We drove on all the way to the southern end of the lake to the place where Jesus was baptized. Stepping into the water I realized it was full of tiny fish, just a little larger than the ones in my aquarium at home.

At that point I had to say goodbye to this nice group, but the sun was on its way down and the evening breeze had started to come up, so I could get safely back to my starting point.

The following day, Sunday, I got perhaps wiser, and let a taxi take me up to two other important places, Mount Tabor (the site of the Transfiguration), and Nazareth. On Mount Tabor I found two groups celebrating Mass with a cappella music. Each time I heard the music and followed my ears to find the Mass. One was a women's choir chanting in a Slavic language (Russian or Polish), the other a men's choir singing in Italian. The only thing less than perfect was that you were not there.