Tourism revisited

I'm back in the land of the lounging, lazing on my bed in our swanky hotel trying to come down from the crazy high of the World Cup final and the first night of Channukah coinciding. Needless to say I'm exhausted from doughnuts and penalties.

The last couple of days in the farm were both spent as a waiter in the restaurant but they weren't without incident.

I was due to leave on Friday to get to civilisation in time to collect A from the airport the following night (once Shabbat begins you can basically forget it until Saturday night.) Dalia was upset at the idea of having to do a restaurant Saturday on her own without me but I couldn't see anther way out.

Until inspiration hit me. It was Friday morning around 10.30am. If I could get to a hire car place before the Shabbat curtain was drawn across the country I would be free to stay on Friday night, help Dalia in the restaurant on Saturday, then depart Saturday afternoon free from the constraints of holy relaxation. The car hire place in Nazareth, our nearest big city, closed at noon. The place in Haifa, significantly further but an actual metropolis, closed at 1pm. It was stretching it. It also meant I would miss most, if not all, of Friday's work. But I decided to take the gamble.

Amnon was not feeling well so I set off to one big city or another on foot, quickly breaking a sweat as I trudged up and down the long, rocky dirt road to Yodfat. A seemingly interminable amount of time passed with no one but a lost-looking cow to mark my progress. This was exactly the kind of futile effort that ended with me coming back to the farm after dark having missed the day's restauranteering and the closure of the car hire places. I began to lose hope.

But then a huge pickup passed and stopped and I jumped into the back, carefully avoiding lying on the instruments that were inexplicable loaded there. I held on tight and lay down and was jerked and jolted the 300m to the first junction where the truck and I parted ways. I quickly flagged down a swish-looking city car that took me down the mountain to the highway which leads to Nazareth and Haifa. It was already 11.20. Thoughts of getting to Nazareth on time began to seem absurd so I decided to concentrate on Haifa.

Miraculously the second car who stopped was going all the way and I gladly got off the hot highway roadside and into the car. The young driver was on his way to a rock climbing competition, having just aced a try-out for the army to become a parachute instructor. Little wonder the Israelis you meet when you're traveling all seem so incredibly hard and cool.

I made it in easy time to hire the car, get back to help Dalia with both Friday and Saturday service and left after an exhausting two shifts to meet A at the airport in Tel Aviv and whisk him to our luxury spa experience hotel from whose pampered luxury I'm writing this now.

More physically exhausted and smelling of goats I have never been than I was last night, but as I swam in the clear warm water of the sea off Netanya, and ate room service pizza in my complimentary robe, it all seemed a thousand years ago already.

An exhausted me after finishing farm work for the last time

City Rob takes over (although note that the sandals haven't changed)