Nahal Oren & Nahal Galim

Participants: Misha Zab, Dima Potekhin, Ilya Surdin.

Last Wednesday after a quick decision a couple of days before, and decision upon the area of travel the night before, we set to go out around 7am to the Carmel area. After a short delay in the time of embarking upon our way towards the region, we took Lev to his base, so he can give us the precious path-marking map(מפת סימון שבילים). Thus going all set-up north. There we decided in general terms on our itinerary, and sent Misha to find some lost sleep time, which he did quite successfully.
We shortly arrived at our parking point, Oren junction, and organized for going out. The clock showed 10:30 and all was well in the region. Actually, we parked at a place which looks likes it is going to be an organized park and people will have to pay for entrance some day, but for now it was still for free and had some water spots for drinking, and had beautiful olive trees growing around.

Index:
Purple solid line - walking upon a road
Purple "cat's paw" - walking upon a path, or other way
Red solid line - Hitched a ride, aren't we lucky.

There we found the Israel-Path which goes nearby, and soon Nahal Oren upon which we set to go, until decision otherwise, it also coincided with the blue trail. The Nahal is very green and pretty, with some annoying traces of human presence.

Around the place where the Nahal crosses the road from North to South, we went upon the road did a survey of the surroundings and checked our place of being. Then continuing on our way. From that point on, we met quite a lot of school kids going in the other direction, probably because in the end of this section there was an ascent which they didn't want to go up, but preferred the other direction which didn't present any technical difficulties, but offered the same wonderful view. We went on the Red and Green paths in the beginning, and then continued on the blue path which followed the Nahal. Somewhere in the area we went up a hill and discovered a building which had a big sign on it saying "Holy Place" and a 4 colored flag. We resolved not to find out what it is, and return to the track. This part was handsome as well, and offered a lot of views of hills full of trees and pretty ways of different kinds of trees mingling among themselves, and yet staying in groups with quite well defined borders, except some spies here and there moving slyly in the rows of the opponent.
The end of that part of our adventure was after arriving at Damun Junction, where we had to walk about 100 meters on the road to get the spot where the path of Nahal Galim began. Some of us has already tried their strength upon that path, and one has even done it several times. It's an easy, pretty and fun part, which takes around 2 hours, and is recommended if you're in the area and have a couple of light hours to spare. Misha said we can go on the path or go along the Nahal itself, and after a short assessment of time and what we've completed, it was decided to do the marked path, as we have went along the Nahalim already in the beginning of our program. Also, we didn't wanna get stuck along the way in the dark.
After doing this forested descent we arrived at Tirat ha-Carmel, which is a mixed Jew-Arab
town, where they live in harmony. Unlike most mixed towns where there is a Jewish area and Arab area, there everyone lives together, and it fills you with some hope of the future and better times. There we were lucky in hitching a ride, with a minivan which was going to Atlit, and brought us almost to our car itself! It was a very good ending for the trekking as we have considered taking a bus from that point to save us some time.(Driver, if you're reading this: Thank you very much!)
Listening to our rumbling bellies, as we washed strategic parts of our bodies at the place we parked the car, we agreed to go and satisfy some of that hunger at Usefia, a Druze town nearby, which has excellent "restaurant" and has featured several of the previous posts.(It is located in front of the town hall, and I promise to remember the name of it, next time we're there).
From there we went all happily satiated, happy and a little tired, home.

P.S. Nahal is Hebrew for stream, brook. Usually they don't feature water, unless there is some serious raining going on. None featured it this time.

EOP,
Surd.