27. Trip to the Hula Valley

Dear Emilee,

I was right, I knew it, I was right; I just knew we are going somewhere and we did!

Sue and Howie picked us up first thing this morning and drove with us to the Hula Valley.

It is a valley in the north of Israel. It used to be a lake, or as the ancients called it a sea, a part of the flow of the Jordan River. By the 1950’s the Israelis dried it up. The marsh it was had malaria spreading mosquitoes, the worse of their kind and many people, mostly children, died from the disease. Now, the majority of the valley is a seabed of a rich agriculture soil. But some of the marsh, now clean of mosquitoes, was contained and kept as a nature reserve where big birds are landing on their migrations from the north to South Africa in the winter and on their return to the Northern nesting grounds in Summer.

Today, only some of the local residents were in the marsh. The big birds already left about a month ago. But the Hula Valley was peaceful and we enjoyed the walk.

We met grade 3 from Karmiel on one of the bridges and they took their pictures with me to say hi to your grade 3. They will be checking the blog and see if maybe they can connect with your class and have an exchange of friendly letters and pictures. They loved the catfish and the water turtles and pointed to us the reed that grows like weed in the marsh. They told me that this is the same reed used to make a little basket for Moses from the Bible, so he can float in the Nile.


We watch a 3D film of the migration of the big birds with winds and moving chairs and water drops in our faces. Fun. It felt like we were flying with the birds over oceans, mountains, and deserts.



We saw catfish and water turtles swiming together everywhere they think you might feed them.

From the Hula sanctuary, we went to The Dubrobin Farm where a preservation of the first farm in the area erected in 1884. We visited an old well with a water wheel, the chicken and geese and one horse. There was a large orchard around the farm and many beautiful roses. We saw some old dresses, beds, and pictures of the people that used to live in those houses.

It was a good day to travel.

Tired, going to sleep now, your reporter Flat Stanley.