Day 39: Netanya to Sdot Yam

Day 39: Netanya to Sdot Yam

Day 39, April 7: More beach walking plus some forays into woods and streams above the beach. Trail badly marked, checking map every few minutes, madder and madder at guidebook. Wrote bad review. Refused water on beach so went to Sdot Yam. Stayed at cool guy's house.

The Israel Trail is very well marked for probably 90% of the trail. For another 5%, the marks are either faded away, hidden, or damaged, but you can pretty much tell where you have to go even without markings. The other 5% you're basically guessing, and these parts are where a good guidebook would step in and give you detailed directions. A good guidebook, unfortunately, does not exist (as of when we hiked) and so our attempts to navigate just made us more and more irritated with the guidebook writer. We had internet access that night, so I went on Amazon and wrote a bad review of it.

We reached Kibbutz Sdot Yam and passed an older lady who told us her son had built an outdoor area for hikers. Then she realized the water wasn't turned on out there, and at the same time, a dude skateboarding past offered to let us stay at his place. This guy's name was "Yam", meaning "Sea", and he had a haircut that merited the epithet "Flock of Seagulls" - that is as far as words are able to describe it.

His place had an open window and so was full of mayflies, which, despite looking like Godzilla-mosquitoes, are harmless. Well, except for the psychological trauma caused by those monsters flying around everywhere.

The "outdoor area for hikers", which we saw briefly, was really impressive - kind of a treehouse/cabin type structure out past a few agricultural fields, amid a eucalyptus grove. There was a small shut-in area on the first story, as well as a patio and a second-floor roof deck. A few couches provided seating and you could see it would be a really nice place to sleep if the weather were good and the mosquitoes weren't out.