Israel Au Natural: A trip not to be found in the Let’s Go Israel tour book

I got word a few weeks ago, from a good friend of mine up north in Kiryat Shmona, that her federation was given her group a mini trip to hot springs close to her town. She invited me to tag along and so off I went!

Now these hot springs are not your ordinary overdone eat-a-fancy-dinner and have-a-spa-day at your expensive-suite-hotel complete with fake palm trees resort (this kind of place does exist as well, closer to Tiberias, but there are about 107 old fat men too many and I really don’t like fake palm trees).

The trip was planned for the next day and the night of my arrival was filled with the usual dinner making and wine drinking and of course the transference of the latest, juiciest, gossip of Otzma.
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On Friday morning we were transported to the beginning of the trail to the hot springs to get the complete low down on them. Turns out they were not directly accessible and we need to drive ATVs to get there! It was like off road go-carts without a designated course and they went a lot freakin’ faster!

This beautiful Israeli man told us that the hot springs were just discovered a few months ago. A near by kibbutz was digging for fresh water and just hit this geyser of hot water. And while soon they are going to close it off and build an overdone eat-a-fancy-dinner and have-a-spa-day at your expensive-suite-hotel probably complete with fake palm trees, right now it is just a stream of steaming hot water that feeds into a little lake you can sit in.

We drove the life size go-carts for around 45 minutes through for all I know could have been Jurassic Park. It seemed like a Velociraptor could have grabbed us before we got to the geyser. No such excitement occurred and we arrived safe and sound. We got out and you could see the shooting hot water jet out from the ground. It went about 3 feet up in the air!

Then back into the ATVs to the site where we could get in. There was not much there, the point of entrance was just a part of the stream that got wider, but not that much wider. About ten of us pretty much filled up the hole and the water only came up to about your knees so we were sitting in the mud! It was quite a scene. Randomly there were also old bathtubs just floating in the water, so you could sit in a tub in the springs!

Winter in Israel in the north kinda reminds me of Eugene winters and so of course the rain started. I really love the effect of rain in while sitting in a hot tub and hanging out there, it felt so wonderful.

Getting out though? Not so wonderful. I’ve never been so dirty in my life. We were sitting in mud that didn’t come off fully as well as impassible puddles, and so I was totally saturated! We ATVed it back, not quite as exciting whilst drenched and freezing, but an awesome way to complete the adventure non-the-less.