Hula Nature Reserve, Monday July 8th, 2013

This was not on our original itinerary.  However, our guide thought it would be something of interest to us and it was.  Every year in the migration season,October, about 500,000,000 birds fly over Israel and stop at The Hula Nature Reserve.  We went there today.  It is not migration season, so no large amounts of bids but the trees were a welcome sight and provided us with a pleasant morning in the shade!  The really large trees are eyucaliptus trees.  Walking through them it smelled like dried flower arrangements from Pier One.  These trees grow quickly and absorb a lot of water.  That is why they were planted there.  In 1951, the Israeli people decided to "dry up" most of these wetlands for agricultural purposes.  There were 15,000 acres to begin with, they "dried up" all but 800 acres and it became a nature reserve in 1964.  They have a IMax type movie we watched in 3-D, in air-conditioning!  It was good.  The we walked out to the boardwalk over the water and saw hundreds of African Catfish.  They were huge and we only saw a small section of the water.