Friday, 20 September 2013

Jerusalem Day 19 (Friday, 20th)

Thanks to the fact that we had Mass last night we were able to start a few minutes later today than normal.

After breakfast and checking out of the hotel we headed off to Mt Tabor with Ghada guiding us again. We eventually arrived at the base of mountain and traveled to the top via taxis - 10+ seats driven up the mountain by excitable Palestinians who got us there in a hurry.

Again, Ghada led us through both the background and history of the site. It is amazing to learn the facts and figures regarding when and how the various nations held control of the site from the early Christians after the Romans to the Muslims and then the Crusaders and then the Muslims and with the Franciscans maintaining, at least at some stages, a presence so that today they are there as custodians of the site, as they are of many of the Holy Land sites.




After an interesting trip down from the top of Mt Tabor we arrived at the place where we left the bus in order to have lunch. After fare welling Ghada and her sister Noura we headed off down the mountain with our bus driver and immediately ran into a major problem. Just after we got round a corner there was a roundabout and parked all around the space were cars of people who were attending the local Mosque. 

The only problem was that there was no room for the bus to get round the corner or anywhere else for that matter. After some extremely difficult maneuvering, Samir, our driver, managed to reverse 100 metres back up the hill and he got us back on the road again.

Safely back in Ecce Homo it was time to have a short break before the evening meal, washing some clothes and now bed.

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