Israel and Beijing

We spent sixteen days in Israel after leaving Europe on December 12, and how wonderful it was to visit with our extended family there. I hadn't visited there since I was nine years old (in 1972 - the passport control officer asked what had taken me so long to return!), and there were many cousins that I had never met before, older and younger, and my wonderful aunts of course. Toda raba to all of you for your wonderful hospitality and fun times! We stayed just off the beach in Tel Aviv and also visited Caecerea's Roman aqueduct on the shore of the Mediterranean, Jaffa, the Old City of Jerusalem (including the Wailing Wall, the four Sephardic synagogues, and the Kabbalistic synagogue where my great, great grandfather was a Rabbi - see the image of the tin door above), the Moshav where my cousin Rina and her family live, and the Dead Sea (better known as Yam Hamelach, or the Salty Sea in Hebrew - we did swim/float and it was amazing). Though we didn't have time to climb Masada and learn more about its history, we were quite awed by its commanding presence towering over the sea below.

Israel is in the midst of a long drought and though it has had a national water plan on the books (and with revisions I'm sure) since I was a PhD student and wrote a paper on water issues there, apparently there has been little progress towards implementing it (according to the relatives). Despite having pioneered drip irrigation, we saw evidence of flood irrigation of some orchards and fields and the use of handlines for irrigation of truck crops. And this after the agricultural sector has already experienced severe cuts in water deliveries. Despite this and the oft repeated desire for more water storage, the government is giving attention to river restoration in a program run by the Ministry of the Environment. Projects have been implemented on 6 of Israel's 16 major rivers. Most notably, this program explicitly recognizes the rights of nature to water. Dave will look forward to tracking the progress of these efforts in the future.

Five days in Beijing were meant to satisfy a more basic tourism idiom for us, and boy did they ever! We visited the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, Ming Tombs, and Tiananmen Square. To see the Great Wall and Ming Tombs, we hired a tour, and what a racket that can be. Along with many other private vans (we used one of these) and buses, we were whisked not only to these attractions, but to a government run jade "carving factory", a government run silk "factory" and shop, and the same for a tea shop. Feeling a little dirty after having been handled so craftily by our guides, we opted out of the Chinese natural medicine facility, also run by the government I think. Thoughts on this experience include the following: this is a good way for China to bolster tourist spending, the guide operations are required to do this probably, and why not exploit the western schills.

Water issues in Beijing are also important as the city is fast outstripping its available water supply thus necessitating that it reach out to rural areas to satisfy urban demands. Dave wasn't able to research much of this, but does recall from a former student's paper that the great North-South water project is intended to deliver waters from the Yangtze to the Beijing region when the project is completed.

Beijing is also trying to deal with traffic related congestion and pollution and issued a new policy limiting new car ownership beginning in 2011 - it will be done by lottery and no one person is supposed to be able to purchase a second vehicle.

We're now in Tokyo for a week and then will visit the Japanese Alps - probably won't be skiing though. There are rivers up there that are treasured trout fisheries here and we'll visit with local angler groups that manage them.

Happy New Year to All! Dave and Crew.

Leaving Spain, and Europe

Following Thanksgiving we zoomed across Spain to Zaragoza in Aragon in order to stage for our travels north towards Paris for our departure to Israel. A primary motivating factor underscoring the selection of the route was whether or not we could explore the Pyrenees one last time - in particular a ski area. If that were not possible we would have pressed on to Barcelona.

We were in luck two different ways. First, after arriving in Zaragoza we learned that the "Siberian" which has been affecting weather all across Europe with very cold temps and copious snow dumped enough snow in the Pyrenees to allow many ski resorts to open. So we went north to the Spanish/Catalan/Aran village of Viella/Vielha to stay a few days in the mountains and ski at Baqueira-Beret (see the map at http://www.baqueira.es/estacion/mapa-pistas). Rio, Ari, and I had the mountain and all the lifts pretty much to ourselves, which was especially tough given that there were 2-6 inches (I think that 5-15 cm sounds better) of fresh powder down on virtually untouched slopes since the mountain had just opened. !Muy bueno para nosotros!

The second way we were lucky was that Barcelona and Madrid soccer clubs were playing a series of matches (a championship?) and the city of Barcelona was in near riot form in a number of areas apparently even though the Barcelona club was trouncing Madrid (even a 5-0 match).

Some notes on geography and water. The landscape north of Zaragoza in the area of Huesca and Barbastro, and Benabarre is similar in many ways to Montana's Rocky Mountain Front (minus the dramatic hilltop villages of course). Dramatic reefs break down to the plain below, and the sedimentary formations are very impressive (see pic above). On the downside, the rivers that drain the south side of the Pyrenees in Aragon are much developed for irrigation and hydroelectricity production, even to the point where the rivers carried no flow in many reaches. We also witnessed this in the Valle de Aran on the north side of the Pyrenees but still in Spain - on the Riu Aran which is the headwater tributary of France's Garrone (see the other pic above). After crossing the border into France, the canals started immediately too!

We're flying to Tel Aviv tomorrow but won't arrive until Monday because of a layover (Dusseldorf - will only sleep there). Hopefully the fires are out by now. If you hadn't seen it in the news, there are some large and deadly (some 40 fatalities) fires in the North with at least one set intentionally by arsonists according to my dear Aunt Adina. The fact of wildfires is not surprising though given that Israel has been experiencing a hot, dry, and long late summer. Will be looking into water, land, and fire management there during our visit - and spreading the word about proper planning for development in the WUI (wildland urban interface).

Au revoir from and to France - and Peace to all!