Green Traveler: Kibbutz Lahav, Israel

August 1-17, 2011 -- Despite processing pig meat and performing medical research on swine, Kibbutz Lahav in southern Israel doesn't use hog manure as a renewable energy resource to power up the place. Not yet at least. Lahav does however use solar water heaters to power homes and buildings. In fact, over 90% of Israeli homes have solar water heaters on their rooftops thanks to a 1980 law passed by the Knesset mandating that all new residential units install solar water heaters.

And since the price of gasoline in Israel is so high -- $8.33 U.S. dollars per gallon or 30.24 Israeli New Shekels (ILS) per gallon as of May -- many kibbutzniks do not own cars and instead rely on the public bus or private shuttle to make trips to nearby Beersheba.

Bicycles, motorized scooters and electric carts are popular modes of transportation around Lahav. We borrowed some bikes one Shabbat Saturday for a ride around Lahav Forest -- a man-made national park that surrounds Kibbutz Lahav. The towering pine trees of the Lahav Forest are an impressive site to see considering before 1952 the area was a desolated desert outpost. It is a living legacy to the vision and hard work the early Zionist pioneers put in to "making the desert bloom." The green revolution is nothing new to Israelis. They have been planting trees since 1948. The cultivation of the country comes from the prophet Isaiah's biblical passage that "the wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom."

Kibbutz Lahav must have a buy American clause when it comes to purchasing cars because I saw more Fords and Chevrolets there than in my entire trip around Europe. The American auto industry was recently brought back from the dead and is experiencing what is hoped to be a real revival with smaller fuel efficient and electric vehicles. It was encouraging to see that at least in Israel, people are buying American automobiles.

Click here for more observations of Kibbutz Lahav on Josh's Travel Blog.

Here are more photos from Kibbutz Lahav. Click here to see the set on Flickr.

Boarding the Bus: Tel Aviv to Kibbutz Lahav

August 1, 2011 -- After spending six days exploring Tel Aviv-Yafo, it was time to be assigned to the kibbutz I would be working on. The Kibbutz Volunteer Center directed me to Kibbutz Lahav, which meant an hour-and-a-half bus drive south from Tel Aviv.

The Tel Aviv Central Bus Station is now the second largest bus depot in the world after the Millennium Park Depot in New Delhi, India opened a year ago. Most Israelis use buses for intercity travel so it is an impressive site to see so many buses coming and going every few seconds. The station opened in 1993 but the seven-story structure seems much older. There is a run-down shopping mall that occupies much of the space with over 1,000 shops and restaurants. Only three of the seven floors are used as a bus terminal and the maze of escalators can be hard to navigate, especially if you can't read the Hebrew signs.

Lahav is located around 18 miles (30 kilometers) northeast of Beersheba and less than a mile west of the 1949 Armistice Agreement Line and Judea and Samaria (West Bank). The bus driver dropped me off a stop too far, at the Lehavim Junction near the planned community of Lehavim. The Kibbutz Lahav volunteer coordinator had to drive to the intersection of Highway 40 and Highway 31 to pick me up.

Soon I would arrive at Lahav for my next adventure -- washing dishes and scrubbing pots and pans at the only Jewish-run pig farm in Israel!

Here is video leaving Tel Aviv Central Bus Station on Metropoline route 351 to Beersheba. Metropoline is a bus company with routes mostly in southern Israel (Egged is the largest transit bus company in Israel). You really get a sense of how much bus traffic there is as we drive past bus after bus after bus on our way out of the busiest station in Israel.



Here are more photos of the bus trip from Tel Aviv to Lehavim Junction. Click here to see the set on Flickr.