Journey to the World

Big water turtles and one cute otter. This is what you can see under the Turtles Bridge located over Alexander River in HaSharon Park near Hadera. We arrived there by accident. An organized tour of some 4×4 vehicle drivers leaving the Hadera Forest on a dirt road met us just before we were about to pass there with a regular car between the puddles. When we realized a normal car would probably drown in the deep water, one o the drivers told us that this road is leading to the Alexander River, and that they are driving to a place called Turtles Bridge (“Gesher Hatzabim” in Hebrew).

In order to get to Alexander River, you have to drive on road number 2 (“Kvish Hachof”) and turn East on the Yanai junction. We drove through a village called Hofit located near a mall called “M Haderech”. There’s probably another way to get there. You can get to Alexander River in different points, so you should ask the locals how to get exactly to Turtles Bridge, otherwise you would have to walk for a few kilometers on the promenade by the river. The promenade is three and a half kilometers long. You can park on one end and walk to the other end by foot, then walk back or use two cars to save the double walk.

After you leave Hofit, you get to a traffic circle. You should pass it and continue driving straight. Turn left one intersection before the bridge. You will get to the Turtles Bridge within a few minutes.

Water turtles in Alexander River

There are a few small turtles and two big turtles were eating bread thrown to them by visitors.

Otter in Alexander River

The big surprise was an otter hanging around this place for some time. This was the first time I’ve seen one in nature. If you’re lucky maybe you’ll get to see it too.

 

This article was published at 1-03-2008 Time: 21:22 and belongs to categories Animals, Middle East, Israel, Otters, Alexander River, HaSharon Park, Turtles, Natual Reservation. You can follow comments to this article using the feed RSS 2.0. You can post a comment, or trackback from your website.