Kfarhelda in April, and the argument for going twice

I have a rule that I did not decide on so much as accumulate: any waterfall worth the drive is worth seeing twice, in two different months, because you are not really looking at a waterfall. You are looking at a weather report that takes a year to print.

Kfarhelda made the rule. The first time I went it was early April and it was a wall. Not a ribbon, not a curtain, a wall — the kind of volume where the air twenty metres back is already wet and conversation stops being a realistic option. I left with my ears ringing.

The second time

June. Same place, same pool, same rocks I had scrambled over shouting. The wall had become three separate falls with dry stone between them, and the pool at the bottom had gone from churning white to a green so clear you could count the stones. It was quiet enough to hear people talking on the far side.

I liked it more. I did not expect to like it more.

The loud one is the photograph. The quiet one is the swim.

On swimming in it

You can. It is cold in a way that is genuinely informative — the first ten seconds tell you something true about yourself. Go in off the flat rock on the left, not the sloped one on the right, which is covered in an algae with no friction whatsoever and has personally embarrassed me.

The village is small and the people running the little place at the top will feed you enormously if you let them. Manaeesh, fresh, out of an actual oven. I ate three and called it hydration.