Eilat

            I think I’ve mentioned my fascination with the ocean (I was a lake kid).  And as a Buffalonian, sun is hard to come by (literally there are tallies of how many days we go without sun a year).  So I was pretty psyched when my flight landed in Eilat on the Saturday night after the marathon.  Yeah, my legs were still incredibly sore and I was pretty beat from the race.  When I left the apartment in Herzliya, I was kind of like, “What did I just do?  Can I please just stay here for three days and sleep?”  But, at the end of the day (week), I was really glad I went.  I had been been planning to go to Eilat for a while.  I had considered doing it on a weekend, but it just seemed like a lot easier to do during my time off, since I had the time to spare.  And I was right.  Eilat is a city on the Red Sea, basically a beach town bordering both Egypt and Jordan, with Saudi Arabia nearby.  It’s about a four and a half hour drive from Tel Aviv, but an hour by plane. 

          I used to think it was important to plan everything letter by letter when traveling.  But, I’m starting to care a lot less about that.  I bought the flight way in advance because it was crazy cheap (warning on that, consider what day you’re leaving and how you’re getting to the airport.  I flew from Ben Gurion, which meant that usually I could have taken the train, but it was a Saturday night.  Yes, Shabbat ends at sunset, but if your flight is at 20:30, you have to be at the airport around 19:00 and the trains won’t have started when you need to leave.  So I took a $50 taxi ride, which meant that my $20 flight just got a whole lot more expensive, but it was still cheaper than it could have been, and it was totally worth it. 

 I took a taxi from the airport to the hotel.  (Yep, no hostel this time; I splurged that week).  I knew that after the race, I’d want some space to myself to recuperate and relax.  For fifty USD a night, the place wasn’t too shabby.  It was a little close to the airport, so you could hear the planes, but for me, that wasn’t a big deal.  When I got there, I spent some time researching where to go the next day before heading to bed.  I’d heard so much about the underwater observatory that I really wanted to go.  Since it was early March, it was still a little bit of the off season, so there were tourists from Israel around (mostly Tel Aviv), some from Europe (several places in Europe offer direct flights to Eilat), looking for a few nice days at the beach, and the stray tour group (Sunday was a group from Virginia and Monday was Canadians from Winnipeg).  So when I first got to the observatory, it wasn’t too packed. It was early, probably 930 or so.  The underwater observatory has a few different attractions.  On one hand, it’s a lot like an aquarium, showcasing sharks and turtles and rare fish and fish from the Amazon and so on… but when you walk on a bridge out into the water, and descend a spiral staircase, it’s a real look into the underwater. 

The underwater observatory is exactly what it sounds like.  When I was a kid in Dubai with my family one winter, they were building an underwater restaurant.  It seemed to me unfathomable.

            But the world is capable of doing all sorts of crazy insane stuff these days.  The underwater observatory is basically an aquarium into the real world.  Instead of looking into a tank at a bunch of fish, you’re the one in the tank.   I saw a bunch of fish I had never heard of but looked cool, and just stood there pondering life (and watching fish) for a while.  When I first got down there not too long after the park opened (maybe an hour or so after), it was pretty sparsely populated (with visitors; there were plenty of fish), and it was just me and a couple families.  After a while, it got harder to get pictures through all the people, and I headed out.  I wanted to catch the shark feeding anyway.     

    Unfortunately, the Coral 2000, which is literally a yellow submarine that you can take right from the observatory for an alternative view of the ocean, wasn’t running that day.  But luckily, your entrance ticket counts for 3 days.

You can see the Coral 2000 barely, behind the tree

Check it out: Jordan is over there (the country)

Eilat is not only known for its warm weather, but for its coral reef.  Tons of Europeans and Israelis will come for shopping (the Promenade/boardwalk is really cool with tons of shops along the way and amusement park rides if that’s your thing) and the beach (although I love Eilat, but Tel Aviv and Herzliya’s beaches were a lot nicer, at least from a sand point of view; I walked along several of Eilat’s beaches and almost all of them were either gravelly or pebbly) and lots go for scuba diving.  I did an intro dive last year in Australia, and I like diving, but I just ran a marathon so I wasn’t looking to break bank (or myself) so I decided just to snorkel.  It was a great choice for someone whose looking for a fast/inexpensive way to get in the water and see some coral and fish. 

            From the observatory, I walked ten minutes to the Coral Beach Nature Reserve.  I rented a snorkel and mask and went snorkeling.  I got insanely close to the coral (not sure if I somehow evaded the swimming lanes or not, but all I know is I was right above it.  I saw trumpet fish, and clownfish (like Nemo!) swimming in the anemones (I had no idea how tiny clownfish were!), some sea cucumbers, and more.  It was absolutely beautiful and entrancing.  At both the underwater observatory and snorkeling, I was struck with the pure simplicity of watching fish be fish, of being so close to something so different from you, and not just one fish, but hundreds, or thousands.  Watching the clam open and close, the blue fish travel in pods, the sea cucumber remain stagnant at the bottom of the sea.  Being one with those fish, so that when they don’t notice you, you’re overcome with questions, all good ones, all striving to understand the world and how it works, the world and why it works, why it is what it is. 

            The truth is, I like nature.  History is cool and everything, but there are times where I just want to get some exercise and experience something that’s a little less educational.  Watch a trumpet fish (even though it scared the heck out of me at first because I don’t know fish at all and thought it was an eel).  Eilat was a great place for that.  I returned to the observatory the next day to take the ride on the Coral 2000.  It doesn’t dive down or anything, but when you board it, you’re already below sea level.  It’s just another way to see the reef, which isn’t necessarily as cool as snorkeling or the observatory, but it was cool to get another perspective.  Afterwards, I took a quick camel ride (touristy I know, but bucket list item I just had to tick off) and snorkeled again at the nature reserve.  I spent the rest of the day at the beach and wandering along the promenade looking into the shops. 

            My last morning, I wanted to give hiking a shot.  It was kind of a struggle to figure out where to start the Mt. ­Tzfachot Circular Trail.  I ended up taking a taxi to the Camel Ranch and promptly took off straight down the wrong road.  Eventually, I realized that I was wandering through the desert in the absolute wrong direction (the closest I got to being lost in the desert on this trip; I knew how to get back but had no idea how to find the trailhead).  

"Lost" in the desert (with 3G and Google Maps)

Walking back towards the Camel Ranch, I was ready to go back, since I wanted to spend a little more time at the beach before hitting the beach, but then against all odds, I figured out that the trailhead was just a few minutes down the other road (if you find the Bedouin style tent you can stay overnight in, you’re right on track).  It was a pretty solid hike once I found it, and the views were pretty sweet as well. 

            Afterwards, it was off to the beach and the next adventures.