Eilat

It's been a couple weeks since I went to Eilat with Limor's family and the families of a couple of Limor's parents' friends (whew lotta words), so the details are a little bit fuzzy right now. I did take a lot of pictures, which you can see at:
[placeholder]

First, we woke up very early in the morning for the five-hour drive through the Negev Desert. Oh man, it had to have been around five AM when we woke up. It reminded me of those field trips in highschool (ah the physics class trip...).

For a light breakfast, we stopped at the equivalent of a truck stop at Chatzevah. We ate at "Aroma", a nice sandwich/coffee chain with an odd substitute for an air conditioner (an intermittent sprinkler system in the ceiling).

A little while later we stopped at "U-tapuzim". It's kinda like Hershey's, in that they make chocolate milk and other yummy products like that. The place is actually called Yotvetah, but their logo looks like an orange (hebrew: tapuzim) inside of a green "U", so that's what I call it.

Walking in, it looks just like any other tourist trap - big displays with English explanations, and all sorts of cheesy t-shirts and other gimmicky crap. There just so happened to be a big group of American kids on a BBYO highschool trip, gawking at every little item and exclaming "oh I am so buying this for my daddy". When we sat down to eat, I noticed a table full of highschool JAPs fawning over their security guard (which, on pratically all Israeli-led trips, is a twenty-something male). I hope the only reason he all that attention was because they were buying him ice cream.

On a side note, and only because I've been reading so much Robert Jordan, the ceiling lights in the cafeteria area made me think of sar-lights. Too bad only a couple of you know what I'm talking about. Or maybe it's better that way...

After lunch, it was back to driving through the desert. I've gotta say, much as I love trees and growing things, there's just some thing so beautiful about the desert. Especially coming down a switchback and being able to see for miles all the way out to the Dead Sea.

As soon as we stepped out of the car in Eilat, BAM, the heat hit us like a fist. So naturally, we went straight to the hotel pool and stayed there until dinner. No moving about in the heat for us yet.

Of course, we made the mistake of thinking "oh it's much cooler at night because there's no sun right?" But as anyone who's been to a beach can attest, the wind blows from the ocean to the land during the day, and from the land to the ocean at night. So, instead of having the modicum of coolness provided by the Red Sea, we have wind that's been traveling across miles of desert. I could feel it literally crawling down my throat to rip the moisture out of my lungs. It was just as hot as in the daytime, so I assume that I was sweating, but my clothes felt like they had just come out of the dryer.

Needless to say, we walked outside for about five minutes and then ran back to the hotel. I felt like a slug that had been dipped in salt and then run over with an iron. The heat took so much out of us that we passed out early.

The next day, while the women went to a spa, the guys went to one of the nearby beaches. Even though our hotel was a couple miles away from the Tayelet (like Las Vegas' Strip, but right on the water) we still had several nice beaches to choose from. Unfortunately, after waiting for almost an hour for the guys to get ready (I mean, all they had to do was put on bathings suits -- what's the deal?) we couldn't find the "private beach" belonging to the hotel. So we wandered back and forth before settling on Village Beach, only to receive a phone call telling us to meet everybody else at Coral Beach.

It actually turned out better that we went there, as the water was crystal, fish were plentiful, and the snorkeling (or "shnor-KEL" to pronounce it in Hebrew) was great. Schools of fish would swim right up to you, completely fearless. I actually had a couple fish try to swim up my pants when I stood in the middle of one.

But, it was still too hot out on the beach, so we went back to the hotel pool and sat in the shade with cushions for hours.

In the evening, Limor and I went to the Tayelet and wandered around. It was much, much more crowded that when we were there two years ago. Full of travelers and tourists streaming back and forth from shop to restaurant to shop, all along the four-mile stretch. Limor and I wandered about, getting reaquainted with the gorgeous hotels (like palaces with elevators) and enjoying the new additions. We were supposed to meet up with a friend of Limor's, but her boyfriend fell asleep so they didn't join us, and we went back to the hotel.

The third day the men went to the spa, and we went along with them to the nearby Dolphin Reef. It's a smaller private beach with a sectioned-off area where about six dolphins live. And for an extra fee, you can swim in the same place the dolphins do, and hope that maybe they'll come by to say hi.

Limor's family was entranced by the dolphins, and we sat out on the boardwalk over the water to watch them. The boardwalk was a series of interconnected platforms floating on the water, kinda like wood-and-steel lilypads, with bean-bag chairs scattered around under umbrella-like roofs. Very pretty, it kinda reminded me of the floating cities in Waterworld. But probably way less expensive.

The beach itself was alright, not really much there, but the real coral and fish were all out in the deeper water along the netting separating the dolphins from the humans. I saw plenty of different kinds of fish, my favorite being the lionfish. And I spent about fifteen minutes trying to talk to the dolphins by screaming underwater, but I don't think they understood what I was saying.

Afterwards, our ritual way to end the day was to sit out at the pool for several hours and read a book -- and it's hard to break tradition.

After the pool, we headed into "town" to the pyramid-shaped IMAX theatre, where they've been playing the same movies for the last two years (they had the same films as when we went). After getting to the theatre, I remembered why I didn't watch a movie there the last time -- everything was in Hebrew, no subtitles. Perfect. So I bit the bullet and watched this weird flick about aliends coming to an amusement park. It turns out that it didn't matter that it wasn't in English, because it wasn't in Hebrew either. The few times the aliens spoke it was in gibberish -- literally like a very deep-voiced turkey -- so I didn't miss anything. Otherwise, it was exactly like those crappy ride-simulators you can see at DisneyWorld or Kings Domininion. Nothing special.

The next (and last) day, Limor and I spent a little while out on Village Beach. It was nice and quiet and strangely empty, considering only a few hours later the floating platform would be jammed with kids, standing room only. The beach dropped off sharply to a depth of about twenty feet, with 100% visibility the whole way down. Unfortunately, Limor isn't a fan of deep water, so I couldn't show her all the neat fish swimming about.

Back to the pool for lunch, then a quick shower and we piled into the car to drive home. The beautiful (but desolate) desert scenery flew by, and before I knew it we were back in Be'er Sheva for dinner at Nafis.