Eilat

Hello from Eilat!

Our trip is coming to an end as this is our last day in Eilat. Tomorrow we fly to Tel Aviv and then back to the States. Here is the catch up for our time in Eilat.

The Hotel
Online reviews said that our hotel had a slight nautical theme. We found that this was a massive understatement. The hotel lobby has a big ship right in the middle of it giving access to the 2nd floor. The elevator is designed like the inside of a submarine. The back of the elevator is glass and has an underwater mural that changes as the evelvator lifts up or down. To top it all off there is the sound of the ping, ping, ping of a diving sub. Our room has a large white seagull mobile attached to the wall. Its at least three feet big. The room does have a small kitchen, the hotel overall is clean, and it has at least 6 swimming pools.

It's also close to everything inculding the mall and south beach where Sara and I have taken many strolls. That beach includes a walkway of cool shops. You can get everything from Creps to a Dr. Dang foot spa treatment (where little fishes or dangs eat away the dead skin on your feet). In case you didn't know it's the newest craze in Japan and America... news to us. You can also book trips to Petra, Jordan on this same boulvard.

Speaking of Petra
Eilat is a beach front town of about 35,000 people in the down season which doubles to about 80,000 people during the high season. It borders Egypt and Jordan on the Red Sea. This has been a very down season with what is happening / has happened in Egypt. Sara and I were planning and had paid to take a trip up to Ein Gedi (think desert springs and waterfalls that hosted King David), The Dead Sea, and Masada. The trip was canceled after the other members of our party dropped out. That turned out to be ok as it was raining in all of those places on the day we planned to visit. Instead we traveled to Petra, Jordan.

The day started early with pickup at 6:50am from our hotel by Ruth our Rhodesian (currently Zimbabwe) expatiot of the British Colonial Empire. Next was the pickup of two additional British citizens from London, Norman and Elizabeth. A novalist and a patent lawyer respectively. Norman's first book Song of Names, I was to learn, is as we speak being turned into a movie starring Anthony Hopkins and Dustin Hoffman to be released in 2011. We were dropped off at the boarder and met our last participant, Lindsey. Lindsey was a professional womens basketball player formerly from Iowa State University. She had played point guard for teams in Greece, Turkey, Solvenia, and finally Israel.

Crossing into Jordan we met our guide Ahmed. A short slender man with a gray goatee and robust, playful personality. We had a 2 hour and 40 minute drive from the boarder to Perta. We passed by Aqaba Jordan, a major port city discribed by Lawrence of Arabia during the Arab uprising against the Ottoman Empire in 1916. Outside of Aqaga, endless desert further than the eye can see. On the way the moutian were colored with strikingly beautiful veins of copper (green), iron (red), magenese (black), and impure magenese/copper combo (blue). The veins were clearly visible in all the surrounding mountians streaking side to side. Finally, after taking in this scenery, we arrived.

Petra is a city in the Mountians of Jordan whose inhabitants carved their homes, tombs, and beautiful temples out of the sand stone mountians. Curiously, they started all the strutures from top to bottom showing each structure must have been thoughly planned out. This city was originally inhabited by the Nebetians, then the Greeks (after a general of Alexandar the Great couquered the city), and next the Romans after doing the same. All of this is because Petra was a connection of major trade routes (like the spice route) flowing to Europe through Israel, Africa through Egypt, and Asia Minor through Damasus/Beruit. After the Romans a civilzation florished before a great earthquake rendered the city mostly deserted, except for its cave dwelling inhabitants... The Beduions. Later in the ages, the city was rediscoved by the rest of the world and was voted as second of the 2007 new 7 Wonders of the World (number one was The Great Wall of China). It was also the site of filming for the Indian Jones Movie: The Last Crusade. Its beautiful temple (called the Treasury becasue someone thought it was so marvelous it must have treasure inside...it didn't) was the place where Indiana Jones rediscovers the Holy Grail.

After our car ride, we started down the canyon. It was quite nippy, about 52 degrees farenhiet with a windchill making it feel even colder. The limestone moutian showed the same red, green, black, and blue streaks as the mountians on our way to Petra. The entire trek into Perta and back was 7 Kilometers or 4.3 miles. It was worth it. Large canyons with limestone walls made you feel like you were in the Grand Canyon. Then some examples of civilation appeared as rockfaced scuptures of camel led caravans appeared further along the trail. A left turn took you to the crowl jewel of Petra... the Treasury. Our opinion is that the Treasury with it Corinthian collums looks to have a specific Greek and Roman influences. No one knows for sure who actually made it, when, or what its purpose was. All those questions and its immensity adds to the mystical feel of the area. Past the Treasury is tombs carved out of the mount with little Vs on the side donoteing how many were buried there. Next is a large theater, with the capacity to hold up to 4,000 people. The icing on the cake wasn't the tombs, or the theater, of even the Treasury, but the ancient dumpster. Let me explain. Ahmed led us up a small hillside that gave us a good view of the royal palace area of the city and was an acient dumpster where tons tiny bits of broken pottery were cast about all over ground. Sara, as a ceramicisit, went hog wild with all the ancient Nebetian pottery. More on that when we get home.

Oceanography
The other really cool things we did in Eilat involded the Ocean. Eilat is home to 95% of the Worlds troptical fish. We really took advantage of the coral and marine life. The sunset boat cruse in a glass bottom boat took us all around our gulf of the Red Sea. We sailed past Dolphin Cove and one dophin was kind enough to greet us. His friends were peeping up not too far away. Then we reached the coral reef. It had all kinds of brighly colored fish and coral. After enoying looking at the fishies from the top down we sailed into the sunset on our way home.

The Eilat Aquarium has a lot of very cool marine life as well. It's located just off the coast of the coral reef we saw on the boat. Sharks, big turtles, little turtles, big fish, little fish, the ray, and amazon animals joined us at the aquarium. One thing that was cool is that we were able to see the feeding time for all those critters. My (Mike) favorite was the feeding of the big turtles and piranhas. Sara's favorite was the Jellyfish exhibit. The five foot long reef sharks and sand sharks were so well fed that other fish were roaming in their tank with them. One such creature was a black spotted sting ray named Amit or "Friendly" in Hebrew. After being caught and injured in a fisherman's net, he was brought to the aquarium and nursed back to health. He was given such TLC that a bond was formed between him and the divers. Whenever a diver enters the shark tank for feeding time Amit is the first to meet them. Once in the tank Friendly gracefully glides over to be hand fed and petted on the nose. It looks strangely like an underwater dog recieving attention from its owner (we have it on video if you don't believe us).

The Amazon section is the only place that holds freshwater and land marine life at the aquarium with piranhas, tarantulans, an ananconda, lung fish, and egyptian crocs. All are very exoctic and dangerous looking. During feeding time the pirahas were vicious, tearing apart bits of flesh from the good-sized chuck of fish fed to them. Many of the piranhas were missing eyes, or fins, or tails. All victim of feeding time.

The marine observatory gives a great view of the Red Sea at the top, as it is about 40 feet above the water. Walking down the central spiraling staircase to the bottom, about 25 feet down, you get an amazing view of the coral reef and fish who live there. Mike saw a wild dolphin swim by his window and hastily called Sara over who only caught a glimps of its tail as it quickly swam away. Too cool :).

We hope that you have enjoyed coming to Israel with Sara and Mike. We will be coming home soon. Love you all.

Shalom,

Mike and Sara