Border crossings with Israel are never going to be a totally relaxed affair. On our flight in from London to Amman with EasyJet the captain came on the intercom and said that due to Israeli restrictions everyone would be confined to their seats while over Israeli airspace, so go to the toilet now. Israel is paranoid but probably have cause to be. Jordan is the main friendly neighbour and one of the few places you can cross into Israel by land. Even so there are lots of well-armed Israeli soldiers standing around looking ready to kill anyone should the need arise. The Jordanian side was pretty simple, just go from one window to another paying the departure tax, getting the passport stamped and saying farewell. Jackie managed to drop her foot in it when asked by one official where she was travelling from. “Lebanon!” she blurted in haste before clamping her hand over her mouth and looking embarrassed. The official just looked a bit confused then smiled weakly as we all killed ourselves laughing.
At the Israeli side we got stuck behind the one and only Asian tour group so in the end it wasn’t very exciting at all, which I guess is what you want with a border crossing. I got a grilling from the young immigration girl about where I was going, what I would be seeing and whether I knew anyone in Israel. It was distracting me that she had dried blood in her right nostril but as if I was going to ask about the origin of that. I didn’t supply interesting enough answers to get her attention so we went off to grab a taxi and head pick up our Israeli rental car, it being impossible to take a Jordanian rental car into Israel.
Our taxi driver was a fat buffoon who tried to play a joke on us by pretending that the address we asked for didn’t exist. This didn’t really go down so well but he got us to our destination in the centre of town which is, conveniently for some I suppose, right next to the airport runway. It was striking to come into Israel and see how much larger people are here. They just look more well fed and more American somehow than their Arab counterparts across the border. It is a much more modern country as well which is evident in the shops and roads.
We got our car and headed to the Israeli Red Sea coast just a few kilometres down the road which is an even shorter coastline than the Jordanian side, being cutoff by the Egyptian border. We were directed to an excellent free beach by the woman who worked at the beach you pay to get into. I’m not sure what her boss would think of that but it worked out well for us because we could get changed, hire some snorkelling gear, lie out on the deck chairs and eat a cafe lunch on the sand. The snorkelling just off the beach was fantastic. In fact, just standing in the shallow water you could see a variety of tropical fish hanging around looking for handouts. It is possible to swim from the free side to the coral formations off the paid section of the beach which are large but not colourful.
The free beach doubled as a diving school and it looked like the Israeli army was there doing training. When Sarah went in for a shower after her swim she found herself in a co-ed changing room surrounded by buff Israeli guys taking a shower. The experience seemed to perk her up a bit, not that she wasn’t perky already from her tropical swim.
That afternoon we drove to Tel Aviv about four hours away. This journey traversed more than half the length of the country. Israel is not a large place. Southern Israel is very sparsely populated and most of the land seems to be either desert national park or given over to the army so they can roll their tanks all over it for training purposes. It’s not many countries where you get a ‘warning: tanks crossing’ sign posted. The desert on the Israeli side looks similar to the Jordanian side, but from what we saw not quite as spectacular. There is a large crater that you drive through and up (contact Jackie for the exact dimensions which Sarah drilled into her – let’s just say it’s massive) which gives you views back over the valley but it didn’t really compare to what we had seen in Petra and Wadi Rum. The sun was fading fast and we had a large city to negotiate.
View all the Eilat photos here
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