Lew Shaw’s Blog from Haifa

The final leg of my trip was a five-day dive trip (called a safari here) aboard the Egyptian boat South Moon.  We were a total of 16 divers, all Israeli with the exception of one Belgian guy who spoke no Hebrew but it didn’t seem to bother him.  The group was in their 20’s and 30’s, just three women, with varying levels of dive experience.  The crew consisted of six Egyptians, plus an Egyptian and an Israeli divemaster.  The Egyptian divemaster, Mohamed Ahmed Abd El Hamed, was a 32-year old former policeman with great energy and dive skills.  Our Israeli divemaster,  Slava, was originally Russian, had only been leading dive trips for about 2 years and spoke no English.  Since communication with Mohamed and the rest of the crew was in English, coordination was a bit lacking.  Slava would give a dive briefing before each dive, but we eventually realized that he wasn’t well informed and we chose to rely on Mohamed for details about each site. 

The first day we crossed into the Red Sea from Sharm el Shek to Ras Mohamed, heading east to the point where the sea leads to the Suez Canal.  There we explored several spectacular World War II and earlier wrecks.  The best was a British transport ship about 100 meters long in fairly deep waters (30+ meters) with many motorcycles, trucks, and other artifacts still sitting on the decks and in the holds.  In three dives on that wreck we penetrated almost every room in the ship.  As with most wrecks, a very eerie feeling knowing that this was the gravesite of many seamen.

On day three we crossed back in the direction of Sharm and the rest of the dives were on pristine coral reefs, rather than wreck diving.  The condition of the reefs in the Sinai is much better than what one sees in the Carribean or Central America, partly due to stringent restrictions on anchoring, drag netting, and other practices which destroy fragile reef communities.  We effortless wandered along reef walls that began at about 20 meters and continued into the deep.  The bounty of hard and soft coral, miriad of species of tropical fish, and several opportunities to view large pelagics was outstanding.  Napoleon fish, lots of lion fish (quite poisonous), three species of moray eels, a leopard shark, two hammerhead sharks, triggerfish, several varieties of angel fish, sargeant majors, wrasses (different from the Carribean varieties), several porcupine and other puffer fish, box fish, tuna, turtles, etc., etc. 

The last day of the trip we crossed over to the Straits of Tiran.  This is in the middle of the Red Sea, southwest of Sharm and not too far from both Saudi and Sudanese waters.  Diving there was equally spectacular – huge coral formations teeming with life.  I spent five days basically in awe, trying as best I could to photograph the experience as well as take it in visually and spiritually.

The last time I dived in the Red Sea was in the early 1970’s, well before any organized tourism or dive industry.  At that point, the Sinai peninsula was occupied by Israel, to be return when Israel and Egypt signed the historic peace agreement in 1977. I’m not sure how much I remembered, other than that is was equally spectacular then.  Today, Sharm is home to over 400 dive boats, all full of divers from all over the world.  Mohamed told us that his next trip (starting the night we left) was with a Spanish group.  I’d say the diving was among the best I’ve ever experienced!  I’ll also note that food and accommodation on the boat was fine.  The crew was great and so was the assortment of divers on the trip. 

So we got back to Sharm el Shek harbor at around 4 PM on the last day, transferred our gear to a waiting Egyptian minibus, waited for the two tourist police to join us, and made the 3 1/2 hour journey to the Taba border crossing.  We finished exiting Egypt and entering Israel by around 9 PM.  I joined a couple of the divers for a bedouin meal outside of Eilat, then was dropped off at the dismal Eilat bus station to wait for my 11:45 PM bus back to Haifa.  I arrived back in Haifa at 5:30 and was home by 6 AM, to get unpacked and rinse off my dive gear, check a week’s e-mail messages, catch a quick nap, and get back to my Haifa routine.

On the third morning of my journey, I get up early, organize my pack for the next leg of my journey, grab a fresh roll and some coffee, and wait for the driver I had arranged through my Petra guide yesterday.  I have no idea what to expect, but am willing to go with pretty much anything.  Sure enough, at 8:45, Imad is waiting for me in the lobby of my hotel.  The plan is to drive to Wadi Ran, organize a brief jeep tour with a Bedouin, then continue on to the border back to Israel.  Imad agrees and off we go in his Samsung sedan (with no taxi license).  After about an hour we descend into the desert area leading to Wadi Ran.  Imad has told me that a jeep tour will cost me 85 Jordanian dinars (about $120), much more than I had wanted to spend.  However, at the place we stop for coffee, I happen to see the Bahamian woman I shared a guide with yesterday.  With a little negotiating, we agree to go together in the jeep she had already reserved.  So the Bedouin driver takes us into the desert.  This is the area where “Lawrence of Arabia” was filmed.  The jeep maneuvers easily through the sand and we make several stops at places with pretty amazing views and rock formations.  Of course we also make an obligatory stop at a Bedouin tent for sweet Arab tea spiced with sage.  The whole tour lasts about 3 hours, then we are driven back to the rest stop where our respective drivers are waiting for us.  The descent towards the border is about 45 minutes more and both Imad and I are hungry, so he agrees to take me into the port city of Aqaba to a restaurant he knows. 

Aqaba is across the Red Sea from Eilat, on the border with Saudi Arabia, and a popular resort town for Europeans, Arabs, and even some adventurous Israelis.  The restaurant we eat at is modest, clean, and made a great chicken with okra in tomato sauce.  From there we walk down to the filthy town beach to a seaside café for a cup of coffee before he drops me off at the border.  Crossing back into Israel is quite uneventful.  I grab a waiting taxi back to the center of Eilat at about 5 PM and now have several hours to wait until I am supposed to meet up with the dive group at the Taba border crossing into Egypt.

So I wander around in Eilat, a rather honky-tonk resort town, the southern-most town in Israel, with lots of beaches and hotels.  I quickly become tired of wandering along the commercial walk along the ocean, too many people and gift shops.  So I find an upscale hotel, strut in like a guest, find a comfortable lounge chair in the air-conditioned lobby and nap and read for a couple hours.  Then I grab a salad for dinner and take a taxi to the border to meet up with the other 15 divers on my trip.  Slava, our Russian-Israeli divemaster, walks us through the steps of leaving Israel (with my Israeli passport) and entering Egypt (with my US passport and Egyptian visa).  We then load all the dive gear into the waiting Egyptian bus and at about midnight begin the four hour drive down to Sharm el Shek.  Too dark to see anything, too uncomfortable to sleep.   We get to Sharm, haul ourselves and our gear onto our waiting dive boat, grab a bed, and sleep for a few hours before the first full day of a five-day dive safari.

I’m up at 6 and ready for a hearty breakfast (as my guidebook recommends) before heading down to the ancient city of Petra.  However, no restaurants seem to be open, and none of them seem to be appealing anyways.  So I purchase a fresh roll at a bakery and start walking the 2 kilometers down the hill.  I get to the entrance at around 7:30 and head for the visitors’ center to arrange for a guide to Petra.  Although my guidebook says guides can be acquired for about $25 for a full day, according to the visitors’ center, the going rate is $100.  So I decide to wait outside to see if I can join up with another individual or small group to share the expense.  Soon I see an elderly British woman alone and ask if she wants to share the cost of a guide.  She agrees, we make the deal, and off we go.  It turns out that she is from the Bahamas and is touring Syria and Jordan.  We head down to do the 1 ½ kilometer walk through the Siq to the ruins of the ancient city.  It’s a narrow passageway through a cut in a huge mountain with an eerie sense of mystery to it.  Along the way we see a carved waterway along one side of the wall and several places with hieroglyphic writings.  Eventually we see an opening up ahead, and soon the Treasury building comes into view.  It’s hard to describe, although it was filmed in “Raiders of the Lost Ark”.  It looks like a giant façade carved into the sandstone mountain with a large courtyard in the front.  At this hour, it is not too crowded.  Time for coffee while we just gaze at the magical view.  From there we continue heading down, amazed at each turn to see even more giant facades, which our guide describes as either tombs, temples, homes, or other things.  There is even a huge outdoor amphitheatre built by the Romans.  Although the guide gave us all the obligatory, detailed historical background, the best I can remember is that several successive peoples occupied this place, including Phoenicians, Byzantines, Romans, Arabs, not necessarily it that order.  Our tour includes the ascent of 1200 carved steps up a mountain to the monastery.  Our guide recommends we rent donkeys for the ascent, which I really don’t want to do.  But our guide insists, so up I go on this poor mangy little donkey, led by a donkey guy, and I hang on for dear life as the donkey bounds up the steps, walking precariously close to the edge of giant cliffs.  I’m pretty sure I’ll die, but what the hell.  If it’s so hard to climb on foot, why can the donkey guy do it?  I finally realize that this way up is faster and the guide is in a hurry to finish our tour and get on with the next one, the bastard.  We finally get to the top, I’m still alive but residual terror is still with me.  The monastery is impressive.  We decide to walk up above the monastery for a panoramic view of Petra and the surrounding mountains.  We stop at a Bedouin tent at the top and are offered some sweet tea.  From here we can see what is allegedly the tomb of Aharon (Moses’ brother) on a mountaintop across the way, a full day’s hike that I will not do. 

From there we walk down the 1200 steps back to the bottom, say goodbye to our guide, who gets no tip.  I invite the Bahamian woman for lunch, which she declines, and I’m off on my own.  It is already past 2 PM and I am very hungry, but enjoy slowly wandering back the way I came, although very crowded with large busloads of tour groups doing a mini-version of what we just did.  Outside of the old city of Petra I find a little restaurant and have some mediocre Jordanian food, basically rice with tomato sauce.  I then take a taxi back to my hotel to rest and figure out what to do for the rest of the day.  I’m much too tired to walk much more.  So I decide to go to the sister hotel, Al Anbat I, for a Turkish bath and buffet dinner.  The Turkish bath, my first one since Istanbul in 1968, is great.  Alternate times in a steam room, then a scrub down by Mohamed, then a rinse, then an intense massage, then another rinse, then some time in a whirlpool bath, then wrapped in heavy towels, served tea, and I’m renewed.  And the dinner is quite good, lots of salads, fish, vegetables, Arabic sweets for dessert.  Back to my hotel to sleep and get ready for a big travel day.

I got up at 5 AM to grab a quick cup of coffee and watch a couple of innings of the American League Playoff game before catching the local bus to the Hof Hacarmel bus station.  I had a reservation on the 7 AM bus to Eilat, a seven hour drive.  There was less belagan (confusion) at the bus station than I had expected, and at 6:55 I slid my dive bag into the storage compartment and got to my assigned seat on the bus.  After two quick stops at Hadera and Netanya, we were off.  I was glad I had booked a day bus, rather than the over-night one, because I was anxious to see the Negev.  We drove south of the Dead Sea, past Dimona, reminding me how beautiful the desert is.  Large winding switchbacks in the road as we passed a sign written “sea level”, and kept on descending.  Hard to describe the combination of barren mountains, plains, and occasional patches of green where isolated kibbutzim and other settlements have reclaimed the desert, growing date palms, vegetables, and even the occasional dairy farm.  After a very long trip, we get to the Eilat bus station at around 2 PM.  From there I catch a taxi ride to drop off my dive gear which I won’t need now, and go about 10 kilometres to the border with Jordan. 

I walk past the “now leaving Israel” sign to the departure area, pay a small tax, change some shekels into dinars.  Then a 100 meter walk through a no-man’s land to the “welcome to Jordan” sign and Jordanian immigration and customs.  There are a couple of Israelis there, headed for a few days at Aqaba and a Swiss couple headed for Petra.  I ask if they’d like to share a taxi to Wadi Moussa and we agree.  Outside the immigration area are a few taxis.  We negotiate a price for the 2 hour trip to Petra, get in and head off, only to be told that we would be switching taxis down the road.  It felt a little suspicious, but we were actually met by another taxi (contacted via cell phone), switched to it, and were on our way.  We were climbing the range of mountains that one can see to the west of the Negev, past Bedouin villages and tent compounds, with one stop for Arab coffee, and arrive at Wadi Moussa, the town built near the Petra ruins.  I am dropped off at my hotel, Al Anbat II, at around 5 PM, so far a relatively easy journey.  I check into my room, a rather dingy place, but it will do for two nights.  After cleaning up, I wander the streets looking for someplace for dinner.  Although there are several restaurants in the town, nothing looks appealing.  So I settle for a quick humus and tea and head back to my room to rest up for a busy day of ruin viewing tomorrow.   Not much to view on the satellite stations on the little TV in my room, nothing in English.  I’m also surprised that such a suppressed country would have at least 10 soft-porn TV stations, and I’m sure there are plenty of theories about this. 

I find it hard to describe the surreal feeling of walking home from Kol Nidre services last evening around 8 PM.  The streets of Haifa were totally devoid of cars, rather full of people either walking home from shul, just strolling in the middle of the streets rather than sidewalks, families out for an evening walk, and kids on bicycles.  Not a single sound of radio or TV coming from anywhere, everything closed.  And again, the same thing walking to and from shul today.  Somehow the distance between religious, traditional, and secular Israelis seems to disappear once a year.

There is a feeling in the air as Rosh Hashana approaches.  “Shana Tovas” all around, street vendors set up buckets of flowers, supermarkets, markets, and any other food stores were all bustling.  It was just as I remembered it – a national and a Jewish holiday.  Many Israelis are quite conflicted about this season of almost a month of holidays.  Many non-religious Israelis use the holiday interruption of normal work schedules to travel, either outside of Israel or to Eilat, which seems to have a rather hedonistic reputation.  Others, whether religious, traditional, or secular use this as a period for connection with their families around the country.   I had several invitations for erev Rosh Hashana, everyone wanting to be sure I would be with “family”.  I accepted a dinner invitation from Rani Hoitash’s parents and made my way up the hill to Danya, a suburb of Haifa, during an evening rush hour of people also headed to families for the holiday meal.  And what a meal – homemade gefilte fish and chopped liver, brisket, chicken, apple cake, honey cake, and much more.  Wonderful company who made me feel already part of the family.  How could I decline to accept the care package waiting for me when I left.

Rosh Hashana morning I walked from Merkaz Hacarmel to my new shul, Kehilat Moriah.  It is one of a number of Conservative (Masorti) synagogues scattered throughout Israel.  The services there are much like those of an American conservative synagogue and again I felt right at home.  The congregation is a mix of Israelis and Anglos, and very welcoming.  The rabbi, Dubi, an Israeli who trained in Jerusalem, is new to the congregation and talked of his goal to expand the number of members of the synagogue.  The synagogue itself is behind a day care center and quite modest, but lovely.  After a very lengthy, participatory service, I was grateful for the long walk home and the left-overs waiting for me.

It is now Wednesday afternoon, a few hours before Kol Nidre and the beginning of Yom Kippur.  This is a day that has an extra dimension for me, as it was exactly 35 years ago when the observance was abruptly interrupted by the beginning of the Yom Kippur War, which deeply effected all of us living in Israel.  Since then, I’ve had conflicting feelings about how to observe the day.  In the past few years, I’ve been able to return to normal observance, fasting, prayer, introspection, seeking forgiveness and forgiving, posing intentions for the coming year. 

I spent two Yom Kippurs in Senegal.  During the first one, the Israeli Embassy in Dakar brought in two young Labavitche rabbis to lead services for a very small group of mostly American Jews.  The living room of the first secretary’s home was converted into a little shteibel, complete with mehitza (separation barrier between women and men).  The liquor cabinet was cleared and converted into an ark to house the miniature (but Kosher) Torah that the rabbis brought with them.  There were exactly ten men present, just enough for a minyan.  This also meant that each one of us was vital for saying all the prayers and we were all a “captive audience”.  The rabbis brough no prayer books and didn’t seem terribly interested in whether we were even following along.  They just got up and did their thing while we witnessed and participated when we were called upon.  All in all, it was a wonderful day, although an hour after sundown as they were starting to finish the prayers, I thought I might pass out from thirst and hunger!  The second year in Senegal, nothing was organized.  I chose to spend the day alone in contemplation and fasting, and had a very moving and unique experience.

So later this afternoon I’ll head over to Kehilat Moriah for Kol Nidre, then return tomorrow morning for a long day of prayer.  Like all Jews, I am hopeful that it will bear fruits that will sustain throughout the year.

And Sunday, a few days before Succot, I am switching gears to act a bit more like a secular Israeli.  I’m taking the 7 AM express bus to Eilat (six hours), where I will cross the border into Jordan (on my Israeli passport), find a taxi and head to the ancient city of Petra, made famous by the Indiana Jones movies.  I’ll spend two days there touring the ruins and seeing what Jordan is like.  Then I’ll return via Wadi Rum, a bedouin desert area that is supposed to be quite picturesque.  I’ll cross back into Israel at Aqaba and go across (about 10 kilometres) to the Egyptian border and enter the Sinai (on my US passport).  There I am supposed to meet up with a group of Israelis and we’ll travel by guarded minibus to the bottom of the Sinai desert, Sharm el Shek.  There we will board a dive boat, setting sail for five days of diving in the Straits of Tiran and the Suez Bay (not far from Sudan and Saudi Arabia).  The diving is supposed to be spectacular.  I’ll return in time for Simchat Torah, the last of the holidays and to “normal life”.