Lew Shaw’s Blog from Haifa

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.