While I’m spending the summer working at this internship with ILH, I still consider this a vacation—I’m away from home, I’m enjoying beautiful weather, and I’m experiencing amazing activities and events. However, sometimes you need a vacation from your vacation where you really unwind and treat yo’self. My friend and I decided to take a weekend and travel as far south as we could go until we reached the city of Eilat. It was my first time experiencing Eilat, and his nth time.
The trip down to Eilat was not a particularly fun one, but not as bad as I expected either. In fact, we got a bit of luck. We had purchased tickets in advance for the one direct bus to Eilat that there was on Thursday, that would be departing from Be’er Sheva at 10am. We left from Alfei Menashe at around 7am to take a train from Kfar Saba to Be’er Sheva. We assumed a 7:46 train from Kfar Saba would get to Be’er Sheva by Around 9:00 or 9:30, and from there we would make our express bus to Eilat. However, it turned out that the train we took wasn’t express like we had thought, and so it was going to take over two hours. By the time we realized this, we had already long passed Tel Aviv and missed any opportunity to switch to a faster train. So grudgingly, we accepted our fate, switched our bus ticket, and mentally prepared to sit on the long bus to Eilat that would stop 32 times… what a bummer.
What we didn’t expect however, was that luck would be in our favor that morning. When we arrived at Be’er Sheva around 10:10 on Thursday morning, we printed out bus tickets at the Eilat ticket machine, used the restrooms, and decided to locate the bus terminal so we would know where to catch our new 11:00 bus to Eilat. What we found there was something of a miracle—the 797 bus (the DIRECT bus to Eilat) scheduled for 10:00, hadn’t left yet! With much excitement and relief, we were allowed to board this bus, and though we were really hungry and hadn’t had time to purchase snacks, we were relieved to be on the fastest route to our weekend getaway.
Two and half hours and one pit stop at McDonalds later, we arrived in Eilat. My first reaction: wow, it’s hot. Eilat is an entirely different kind of hot than I have ever experienced. I have heard of dry heat but never really experienced. I am familiar with the humid heat of Boston, Long Island, Florida, Tel Aviv, etc. But I never experienced really, really hot, dry, heat. It was a shock. I felt like I was a rotisserie chicken roasting in an oven. I got used to it fairly quickly, though, and instead of the heat being a negative reality, it made us appreciate the cool waters of the Red Sea all that much more.
The first day in Eilat is what I would consider the “adrenaline” day. After checking in to our accommodations, we slathered ourselves in sunblock and headed by foot to the Northern beaches of Eilat. What we found was unfortunately, a bit disappointing. The Northern beach was really built up and commercialized and covered in fake grass and platforms to sit on. It’s not really what I imagined, but we made the best of it. Finding two beach chairs in the shade to settle our things and then almost immediately going for a swim in the crisp, refreshing Red Sea waters. The Red Sea is pretty different from the Mediterranean—it’s much cooler, temperature wise, and the beaches are much rockier. Depending on your taste in beaches, this could be positive or negative. What I really appreciated was how refreshing and clear and clean the waters were, and how jellyfish-free they were. After a short stay at the Northern beach area, my friend and I grew antsy and started looking for something a bit more exciting to try. It only took a short search and what we found did not disappoint—water sports.
The water sport venue we found was a short walk from Mall Hayam shopping center. Called Kisuski, this place offered a huge variety of water activities and virtually zero wait-time. We chose a three-activity deal: each activity was a different kind of tube attached to a boat that would whisk us around the Red Sea. The first tube was a flat raft kind of tube and they attached two identical ones by rope to the back of a super-fast boat. On my raft there were four of us laying on our stomach and holding onto handles and the other had five people. With the thumbs up that we were all ready, the boat took off. Flying through the water at high speeds, the sea spraying our faces and temporarily blinding us, we all were screaming out of excitement and a slight fear of losing our grip on the tube or being flipped over. Several times those on the outer edges of the tubes wiped out, and we had to stop and help them back up, but it was all part of the experience. That tube ride lasted 10 minutes and when it was over I felt this rush of adrenaline as I mentally prepared for the next tube ride—the next one was called the banana. Shortly after finishing the first ride we switched boats and prepared for the banana tube. This tube, unsurprising, is shaped like a banana. It has two columns side-by-side down the banana and something like five or six rows. Every participant straddles the tube and grips the handles with all their might. Our instructions were simple, or so they seemed: When the boat turns right, lean right; when the boat turns left, lean left. Well, I can say it was harder than it sounds. The whole experience was one of hearing people scream yamina! Yamina! Smola! Smola! Over and over again and having to trust those behind me since I was blinded with sea spray. We all wiped out several times, and with that, this tube proved to be the most challenging but also extremely exciting.
It’s really interesting—My friend and I were on the tube with 7 or so other kids our age who we didn’t know and we were basically forced to work together for those ten minutes to minimize wipeouts and have the best time, and it was a really cool experience. The third and final tube was called “Crazy shark,” though in my opinion it was the least crazy. We were sitting in what looked to me like an inflatable couch and we were whipped across the sea, holding on for dear life so we wouldn’t be thrown out of the tube. There were no wipeouts with that tube ride, however, the boat took us really far into the sea. So far actually, that we crossed the sea border into Jordan’s territory and were being zoomed around an IDF border vessel. It was a pretty surreal experience and one I won’t soon forget.
As you can imagine, after those tube rides, we were thoroughly exhausted and stiff from salt. We decided then to hop on the bus and head to our accommodations to shower and clean up for dinner. Our meal that evening was had at Paddy’s, an Irish bar, where I had a medallion steak and Omri had a burger. Both turned out pretty good—though the burger was definitely best—and the beer menu was very extensive. Admittedly, we chose this dinner location due to its close proximity to our next adrenaline-filled activity, Nightmare. Nightmare is a horror-maze and dang, was it scary… When you arrive at the location and enter the building, you greeted by a staff member at a desk surrounded by a ton of cheap-ish Halloween props and a cheesy atmosphere. However, once you step through the curtain and enter the maze, it is everything BUT cheesy. The instructions we were given before entering were simple: hand over your bags and cell-phones, follow the red dot, and if you want to get out early, scream “nightmare.” I don’t even remember how long it took us to finish the maze, but I do remember being the most scared I had ever been in my life, and thinking I was going to die. Oh, and I broke my flip flop halfway through and had to continue barefoot… what a—wait for it—nightmare.
I’m not going to spoil what you’ll encounter inside but let me say this: prepare to be scared and do not go in alone. I can’t even figure out if the people I saw inside were real or machines and how any of it worked but when I got to the end and saw a curtain at the end of the hallway shielding a faint light, I ran for my life and stumbled into the lobby screaming and shaking. Nightmare is one of those things you hate yourself for doing while you’re inside but you’re so glad you did it afterwards. It’s hard to explain but boy did it freak me out.
After an exciting evening of burgers and beers and a horror maze, it was time to head back to sleep before the first full day of Eilat fun! Friday was a much more relaxing day than Thursday, but exciting nonetheless. This was the day I would go snorkeling for the first time in my life! There are dozens of snorkel (or shnorkel, as it’s said in Hebrew) places all over the southern Eilat beaches, but Omri and I elected to try out a place called Snuba. Snuba was one of the more remote scuba and snorkel places we found, and it seemed like most relaxed, authentic, and the least-touristy. The staff was very kind and quickly helped us in renting our masks, snorkels, and fins, and set us up with a locker to store our belongings.
Before I knew it, we were heading down to the shore to gear up and enter the chilly waters. There was a roped off entrance area where you can safely enter the waters before swimming out a little farther to explore the reefs. The next few hours were easily the most breathtaking of the whole trip. I was a little scared at first, especially when I saw some really big fish, but once I relaxed a bit and let the beauty of the underwater world captivate me, I spent the rest of the time in awe of the amazing corals and marine life.
It was so peaceful under the sea, and I wish I had more time to spend there. It was truly beautiful. There were so many things to see, though my favorite find was the clownfish. When I entered the water I wondered if there would be clownfish in the Red Sea and so I kept my eyes peeled for Anemones—knowing that if I found that sea species nestled somewhere among the coral, I would for sure find some Nemos.
After about an hour of snorkeling, we exited the water and took a snack break back up by the Snuba shack. We enjoyed the shade and some chips and ice-cream bars before going back for one final swim. An hour and a half later, we said goodbye to Snuba, packed up our things, and headed back to shower and get ready for our next Eilat adventure: Ice skating at the Ice Mall.
As an Ice Hockey player, I was really enthused about the chance to ice skate for the first time since I arrived in Israel in March. The experience didn’t disappoint—aside from the not-so-good quality of the rental skates, which you would get anywhere, the ice was okay and it wasn’t too crowded. I also enjoyed, for the first time, being the best skater on the ice. It was a cool feeling. The ice-skating was a nice escape from the heat and a good way to work up an appetite for dinner.
Speaking of dinner, my friend is a chef in Toto, a restaurant in Tel Aviv, and conveniently his co-worker spent some time in the past working in Eilat and hooked us up with a really nice Italian restaurant in Eilat, La Cuccina. The chef came out to meet Omri, we got to see the kitchen, and we got some delicious complementary food. It was one of the best Italian meals I have ever had, and even cooler being there and feeling like a VIP. We left the restaurant after closing, feeling very full and very satisfied. We decided to walk a bit and conveniently neared the Yaniv Fireball attraction in Eilat. We had been planning on going on this flying-ball ride, though didn’t anticipate it being right after a nice Italian meal… Regardless, we didn’t know if there would be a better time and so we bit the bullet and bought two tickets for the Fireball. It really is a bit of a tourist trap, but it was a fun little cap to the evening and I didn’t know when I would be back in Eilat so I had to try it! Basically, you get strapped into a metal ball suspended between two poles, and you get flung up eighty meters into the air, all the while spinning around in the metal ball. Sounds fun, right? Hah…
The next day was Saturday, and also—sadly—the last day of our weekend getaway. We spent the afternoon visiting the Eilat Underwater Observatory, which sadly did not live up to Omri’s childhood memories. As far as aquariums go, it wasn’t the best I’ve seen, and there was not much to see that we hadn’t seen while snorkeling the previous day. While acknowledging that the observatory would be a fun place to bring kids, I did wish that we had spent the last afternoon snorkeling once more or trying another water sport.
We concluded our weekend getaway with a lunch of some Asian food at a restaurant called Ginger, before trekking back to the Eilat Central Bus station to begin our journey back to the Tel Aviv area. It was really sad leaving Eilat. I felt I needed more time to appreciate the sea and to do things I didn’t have time for such as hiking in Timna Park—though it may have been too hot to hike… Regardless, Eilat proved to be a wonderful gem tucked away between Egypt and Jordan and a source of beautiful adventures for all.
