Road Trip to Eilat + Jordan

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Roadtrip + JordanSo I figured out a way to type as much as i want before i actually use the internet so now
I am going to write out a lot more as to what happened over the past week or so.

I'll take you back to the road trip which started about 4-5 days after birthright and
brought us from Tel-Aviv to Eilat. Mike, Aaron (a guy we met on birthright) and myself rented
a car in the late afternoon and we headed up north towards the Golan hights in the hopes of
reaching the city of Katzrin so Mike could exchange his 800 Shekel (200$) bottle of wine.
Unfortunately, before we could even get past Tel-Aviv, Mike was already nodding off behind the wheel. After a quick coffee break we were back on the road only to find out that the coffee had very little effect on Mike and not only did he nod off, but he wouldn't listen to my
navigational instructions and we had to backtrack quite a bit along our way. In the end,
I did most of the driving up north.

As a side note, I would like to point out the fact that people from Quebec are NOT the worst
drivers in the world. I can honestly say that people from both Israel and Jordan are far ahead
of Quebec in terms of poor driving. Essentially, Israeli's like to cut you off, there are no
real speed limits, and are unbelievably aggressive in their driving. In fact, most cars have
scratches, dents etc. In short, always take the super insurance when driving in the mid-east.

I drove most of the way up north to the Golan Heights with no navigational errors, and Mike
woke from his nap a little before we reached the city of Nazareth. We were all very excited
to see the place where Jesus grew up in. However,we didn't have any tour guides or books and all the tourist centers happened to be closed as we only arrived at about 8pm. Also, we learned that as soon as we arrived, Nazareth is very arabic. Essentially it gave us a general sense of unwelcome. So, we ordered some shwarma for dinner (got ripped off) and promptly left continuing our course north. As I already wrote here, it was night time, the winery was closed so we decided instead to call up our guard for the birthright trip, Boris who we heard was hanging out in Ha'on about 20 minutes away from Tiberius on the opposite side of the Kinneret. He wanted to sneak out of his current Birthright duties (he was the guard for another trip at this time) and
come party with us in Tiberius but we decided that it was in his best interest not to join us
as he could lose his job. So, we drove to Tiberius and checked into the Astoria hotel where
we ran into other Taglit groups and partied with them for the remainder of the evening. The following morning we were on the road at about 11:30 and headed up north to Katzrin where Mike exchanged his bottle with no hassle we bought more wine and started heading down south on a road less traveled, through the West Bank. Along the way we picked up a couple of hitchhikers. One 15 year old guy named Tom who was the self-proclaimed best rower in Israel and was actually training every day to get into the Olympics in 7-8 years time. Further south, we picked up a very religious girl, I would estimate about 23-25 who needed to go to Jerusalem for her dance lessons. 2 very interesting characters.

After dropping off the girl at the intersection between, the dead sea and Jerusalem we continued on to our next destination of interest, the city of Jericho which is the oldest city in the world dated at about 10,000 years old. What is interesting to point out is the fact that even though this city is in Israel it is completely under Palestinian control and therefore we needed to cross 2 "borders"; one israeli and one palestinian. These were by far the most intense border crossings I have ever done. After that was done, we were in Jericho and I have to say that it is so interesting to see the absolute difference in terms of quality of life that is led by the palestinians compared to the Jews. The thing that shocked me the most is that even though there are many power lines up, there is absolutely no electricity. I mean complete blackout, all traffic lights, generators etc. were out.There was also no running water and I know this because a little boy took half a Coke bottle went down to a little stream filled it and proceeded to drink from it.The other
thing that was very prominent is that there was no one walking the streets. All the stores
were closed with the exception of 1 or 2 conveniance stores and there were almost no cars on the road either. The last thing I noticed, out of the cars that were on the road, we had the only israeli liscense plate (yellow and black, palestinian is white and green) on the road making us pretty much a moving target. Anyways, we drove around a bit, moving between the narrow roads surrounded by
barbed wire and saw a fortress built high in the mountains. Unfortunately we couldn't access
them, again had a feeling of unwelcomeness and proceeded to leave Jericho. We then stopped briefly in Jerusalem for supper and continued south to Be'erSheva driving through, what Mike calls the nicest part of Israel, Hebron and Bethlehem.

When we finally arrived at Be'ersheva at about 9pm, Mike learned that his Hebrew wasn't as good as he thinks it is and it took us an hour and a half just to find a hotel. However, the hotel we stayed at was beautiful, I mean luxury for the price we paid. For $120US a night we had a king sized bed + cot, 2 rooms, a fridge, mini-kitchenette, really REALLY nice. From there
we headed to the largest party in Israel at that time called Student Night a 2 day/night party
where there are 4 different music stations playing various styles of music and was situated on
an airfield. At 85 shekel a ticket it realy was a blast. There were easily 5000+ people there.

The following morning, Mike came down with food poisining and was pretty much out of commission for the whole day. I went out hunting for an internet cafe to book a hotel in eilat (unsuccessfully) and Aaron pulled a Junkie move on us leaving without any warning, contact info or just any information for that matter. He didn't answer any of our calls and worst of all he owed us money that we will never see. I say he pulled a Junkie move because he is a junkie addicted to Heroin. Anyways, the last I heard of him he has locked himself into a hotel room in Tel Aviv.

The next morning we got on the road and headed south to Eilat. Along the way we stopped at Ben Guirions desert home which was closed and we picked up 3 religious hitchhikers along the way. They were very nice people who actually offered us accomodations for the night and a shabbat meal at the synagogue. I think that Mike kind of ruined that however by discussing how much he hates government, swearing his head off, Blaring Bob Marley's "Syria" on the cd player, and driving like a madman. I say this because after the song Syria, all three of the guys started praying like mad, hoping for a safe journey to Eilat. They also prayed for us to receive good luck when we arrived in Eilat.

Finally, we arrived in Eilat, dropped our hithchikers off and started to drive around town trying
to get our bearings. I find that Eilat is a very touristy town with many large buildings, a lot of
resorts and beaches and not much else. We drove to the diver's village and registered for a
Scuba course with which we were also given accomodations for about 100 each a night. and that is what we did for the next couple of days, trying out different restaurants at night and even going to Imax 3D in Hebrew. Unfortunately Mike got injured while doing a dive and had to drop out of the progam which we will continue next week and we decided to take a 2 day tour of Jordan which included a tour of Wadi Rum and Petra.

After another intense border crossing we met up with our guide and started our tour of Jordan in Aqqaba which is considered to be a tax free zone. We then drove up to Wadi Rum which is essentially a valley during the rainy season but an absolute desert in summer. We first had lunch at a Bedoin tent, played a little bit of Shesh-Besh an alternate form of backgammon, and got into a 4X4 driven by the chief, through the deserts of Wadi Rum. It was a very fun ride. After that, we headed north to little Petra where our guide, our driver and his brother prepared for us over a fire a traditional Jordanian dish called Mansef which is lamb meat cooked in dried yoghurt all over rice and flat bread and eaten with the hands. It was very delicious, though I couldn't eat much of it because my stomach wasn't feeling to good to begin with and the yoghurt wasn't sitting right with me. Anyways, we then checked into our hotel watched the end of a soccer game and fell asleep

The next morning we woke up early and walked over to the ancient city Petra through the canyons. When we finally arrived at the treasury (the same building in Indiana Jones and the last crusade) it was SO neat to see the architecture and the shear size of it. To think that human beings carved out the whole facade in the mountain is extraordinary. We then did more exploring and discovered that there were many more buildings/tombs carved into the mountain and learned that it took about 300 years to "build" the city. It was also neat to see the various colours of the sandstone which was actually used as make up way back when, and to see the various influences of different
civilizations who over the years controlled Petra. After having lunch near the hotel we decided
to try out a Turkish bath which essentially starts off with a quick rinse, followed by 20minutes or so in a hot steam room spiced with cloves, followed by a good scrubbing to get off all the dead skin and dirt, a shampoo afterwards followed by a massage. It was very relaxing yet invigorating nonetheless and a perfect way to end our tour of Jordan.

When we came back to Tel Aviv, Mike received a call from other Mike and he hopped a plane to Tel-Aviv to go and party while I stayed in Eilat.

Yesterday, I spent the day at the beach and had a very relaxing time.

Today, I went to the underwater observatory close to Taba and had a lot of fun learning about the various kinds of fishes I will see in the Red Sea during the Scuba course. However, because it is Shabbat there was an UNGODLY amount of bratty kids running around everywhere, spilling juice on my bag and popsicle drippings on my shorts.
Needless to say it hampered my fun just a bit. My favourite species at the observatory had to
be the turtles just due to their shear size. That is pretty much it for this post. Mike is returning
either late tonight or early tomorrow morning so he can go to the doctors and hopefully unclog his ear. Next week we complete our scuba course and the week after head to Egypt.

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