I like it Eilat!

Hey all,

Well, day 2 coming to a close with no clothes.  I checked with both the United website and called their number here and the site says it has already been delivered while the dude on the phone gave me an “of course” when I asked if it was going to be delivered today.  To be slightly fair, even though I don’t want to, that is the usual answer to a question here in Israel…but when it’s given, it usually DOES mean “of course” and whatever it is said in reference to is a done deal…except in this case.  So United = sucks now.  Plus I get to vote with my wallet since I will probably be coming here every 6 months or so. Sure, not a ton of money out of their pockets, but every little bit helps.  I realized tonight that not only is my camera case in there, but my Dramamine is too.  Yeah…boat dive tomorrow.  Hopefully they have some on the boat *burp*.

I did the 2 dives today with one being a refresher dive since I hadn’t been diving since last April and the other was a normal dive.  The refresher was your typical recover your regulator (what you breathe through), take your mask off and put it back on, buddy air techniques, etc.  It’s basically done to make sure you are a safe diver when you do the follow-on dives.  The one weird one of this was when we took the mask off (and then put it back on), he said an optional thing to do was a farmer’s blow (hold down one nostril and exhale through the other).  I had never had anyone suggest doing that before (maybe I am sheltered?) but I HAVE had some mucus build-up from time to time while diving and since your nose is inside the mask, not being able to blow it has proven to be a pain in the butt.  Now I have a remedy!

We wandered around after I had done the tasks just to check out the local scenery.  It was pretty dull until a spotted sting ray decided to swim through.  It was pretty cool looking.

The second dive was a bit better than the first one, but there wasn’t a ton of life to see.  There was a pretty good variety of fish, but it was nothing like Thailand.  I am sure it has a lot to do with all the tourists that come through here and I hope tomorrow’s dive is more heavily populated.  I did see a sand dollar (first time since my certification dive in Monterey Bay) and some colorful fish so it wasn’t a total waste.  The dive was 35 minutes, but relatively shallow (around 25-30 feet) so I came up with over half a tank left (take THAT Sophia [even though you would have come up with 7/8ths of a tank due to your gills]).

Tomorrow is a boat dive further south so hopefully it will be awesome and chock full of life.

I went to dinner tonight at a seafood place right across the street from me.  Apparently they are good…or at least their prices indicate that is so.  I had my first encounter with a whole fish (“whole” without the innards, of course).  Lots of little bones involved and I had to pick them out of my mouth occasionally.  While it was really good, the bones sort of sucked.  I have to assume there is a much better way of stripping the meat off the thing than what I did, but I will say I did a pretty dang good job. Got pretty much everything short of gnawing on the bones pork chop style to get the last remaining bits. 

I happened to glance at the bar and saw Marci’s old Brazilian nemesis: Cachaca!  For those of you who don’t know, that is liquor distilled from sugar cane and is the main ingredient in Caipirinhas!  In your honor, Marci, I asked if they made them and they said they didn’t.  Super sad.

Day 3 dawned with no magical overnight delivery of clothing.  I say “dawned”, but I am still screwed up from the time change and woke up about 1am and then lay there shifting positions for a couple hours before I said screw it, and got up.

Today was diving in Egypt day.  The dive shop up here gave us a ride to the border and dropped us off to walk it.  The hotel with the other dive shop was literally right across the border so it wasn’t that big a deal except for Egyptian customs.  We got through the Israeli side with no problems.  Oh, I keep saying we.  There was a couple from Holland that coincidentally is staying at the same hotel but also booked this trip through the same dive shop.  Anyway, the last guy on the Israeli side, chatted with the Dutch couple about when the best time to go is for $$$ (September…or after August) and if the light rail and busses ran all the time (they do, 24-7) so he could stay out of city center for cheaper. 

With that out of the way, we were able to head into Egypt.  We entered the Welcome Hall and it was empty except for one guy who ran into another office to grab the operator of the x-ray machine (you have to put your baggage through it).  We made it through that point and wandered over to the passport checkpoint that was also abandoned.  We about walked through since there was no one there but a custodian came after us and said we needed to get the stamps.  Apparently X-ray guy wasn’t authorized to do that since he remained seated at his end of the hall while we waited.  A good 10-15 minutes later, another gentleman came in and gave us the entry stamp.  It was so bizarre.  I mean after the efficiency of the Israel side, we were in a total hurry up and wait mode in Egypt.  The Dutch couple was worried the boat was going to leave without us (it didn’t…we got there and had to wait some more…there may be a theme of that in Egypt…not that it is a bad thing if you are expecting it).  For sure there are not a lot of signs with “go this way” on the Egyptian side, but there are a lot of armed men who will politely point you in the correct direction if you start going the wrong way.

I was on the dive boat before I remembered that I didn’t have any Dramamine.  I tend to get seasick (or at least have the one time I went without in the Dominican Republic and the boat was rocking back and forth in the surge) so I was a little worried, but they had  never heard of it before.  Luckily, it was a calm day, the boat was going about 2 miles an hour and there were no queasy feelings.  Heck, I even ate lunch in an enclosed area while the boat was moving.  Cured?  Maybe not, but less worried about it.

The dives were pretty good.  I mean there were some dull parts, but I got rid of my “I want to see something totally awesome every dive” mentality when I was on sabbatical and dove every day for 4 weeks (except for days before a flight, of course).  If I ever find myself thinking “boring”, I kick back, sort of slap myself and look around again.  I am under freaking water and swimming amongst fish!  How awesome!

To be fair, though, I did see something awesome on each of the 3 dives yesterday, but sadly, there are no photos.   But here is a quick summary:

Dive 1: Cool nudibranch that was blue and orange.  Watched it crawl along for a bit.  A cuttlefish!  I saw one on our first dive in Thailand and didn’t realize what a treat it was.  Instead I was thinking “why is the dive master watching this thing for so long”.  I now understand.  It was pretty cool to watch.  A scorpion fish that totally looked blue.

Dive 2: Place was called Aquarium and it was: tons of fish.  I saw a cool black looking lion fish and a stonefish that was walking along the seabed on its fins.  Crazy…it would sort of hop along pushing itself.  Crazy.  And about the time I was thinking “all this place is missing is turtles and it would be as good as Thailand” we came across a giant turtle!  Easily the size of the ones in Hawaii.

Dive 3: This one was one of those “not much to see here” dives until towards the end.  Still cool to be down there but not a ton of excitement until we came across an octopus that was out and about.  We scared it a bit and it changed color and shape (they can make themselves look spikey) so that was cool to see.  And as we were doing our 3 minute stop at 5 meters (it’s a dive thing to help get some nitrogen out of the body and to make sure you don’t get the bends) we saw a spotted sting ray.

All in all, the trip was a success.

Leaving Egypt, we entered Farewell Hall (which was really the other half of  Welcome Hall) to get our exit stamps.  This time, they were actually manned and we made it through fairly quickly.  On the Israeli side, there was a tour group (it seemed like..they all had matching colored hats) in line in front of us so it took a while.  I think my leaving Israel is going to be a little painful because they now have me entering at Taba, Egypt rather than the Tel Aviv airport so I am anticipating some questioning: “Why did you go to Egypt”, “Where did you stay”, etc.  Fun times.

Getting back to the hotel, I checked to see if the luggage had arrived and it hadn’t…but they did say they had called and were delivering it in like 30 minutes!  Sure enough, my luggage finally made it.  Fresh clothes are awesome…as is deodorant.  I mean I was going all Matthew McConaughey for the past couple of days letting my natural manly scent make itself known to the world.

I went down to the tourist section of Eilat last night for dinner and to walk around.  I ate at an Irish bar, drinking Belgian beer while eating a curried chicken sandwich (Indian) while in Israel.  Man of the world, that’s me.  For those of you interested, shots of alcohol were in the $10-20 range.  Patron Silver - $20! Anejo was in the $30 range.  Yeah…ouch

I also walked along the boardwalk and tourist crap is the same the world over!  Cheap t-shirts and jewelry.  Awesome.  I did get an aux cable for my iPod to hook it up to the car’s stereo cause that drive out in the middle of nowhere between here and Tel Aviv got down to 2 terrible radio stations.  Now I can listen to my iPod instead…as long at the cable works okay.  Since it’s Israeli, the signal may be going from right to left instead of left to right (thank you, I was proud of that one).

Slept a little better last night and went out for a little run this morning because I could. It was already hot so I only did a 5K, but I am happy I did.  Today is another couple of boat dives at a place called Japanese Gardens so hopefully we will see some good stuff.  This time I have my camera so hopefully there will be photos to break up the wall o’ text.

Enough!  I hope all are doing well

Our time, the people’s time!

Love to all

Jim