A Travelogue

Israel – a Conundrum of Complexities

We arrived in Tel Aviv at an unearthly hour in the middle of the night and valiantly jumped through the incoming tourist hoops, and endured the rude staff, to find ourselves in the arrivals hall. Having been earlier warned, not in a dream but by text, to avoid taxi hustlers and to download the Gett app to order a taxi, we proceeded as instructed to Exit 23 on Level 2 and requested a taxi to take us to the Best Western suites in Tel Aviv. A driver names Ogor driving a Toyota was selected for us and the app suggested it would be an 7 minute wait. As I watched the crowds while we waited I was thankful for my friend David’s advice to shoo away the taxi hustlers and stick to the Gett app. In less than a minute I was approached by a man and just as I was about to shoo him away he showed me his phone, with my name on the screen. I protested that he was not due for another 6 minutes to which he shrugged his shoulders to show that he really was there and he led us to a Toyota. We loaded our bags and jumped in and settled back for the 20 minute ride to the city. As we approached the hotel I got a phone call from a taxi driver who was waiting at the airport and wondering where I was. When we got to the hotel the driver, said the app wasn’t working and the payment didn’t go through. I protested that I didn’t have any shekels so he relieved me of a few euros instead. At the check-in we were subjected to the usual registration rituals and we were given our room key. it was now 3:00am. When we got to the room it was clear that it had not been cleaned from the previous guests so it was back down to reception where the night attendant didn’t believe me and insisted on accompanying me up to the third floor to show me how silly I was. He soon turned apologetic and assigned us a room on the first floor. He gave me a bottle of wine and asked me not to tell the manager in the morning. Lorna and i were soon in a well deserved sleep.

It was 10:00am when we woke up dressed and wheeled our bags down to reception. “We are checking out of 305,” I said. “Don’t you mean 103?” was the reply. The hotel manager apologized again and invited us to get a bottle of drink ‘on the House’.

Tel Aviv is a vibrant city. It’s on the Mediterranean and has a long coastline of fine beaches. It has cafes, shops and restaurants that give it an air of vitality. There’s also a lot of construction going on, indicating a vibrant economy.

We went to the Esplanade along the beach and found the market that we had been told about, where we bought some fruit to take with us and we were back to the hotel lobby for 1:30pm to meet David.

David, a friend from primary school, had tracked me down via the secondary school I had attended in England. He was the reason for our trip to Israel, our previous two attempts being thwarted by the Cunard Cruise Line and COVID. David turned out to be gregarious and we soon hit it off. He drove us to Ein Bokek on the Dead Sea. We had a reservation at the largest hotel, the Royal Dead Sea Hotel and Spa. We checked in and proceeded to our room. The extravagance of the hotel facade soon faded as we got out of the elevator and attempted to find our room along corridors with room numbers missing and carpets fraying. We eventually succeeded as the card key opened the door to our room. It was a spacious room with a large king-sized bed and an annex with a pullout couch. We climbed into our pajamas and were soon fast asleep.

Awakening in the morning we looked outside to see the Dead Sea living to its name, it was deserted, dead calm with a haze hanging over it. We decided to go for a dip before breakfast so we put on our togs and headed for the beach. The water felt light and smooth on the skin. As you immersed yourself in it, it became obvious you could float. Leaning back your feet automatically rise and you float effortlessly. Rolling on your front and trying to swim is pointless, kicking your feet is useless because they don’t connect with the water for propulsion, they just kick the air and splash the top of the water. I put my head under but I was careful not to get any water in my mouth because a mouthful can kill you. There are continual announcements in Hebrew and English that if you ingest the water you must attend the first-aid station for treatment.

Following a truly surreal experience we washed off, went to our room to change and then went down for breakfast. It was bedlam. The hotel’s primary market is tour groups of retirees who obviously relish the breakfast included in their ‘package’. The array of food is impressive from omelets to pasta, bread to salad. Groups set-up long tables onto which they deposited heaping plates of all kinds of food and full loaves of bread. Twenty minutes later they would vacate the table with only half the food eaten. Lorna and I filled our plates with what we wanted to eat, and we ate it. After our late breakfast we decided to explore and I asked at reception regarding the town of Ein Bokek.

“Fifteen,” he replied.

“How do I get to Ein Bokek,” I asked. The man on the front desk had Tourette’s syndrome and flinched several times as he answered.

“Do you have a car?” he said. An obviously redundant question.

“No,” I answered.

“You can’t,” he said.

“Is there a bus?” I questioned.

“No,” was the response.

“Is there a taxi,” I queried further.

“No,” he replied.

“How far is it?” I asked, thinking maybe we could walk. “One kilometer, 5 kilometers, 10 kilometers?” I suggested.

“Fifteen,” was the response.

Giving up on the elusive town, which I later found out didn’t exist, we decided to walk to a small shopping mall that we had seen when David had dropped us off the previous evening. As we ventured out, the temperature now over 30 degrees, we looked at several shops before stopping for lunch. Lorna saw McDonald’s and wondered if they did Frappuccino’s, I went to the ordering screen to see. The first thing you must do is enter your phone number. I tried to enter mine with the country code, without the country code, with and without a +, with and without a leading zero; nothing worked. So we went to the Arabian coffee shop across the corridor for a Turkish coffee and a pastry.

Walking back to the hotel I felt quite fortunate that the only souvenir Lorna had found to buy was a hat for Josiah with ‘Israeli Army’ on the front. He would no doubt realize that there is no such thing, only ‘Israeli Defense Force’, but it’s the thought that counts.

When we went back to the room we decided to have a lie down and wait for the day to cool off before venturing to the beach again. We were just dozing off when the door to the room opened and a man came in saying something in Hebrew. I jumped out of bed holding a sheet in front of my nakedness. He took a couple of seconds to realize the front desk had made a mistake and he retreated, making profuse apologies. As we went for our second swim, using the term loosely, we stopped at reception and asked to talk to the manager ‘Ruth’. She was in a meeting and would WhatsApp me. I left my number. Floating in the sea we again marveled that we could float so effortlessly, even though every cut and abration on our skin tingled as the salt water came in contact. The beach itself is made of imported sand, beyond this strip of yellow the bottom reverts to its normal consistency of salt crystals.

Returning to the hotel we went in the swimming pool for some exercise, dodging families with inflatable toys in order to swim lengths. As we went back to the room we stopped at reception again and asked to talk to Ruth but we were told she had gone to Tel Aviv. I’m afraid I lost my temper and raised my voice in complaint. We went up to our room. As we showered and got ready for dinner there was a knock on the door. Housekeeping was delivering a fruit platter and bottle of wine. I refused them saying i wanted to talk to the manager.
Presently a another assistant manager came up with a man who spoke good English and asked what the problem was. I described the incident and asked his opinion he agreed it was a problem. I reiterated my request for a written apology and they left. We went out for dinner to a local restaurant and quite by chance met another couple staying at the Royal. It turned out he had twice been assigned an occupied room and was now happily occupying a premier room.

David picked us up at 4:30am the following day and we drove to the ruins of the Massada fortress and started the climb. It’s not for the faint hearted. It takes about an hour and a half and some of it is very strenuous. But it’s very worthwhile. We reached the top just in time for the sunrise over the Dead Sea. The area is much larger than I anticipated. You can still see what remains of the towers, buildings and cistern. On the western side you can see the ramp the Romans constructed during their three-year siege. When they finally breached the wall they found the 600 inhabitants had taken their own lives.

After we got back to the car park we went for breakfast at a camp overlooking the Dead Sea, the morning sun shining over the water was as stunning as the breakfast was delightful, made more so by the young man who served us, he even asked us what music we would like to hear as we enjoyed our meal.

Then is was on to a historic item. We visited a railway museum with railcars and buildings dating back to the early 1900’s. The Ottomans were the first to comence steam rail travel in the late 1800’s and, as elsewhere steam travel played a part in developing the economy.

We proceeded north to Bet Sheen, a national park in which there are archaeological remains of a Roman town. After a delightful fish meal overlooking the Sea of Galilee we stayed overnight in Tiberius a large town with a brilliant location on the shores of Galilee but which has unfortunately not received the care it needs; its presentation is quite shabby. We did however enjoy a brilliant evening meal, the best lamb chops I have ever tasted. The Airbnb we stayed in was quite comfortable, it had a large entertainment area and a small swimming pool.

The following day we went to Capernaum, the area in which Jesus had spent most of his time. There is a number of sites to see from the Church of the Beatitudes to the Churches of Tabgha. There were residences for visiting clergy and several meeting places down by the water. There was also a small monastery with dramatic pictures depicting Biblical stories.

Next, David had arranged some exercise. It was off to a kayaking experience on the Jordan River. The three of us piled into an inflatable raft and floated down the River for an hour and a half. Actually it was a bit more strenuous than just a float, there was a serious headwind in some sections requiring some vigorous paddling which, as it turned out, was not David’s strong point.

After a swim in the Galilee at Dugit Beach we reluctantly got back in the car to travel to Jerusalem where David was to leave us.

Jerusalem – Old CIty

We could not have arrived in Jerusalem at a worse time, or a more interesting time. It was the evening before Jerusalem Day celebrations commemorating, among other things, the reunification of the city in 1967. On top of that it was the first time in three years that public gatherings were permitted. After considering advice from our Airbnb hosts, and David’s knowledge of the City, we decided to be dropped off at Jaffa Gate and walk to our accommodation. Despite the seething mass of humanity going in the opposite direction we navigated our bags past the Tower of David, down to St James St and found the location at the bottom of Ohr HaHayim. We retrieved the code for the door lock from WhatsApp and made our way up several stairs, and a narrow spiral staircase to the roof-top unit. It was now 11:00pm at night so we climbed into bed and, despite chanting youth on the street below, we fell asleep. In the morning we were greeted by a view across the roof-tops to the Dome of the Rock.

We returned to the Tower of David, which houses museum exhibits on the history of Jerusalem, including a large model created by Hungarian, Stephen Illes for the 1873 Vienna World Fair. The Tower also include many video presentations on the various eras of Jerusalem rule from the Biblical period to the Muslem rule to the Ottomans to the current Jewish administration.

The Western Wall was the next destination, It too was infested by chanting youth singing nationalistic songs and waving the national flag. The Wall itself is continually fronted by a wide variety of people from those in orthodox garb to others in shorts and tee shirts. To the left is an area with covered cloisters where the more serious students of the faith read and learn the Torah.

The other landmark we visited was the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It is a large cathedral with several sections. The building marks the location where Jesus is supposedly buried, although the church was not built until centuries later. There is also the stone where Jesus’s body was supposedly laid in preparation for burial. The cathedral is at the top of the Via Dolorosa where the 12 stations of the cross are located. It’s all rather depressing seeing tourists in rapture at the various stations, given that none of it existed at the time of Jesus’ trial and crucifixion.

Walking the streets of the Old City is in itself awe-inspiring. It is a myriad of stone walkways through the Jewish, Muslim, Armenia and Christian quarters. There are multiple ‘souk’ areas with all kinds of shops and restaurants.

On Sunday, after three inspiring days in Jerusalem, we attended a services at the Lutheran Reformed Church, where we met-up with the pastor we had met at the International Church of Prague two weeks earlier. Afterwards we left the Old City and took a taxi to the bus station to travel south to Eilat.

Eilat

Ellat is a tourist town. It sits on the Red Sea and is the southernmost city in Israel, a four hour drive south of Jerusalem via highway 90. The French would call it ‘gauche’ but it’s Israel’s holiday-land, a place to take the children for a break. It has beaches, all kinds of restaurants many large hotels and amusement rides. It’s a growing city, with construction of more vacation experiences and more hotels, underway. It’s also a port city, the only Israeli port on the Red Sea and it has been declared a free trade zone for transiting cargo.

We arrived in Eilat by bus and set about finding our Airbnb. The first taxi driver I showed the address to handed the paper back and said he didn’t know where Shaldag St. was. The second typed the street into Google Maps and said she could take us there for 30 shekels. When we got to Shaldag Lane I was skeptical but she said they were the same. The number was right so we got out and retrieved our luggage from the boot and set about to find apt 1. The first sign something was wrong came when I realized apartment 1 was up some stairs, it was supposed to be on the ground floor. A knock on the door elicited what I assumed was a “who’s there?” To which I replied “Graham”. An Israeli man opened the door allowing me to see into a messy apartment, rather than a newly cleaned rental unit. I showed him my confirmed reservation sheet to which he replied “wrong place,” handed me back the paper and closed the door.

We set about looking for someone to help us, the third person we asked could speak some English and he spied a phone number on the registration form which he called. He determined that the building we had been at was indeed the right one but the desired apartment one was around the back. He elicited another piece of critical information the code to the lock box that held the front door key. We went back to the building and went around the back where we found two apartments, neither were numbered. I tried the lock box outside the first which stubbornly refused to open. When I keyed in the code on the second lock box it sprang open revealing the front door key. Inside was a newly renovated unit with a double bed, shower, toilet and kitchenette. There was a coffee machine but no pods, nor was there any soap or shampoo. I sent a message to the host and later that night he dropped off the promised essentials.

We went out to look around the town and find something to eat, and to buy some milk for our coffee in the morning. We walked down to the beach and regretted not wearing our bathers. The water was clear and warm. Walking along the promenade we noticed a number of high-priced stores claiming “discount outlet” status but with exaggerated prices. We were also accosted by a man touting for local restaurants. We eventually retired for the night getting ready for the most extraordinary day of the trip. We awoke at 6:30 and had our coffee after which we packed our bags and walked back to the bus still wondering why we had taken a taxi the day before. We had to buy a Rav-Kav key card and a minimum 30 shekel balance for a nine shekel fair even though we would be leaving the country within the hour. We had been told that it was a 7 minute ride to the border, which turned out to be wrong. The number 15 bus goes all around the town before heading to the border 30 minutes later. But it drops you off at the border bus terminal; where our fascinating trip to Israel came to an end.

I am extremely grateful to David for the time he took-off work to make our trip so memorable. While it was a fleeting visit I feel I have a much better understanding of the social undercurrents in Israeli life. The obvious one is the military. Pairs of soldiers roam the streets (particularly in the Old CIty) or man checkpoints at shopping centers or car parks. They are in full military uniform and carry automatic rifles, that aren’t kept on their backs, they are always in front at the ready. Not as obvious are the social fissures. Many shop assistants are Arabs, Israelis typically have the higher paying jobs. While they share the same workdays, Sunday to Thursday, there appears to be little mingling. It seems the human condition tends towards the tribal rather than to co-operative.

Egypt – Push to Open

At the border the fun begins. On the Israeli side you must have your bags and passport checked before the privilege of paying 20 florins for leaving the country. The process is somewhat mechanized; there was a channel for biometric i.e. facial recognition passport control. Nothing similar was to be experienced on the Egyptian side. After we had jumped through all the requisite hoops on the Israeli side we came to a huge ominous door with Hebrew, Arabic and English lettering. The letters said ‘Push to open”.

The first stop on entering Egypt is a luggage check with everything being deposited on the luggage conveyor to be x rayed. The only bag not to pass muster was my briefcase which was subsequently searched. The only item of interest was a package of aspirin which no doubt looked like amphetamines. Eventually the bag was returned to my care and we were waved on to the next building. On entering the building we saw that the first desk contained entry cards to be filled in with passenger details, but all the cards were being held by young men who were filling them out for travelers, for a fee. I explained that I did not have any Egyptian pounds so they relieved me of 50 shekels. The next stop was passport control, but as I marched towards the desk I was guided back to the currency exchange desk where I transferred my last few shackle to 1550 pounds which, I was about to find out, was fortunate. Passport control converted the online visas I had acquired a month earlier to an efficient stamp in our passports and we proceeded to another desk, the purpose for which was to scan our passports again and relieve me of a couple of the newly minted pound notes. The final hoop was a middle-aged man in a white uniform whose purpose in life was to flick the through people’s passports. We then entered into the sunshine for the next step in our odyssey. We were told to take a WeBus minibus from Taba heights to Cairo. As I was accosted by an old man inquiring where I wanted to go I told him Taba heights and he quoted me a price in pounds and U.S. dollars. Concerned my Egyptian pounds would run out before I could pay for the eight hour trip to Cairo I opted, to the old man’s glee, for 30 U.S. dollars. Assuming we were about to go we boarded the already nearly full maxi van and waited. We had to record our names and passport numbers on a form and we waited some more. It took about an hour for the remaining seats to be filled and, after a police check consisting of a sullen faced Defense Force person casting his eyes in our direction, we were allowed to depart. After several stops we finally arrived at Taba Heights which consisted of a petrol station with toilets and a shop. As we pulled up we saw a WeBus minivan and deposited our bags optimistically beside it. I then went to find the driver, who was buying a coffee, and asked if he was going to Cairo. I never did get an answer but was told I had to register with head office. I explained I had no Egyptian SIM in my phone so the kind man at the cash register phoned the number for me. After several calls dropped out due to a poor signal the man explained our situation and an English speaking girl took her reservation for the 12:00 PM departure which, I was told, would arrive at Taba Heights by 11:00 AM. We reluctantly retrieved our bags from beside the 10 AM departure and sat down at a table for a coffee. Presently a van dropped off Irene, a delightful Spaniard in her mid 20s who was a belly dancer returning to Cairo after a week’s engagement at a local hotel. She spoke good English and happened to know Ahmed, the driver who was to take us to Cairo. She even had his phone number and, as 11:45 reared its head with no WeBus in sight, she called his number and then advised that he would be there in 5 minutes. It was 12:20 when he finally turned up and relieved me of 660 pounds, but we were still not invited to board. Presently another couple turned up and we got up to board but we were told to sit down. Eventually another traveler joined us. The 12pm service left Taba Heights just past 1:00pm.

[Note to Travelers shortly after leaving the border on the minibus to Taba Heights we passed the Movenpick Hotel from where minibuses to Cairo can be booked. It’s within walking distance from the border and would have saved us thirty U.S. dollars.]

Our expectation of a six to seven hour journey soon dissipated as we left the main road three times to pick up additional travelers. By the time we got to Saint Catharine’s Monastery for the last pick up all 12 seats were filled and our suitcases, that had been in the rear of the van, were tied on the roof. Leaving Taba we started to notice many half built resorts that were fenced off with no one living in them. Most were empty concrete structures that had never been finished. The driver told us the whole area had been declared a restricted area, but the real reason was the crash of Egyptian tourism after the 2011 revolution.

The road was particularly perilous as it was only one lane either way and our driver was consistently going 120 kilometres per hour. He extracted every ounce of torque from the van’s 4 cylinder engine to veer onto the wrong side of the road to pass trucks, buses and cars deemed to be travelling too slow. Every 100 kilometers or so there was a barrier in the road at which we had to stop for a police check. My estimate is that half the Egyptian Defense Force sit at roadside checkpoints. All our passports and travel cards were kept in a cubbyhole by the driver and handed to a disinterested youth in camouflage. He (we encountered no female army personnel in Egypt) would then flick through them and hand them back.

Then we reached St. Catharine’s Monastery. Having been told we would not stop, other than to pick up the final passenger, the police had other ideas. I learned later that we had too many international passengers and we had to stop for an hour for the police to complete passport checks during the stop. I ordered a coffee and had an interesting discussion with an engineer who was working for a consulting company overseeing the construction of a new city at Saint Catherine’s. A very large UN-funded project is building a hugh settlement in the middle of the Sinai desert at the monastery site.

Leaving the current hamlet we were suddenly in driver’s Nirvana. The skinny roads to that point were replaced with enough bitumen for three lanes either way. The driver made good use of the new roadway expertly swerving at the right time to stay on the finished surface and avoiding hitting the steam rollers on the new sections. We cruised at 140 kilometers per hour making up some of the time lost at Saint Catherines.

By the time we approached the Suez Canal tunnel the road had grown into a half mile wide thoroughfare with the three lanes either way expanding to 6, with 12 lanes at the checkpoints, it is an impressive piece of infrastructure. The toll collection for the tunnel is, however, total manual with staff mindlessly connecting money from the drivers of transiting vehicles. The speed in the tunnel is posted at 60 kpm, we went 120 kilometres per hour.

It is a two hour drive from the tunnel to Cairo. As we approached the capital the driving changed. With the new infrastructure there must be better monitoring, The driver slowed down to the speed limit at certain points and put on his seat belt, only to release it again a kilometre down the road. There was also a change in his use of lanes. As the traffic grew heavier the driver and straddled 2 lanes moving into one or the other depending on which was moving faster. This actually increases the efficiency of the roadway. A road marked with three lanes can easily accommodate 4 lanes of traffic in Cairo. It does of course mean the vehicles are perilously close to each other and it requires precision driving to optimize your lane usage, but with a beep of your horn you can dominate the traffic around you. In fact, the cars horn is the most important component in a passenger vehicle. It allows you to flagrantly defy road rules.

Cairo – Cacophony and Chaos

Typically one’s initial experience in Cairo is from a road, either from the airport or from a bus window. It is immediately obvious that road rules are for guidance only, with enforcement neigh impossible. Vehicles vary from the most advanced tourist bus to horse drawn carts. In between is every kind, size and level of vehicle; cars, mostly scratched, motorbikes, motor scooters, motorized bicycles and rickshaws. Virtually no rider of a two wheeled vehicle wears a helmet although I did see one wearing a full face shield; at least his face would look good for the funeral. The most important component of any vehicle in Cairo is the horn. It is used for the obvious, to alert people of your impending arrival, to advise you are about to turn right from the left-hand lane, or simply to magically move the traffic in front of you out of the way.

Disturbing behavior we observed in Cairo included: youths standing up in the back of a moving pickup truck on a busy highway, men rollerblading down a busy street. weaving in and out of the traffic, and of course, the ubiquitous use of mobile phones in cars, on motorbikes and even buses with a full load of passengers. We even saw a man stopped in traffic on a one way street get out, lock the door and walk away.

We visited Giza to see the three main pyramids and the Sphinx. Not much had changed since my past visit 20 years earlier except for a paved road and ticket booths. We visited the Egyptian Museum which had not changed much either except for being more dowdy and missing exhibits that have been packed away pending the move to the new museum, which does not look like opening any time soon.

We aslo took a day trip to Alexandria, the former great city on the mediteranean coast, and visitied the catacombs, the Roman theatre, the lighthouse (although it was destroyed by an earthquake – only the base remains), we walked along the foreshore, had a fish lunch and saw Pompei’s Pillar (although it had nothing to do with Pompei) and the library, which I’d wanted to see ever since learning about how the Crusaders had destroyed the original library along with the majority of Islamic written history..

The things that I found distressing:

Smoking is ubiquitous . In most countries if you want to smoke you go outside, not in Cairo they smoke inside restaurants, in taxi vans, in the museum; we weren’t in Cairo on a Sunday so I don’t know if they smoke in church.
Infrastructure is in terrible disrepair. Most pedestrians walk on the road because the paths or dangerous: loose papers, uneven trials, large holes all make walking on the footpath dangerous many buildings are historical and have not been maintained; Paint peeling concrete facades crumbling exposing the bricks beneath, balconies being held up with wooden braces nailed earth strategic points.
Lack of western style conveniences. There were virtually no coffee shops where you can go for a pastry and a coffee. There are bakeries where you can get bread, some of it very good, and there are shops where you can get a coffee, generally Turkish, but with americano or cappuccino as options, but we never did find one that did both.
Egyptians are generally quite poor; education seems quite basic and unemployment quite high. For many men the morning highlight is coffee [Turkish] and a smoke [water-pipe]. The afternoon joy is adding a game of dominoes to the mix. We saw Many young men with 12 years of schooling under their belt whiling away their hours at roadside checkpoints, waiting for something to happen.
Then there are the homeless. Some sleeping in stifling heat as pedestrians walk by, some selling packets of tissues to make a few shillings. I felt particularly sorry for one woman with three children one being breast-fed, living under a canvas between a wall and the busy road.

All told – it was a wonderful trip.

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