Since the last time I wrote we've had a super eventful weekend and a not so eventful one, so I guess I'll write about both. Last weekend we took a group trip to Eilat. Eilat is the southernmost city in Israel, nestled between the red sea and the mountains there. Down on the shore there's all kinds of hotels and touristy stuff----which is actually very nice and rather expensive, but going up towards the mountains is the residential section of the city--populated by the employees of the hotels--mostly very poor.

We left at 3 am to arrive in Eilat at about 9 am. We got dropped off about 20 miles from Eilat and wound our way through the mountains towards the city. The first day we hiked a five miles doing a lot of rock scrambling---it was a lot of fun and not too hard as we took (in my opinion) breaks too frequently. Then we had a great night in the desert where we ate a delicious dinner because we had a bus deliver our food, a giant tank of water, and several port-a-potties. Definitely a method of camping I could get used to---we had kababs, grilled chicken wings, fresh made french fries, israeli salad, humus and pita, and soup. Not sure I'll ever want to just carry food on my back ever again.

The next day we hiked another 10 miles and got bussed the rest of the way into Eilat to a really nice hostel. Then we decided to go and eat at the underwater restaurant across the street from our hotel. Although this was an exciting prospect and seeing the fishes swimming outside as we sat down was thrilling, the listed prices and fact that they didn't actually have any of the food on their menu quickly killed our enthusiasm. We then decided to walk down the boardwalk to find somewhere else and ended up at an amazing restaurant---authentically Israeli. My friend morgan wants to be mentioned. He says hey. He wasn't actually in Eilat, but he's sitting here now. Anyway, when you order they put 14 different kinds of סלט (salat--a general term referring to everything from the israeli cucumber and tomato salad to olives to baba ganoush) on the table. My favorite was an awesome eggplant thing in a tomato base. We also ordered many skewers of different kinds of meat---truly phenomenal--and they just keep giving you more and more salat and pita to chow on.

Even though we'd had high hopes for a night out in eilat our lack of sleep suddenly hit after dinner. Obviously we didn't sleep much on the bus and the night before we'd had guard duty--my shift was until midnight and we were up by 6:30 to start hiking--so not so much sleep and the day out in the desert was very draining. By 10 we were in bed--I got a great night of sleep. The next morning we took a nice little hike up to the top of a mountain near Eilat where you can see 4 countries--Israel, Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. Eilat sits on the Red Sea and is the 3rd largest port in Israel after, in order, Ashdod and Haifa (yeah haifa!). In particular Eilat is on the Gulf of Akaba (you know, one of the pointy bits at the tip of the red sea)---Akaba being the mirror image of Eilat on the Jordanian side of the border---Israel extends down the shore a ways, after which point Egypt takes over, and across the gulf is Jordan with Saudi Arabia down a bit on that side, and from the apex of this hike, you can see them all.

After coming down from the hike we went to go see about getting into the underwater coral reef observatory, but it was expensive, and so we just took a walk down the beach and ate lunch at a very nice little vegetarian place on the beach---I definitely want to go back to Eilat and do some of the more touristy things---snorkeling, swimming, jetskiing, etc, but I think I have to prepare myself to spend some serious money before I do. We then took the drive back to Haifa---it was really nice to arrive here, it's funny how much coming back into the city feels like coming home already.

The rest of the week was rather uneventful as was this weekend---yesterday we took the hour-or-so long walk into חורב (horev) and then walked back up before having a really nice Shabbat potluck at my friend Dori's, and today we went to go see my friend Chantal in her crew regatta. We've had a couple of quiet nights in a row, I think everyone is doing some much needed recharging.

The pillars of Amram---a really cool geological formation whose origins aren't really understood. They're named after the father of moses--don't quite remember why---but they're really cool!

The view up into the mountains from our campsite at night---that's the moon peeking over the mountains there.



Chantal and I at the highest point of our hike. Those mountains way in the background are in Jordan--right behind chantal's head is akaba, and Eilat is hidden on the other side of those mountains on the right side of the
Along the route there was a little rock wall that scaled straight up instead of going around---here are the five of us that made it up the wall. If you're looking at the awesome hat on my head and loving it, it's from Gal, the person immediately to my left, our guide. As soon as we got off the bus he shoved it on my head, I immediately fell in love and didn't take it off. Even so, the first day it kept falling off, so the second day I rigged up a highly effective chin strap out of dental floss.

From left to right, my friends Erik, Sarah, Dori, and Eitan at our amazing dinner--those are our salats scattered across the table---the meat hasn't even come yet.