On a Lighter Note

A one hour bus ride took us from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv.  We noticed right away the atmosphere here was much more relaxed and secular.  There is a nice long stretch of beach with hotels, bars, and restaurants just across the street.  On the beach, you can see bocce being played everywhere, girls in bikinis, and guys working out by the muscle park doing sit ups and chin ups (“hunka hunka!” Oops did I say that out loud?).  It was a drastic change of scenery from the old city of Jerusalem indeed.  We weren’t able to book a hotel beforehand, so while the boys sat in the ice cream shop by the beach with our backpacks, Christine and I walked around probably the entire 5 mile radius to look for accommodations.  It was the high season so all the reasonable midrange accommodations were fully booked.  We finally found a decent hotel by the beach called the Savoy, a treat for us after walking in the 35C heat for almost 2 hours!  They only have double rooms, so in order to save some money, Eug shared a double room with Tai (a cool guy from New Zealand we met in Wadi Rum and ran into in Jerusalem again), and I shared a room with Christine.  The room was minimalistic modern but very small.  I was laughing my head off when we walked into the room and saw two tiny single beds pushed together with barely any room on the sides to separate them.  It was a romantic night for Eug and Tai. 

Our other travel mate Tim, a young medical doctor from London, rented a car in Tel Aviv and the five of us were able to get around Israel fairly easily in the comfortable Kia.  We chilled by the beach for the rest of the day with some beers as Tim kept pointing out all the ‘stacked’ guys on the beach.  Thanks for noticing Tim!  We went out that night to grab more drinks until 3am.  It felt pretty good to have a night life again.  We were given some great recommendations for Tel Aviv from the Jewish American couple we shared 5 bottles of wine with in Essaouira 4 months ago.  The next day we visited Jaffa, and drove north to Nazareth.  Christine has a lawyer friend from Toronto there and we met up with her and her 2 cute kids.  Nazareth is Jesus’ hometown (even though he was born in Bethlehem) but he was unsuccessful as a prophet here.  The largest Church in the Middle East is the Basilica of Annunciation in the centre of town.  It is where Catholics believe the angel Gabriel announced to the Virgin Mary that she was preggo.  We found the church to be an eye-sore, but it had some cool mosaics of different interpretations of saintly figures from different countries of the world including China.  And there was a statue figure representation of Virgin Mary from Taiwan!  We stayed in Nazareth for the night to hang with Christine’s friend while Tai and Tim headed towards the Galilee to do some hiking.  They came to pick us up the next afternoon and we went for a winery tour at the Golan Heights winery.  The Israeli side of the Golan Heights is completely different than the Syrian side, which as you might remember from a previous blog post is destroyed, demilitarized and under UN rule.  There are nice residential areas, farms, vineyards, and wineries on the Israeli side of the fence.  We couldn’t believe it was the same Golan Heights.  That night Tim suffered the England loss to Germany in the World Cup.  We were able to cheer him up with some decent Chinese food right by our hostel in Haifa, owned and run by some Hongers.  They had been living there for 35 years!  We wondered how they got there in the first place.  Too bad we didn’t get a chance to find out.  In Haifa, we visited the immaculate Baha’i Gardens and we learned a bit about the Baha’i faith from the free one hour tour of this multi-tiered sloped garden.  They are one of the world’s youngest religions and they originated from Ali-Muhammed in Iran.  There are about between 5 and 6 million Baha’i worldwide who believe in the equality and unity of all religions, and each member must perform a pilgrimage to the Baha’i Gardens at least once in their life, walking the 1400 steps up to the top of the garden.  I guess it didn’t count for us since we walked down, not up.

Christine left us at the end of our Israel leg after one more night of drinks on the beach in Tel Aviv until the wee hours, sob sob…  We couldn’t believe how fast the 2 weeks with her went by.  Thanks for joining us Christine!  It’s been awesome having you around.  We had a blast with Tai and Tim as well.  After Christine left the 4 of us crossed the border back into Egypt where Tim then proceeded to go onto Cairo.  The remaining 3 of us went to Dahab, a laid-back diver’s town on the Red Sea.  There we did a couple days of diving (that’s us up there!) and just loafing, it was exciting to be able to dive again!  We saw a giant turtle, some lionfish, a big school of barracuda, eels, octopus, and of course the cute Nemo!  The coral gardens were absolutely gorgeous and there was an astonishing variety of marine life.  Now we know why the Red Sea is so famous around the world for Scuba.  We both really liked Dahab and its chilled out vibe (unlike its crass and in-your-face neighbour Sharm El-Sheikh) and hope to return.  We are currently waiting to fly to Cairo tonight, where we will be meeting with Andrea (Eug’s sister) to continue on to Tanzania.  We’ll be on the slopes of Kilimanjaro in two days! Woo Woo!

As I finish this entry I realize by flipping through the pages of our very worn-out Middle East Lonely Planet that we’ve visited all the countries in this book except for Iraq!  And we’ve pretty much been to all the photographed places in the ‘Middle East Highlights’ section in the front pages.  It’s been an incredible 4 months in this part of the world.  We’ve learned so much more about the history, the religions, the cities, the landscapes and best of all, the people.  Just as Lonely Planet describes “it’s the people of the region who will leave the most lasting impression”.  We really did lose count of the number of tea invitations we’ve received.  They are warm and hospitable and always around to help if you seem lost.  We’ve also met a lot of interesting travelers here.  I can’t be thankful enough to have had the opportunity to travel through this region, and I’m glad I got to share this with Eug.  And in turn through this blog, I’m glad we could share it with all of you