After we left Mount Tabor we stopped at a mall for lunch. We went to a grocery store and got some pita and a container of hummus and that was our meal. We wanted it to be cheap and quick and it was. It was also delicious.
The mall was basically a two-level strip mall. It was just off the highway and looks like any American strip mall minus the Hebrew. As we pulled into the parking lot a very bored security guard stopped us and looked in our trunk to make sure we hadn’t forgotten to remove the very obvious bomb from the car before we went out shopping.
There are armed personnel everywhere. I am used to seeing a healthy amount of guys with guns walking around since there is so much security in Washington, but they take it to a whole different level here. First of all, the guns are bigger. Second, it seems like everyone has them. Third, most of the people who have them look to be between 18 and 21. I’ve gotten used to it by now, probably because none of the locals seem to think twice about it. I’m sure it makes people feel safer to have military walking around with guns than if they weren’t there. I think it makes me feel safer. It also leads to interesting pictures such as this one.
The next stop would be Eilat, which is at the very southern tip of the country and the very northern tip of the Red Sea. To get there we had to drive through the West Bank. I had told some people before I left for this trip that we would be driving through the West Bank. I got mixed reaction on this. If the West Bank looked like what some people offered as predictions, it would have been burning fields, constant gunfire in the distance, bodies on the side of the road, military presence, and a sure carjacking. Well, none of that happened. Yes, there was a border staffed by guys with huge guns and no, I did not stop to take their picture. Yes there was Arabic on the signage but that had been the case before we crossed the border. One major difference was that none of the signs before the border mentioned Jericho, which is on the highway we were driving on. As soon as we entered the West Bank, Jericho appeared on the signage. This did not seem like a coincidence. It also didn’t seem like a coincidence that the exit for Jericho looked like this:
The drive through the West Bank was remarkable because of the change in the landscape. I mean, look at this:
That was taken just a couple hours after the pictures of the lush green of Mount Tabor. We went from rolling green hills to jagged desert in no time. At times the desert landscape was simply unreal. For miles there would be nothing but mountains, then suddenly there would be miles of nothing but wasteland.
The visuals only got more stunning as we began driving along the Dead Sea.
We got to Eilat around dinnertime. Eilat is a resort town with nice hotels lining the water and a fancy mall with western stores and plenty of foreigners milling about. There is also a long boardwalk filled with the same old stalls selling the same old junk you can find in any resort town that has a boardwalk. But the hostel had a reliable supply of hot water, so that was good and a welcome change from what we had gotten used to.
I’m going to have to abruptly cut this short because in real life it’s 10:30 on Tuesday night and I need to be up and out by 3 am. I’ll explain why later, and hopefully will have some good pictures to show for it.
