voy

After leaving Jerusalem, Chris and I picked up a rental car and headed for the coast…in search of beaches and some relaxation. We arrived in muggy Tel Aviv, which in some ways reminded me of a southern California beach town, and waded in the Mediterranean briefly before meeting up with some of Eric’s friends; Lee who lived in Oakland and her boyfriend Oz, from Israel. They were so helpful, giving us some much needed advice so we could prune our itinerary down to something feasible.

We spent the night in a cute little hostel in Jaffa (Yafo in Hebrew), our first dorm room sleeping situation of the trip. The old port city of Jaffa is just 10 minutes south of Tel Aviv, and from the beach you can see the bright lights of mega-hotels lining the coast in the city to the north, while the sun sets behind the older and wiser stone walls that once welcomed fishermen and visitors from distant lands.

In the morning I made a quick stop at the local flea market, haggled with a man from Uruguay in Spanish (I knew it would  come in handy someday!) and then we ate a delicious traditional Israeli dish for breakfast, Shakshuka, at the aptly named restaurant “Dr. Shakshuka”. The meal consists of 2 eggs cooked over easy with a tomato and pepper sauce, served hot straight from the frying pan with a giant loaf of bread for dipping. The salad that accompanied the meal was not as appealing at 8am, but I am sure it would have been delicious at lunch.

We headed south for the Dead Sea that Monday, descending down from the arid desert some 400 meters below sea level to the shores of the slowly-evaporating and super-salty Dead Sea. A thick haze in the air only barely disguises the hills of Jordan in the distance. Israeli Air Force planes fly overhead, quite low, several times a day back and forth from the training base nearby. We spent the rest of the afternoon down at the rocky beach, confirming the Dead Sea’s ability to turn people into human flotation devices! When you first lift your feet of of the ground, you can’t help but laugh out load as your body loses all control and you float effortlessly in the syrupy water that is actually 30% solid.

More to come later on the second day of our Dead Sea adventure…