Israel & Jordan Log
Our trip to Israel from Egypt was a nice afternoon sail at 8 knots or more followed by a night sail at 2
knots followed by a morning motor to the marina. Now lets not forget to mention the Israel Navy boat
circling us for over an hour asking for details of the boat and crew. They would not leave our side until
the folks at headquarters ran our details and granted us permission to enter their waters. That included
internet searches on us, checks on interpol, and likely much more! Heck when we finally got to the dock
they searched the boat for just about everything including doing a bomb swab of the cabins! They then
took us aside one at a time to quiz us and go over details. Ironically Meadow got hassled the most and
she is jewish!
So anyway after we were cleared in then we got treated great. The folks are friendly and bend over
backwards to help you out. The manager at the Ashkelon marina was probably the nicest most helpful
manager I have ever met. So after a few days of boat projects and local site seeing we rented a car to
explore.
The first stop was southern Israel on the Red Sea side to jump the border into Jordan. If you ever get a
chance to visit Petra in Jordan do it! It took us two days of 5 hours each to see most of that place. Now
it is probably best not done in mid July! Mad dogs, english men, and stupid american tourists out in the
middle of july exploring ruins in the hot sun...
Petra is beyond description and really blew us away. To be honest we were overwhelmed by Petra and
underwhelmed by the ruins in Israel. Maybe too many wars destroyed them? Just see the photos and
you might understand.
Israel had some nice ruins and great people. The beaches were amazing after hanging out in Muslim
countries too much lately. Imagine really attractive women in bikinis after not seeing that for 6 months!
Now if only the US dollar was worth something we could afford to travel here!
Jerusalem was an interesting old city with tons of history. Now most of it is pretty religious so if you are
not into that it is not so amazing. If there is a god he must be dying of shock to find that the old city is
one giant tourist trap with tons of little shops to sell you anything you want. Imagine shop after shop with
an occasional church to mark some important location pertaining to Jesus. I did my part by having a beer
in the old city. The wall is interesting to watch folks go pray at some wall and beat their heads against it.
I don't really get that either. Maybe they are just frustrated like me. Now just on the other side of that
wall is some mosque that is equally famous to the muslims so that makes for serious tensions there. You
need to go through airport type security to get to either place!
I wonder who the idiot that made up the car rental map of Israel is? Leaving Jerusalem to go north we
decided to drive up a way that looked more scenic on the map. It sure was. As in suddenly we are
behind barbed wire and giant walls and on the wrong side of a military checkpoint! Yes we apparently
tried to enter Palestine by mistake. Did the stupid map maker think to put borders like that on the map?
Of course not! He is likely related to the idiot who makes street signs in two inch letters and usually puts
them after the intersection so you always miss your turn! After finding our way out of not so nice areas
and back to major road we continued our way north. The highlight of the drive was the 1 hour spent at a
security point to have the car searched and our stuff. This time they used a bomb dog and only X rayed
out stuff and ran us through a metal detector. Once again Meadow was singled out for extra treatment. I
think she was over israel by that point!
Anyway there are some cool things to do in Israel. The beaches are nice, though there was lots of trash
and jelly fish. There are some nice ruins around. Swimming in the dead sea was really neat. Actually I
should say bobbing, since it is so salty you can't actually keep enough of your body in the water to swim!
It is also about 1000 feet below sea level!