Royal Tulip Eilat

... made by our guide and sat in a long tent with cushions around the side s while Mr Salamah played Bedouin music on his guitar like instrument and sang for us. It was great, and then we sat out in the moonlight watching the stars and looking for shooting stars. The guides lit a sheesha waterpipe and I had a taste but was not overly keen on it and was not keen on sharing a mouth piece with others. So we retired to bed and slept well in our Bedouin tent in the desert.

... featuring the spectacular coral and bounty of brightly colored fish of copious varieties. We took in other indoor and outdoor displays of marine life, including the shark, manta ray, and turtle tanks, and the displays of bioluminescent and rare fish. At the end was a film in the oceanarium about the wonders of the sea, in seats that moved and swayed and bumped along with the speedboats and divers and fish and sharks on the screen. While Kevin ...

... den ganzen Tag nur Scheisse mit einem machen, hat man jeden Abend unzaehlige Touristen, mit denen man quatschen kann. Dabei unterscheide ich zwischen den Kategorien "lockerer Rucksackreisender" und "eigenbroedlerischer Pauschaltourist". Kategorie 1 ist meistens auf grossen Nahosttouren und hat viel zu erzaehlen, wahrend Kategorie 2 die meiste Zeit nur am Motzen ist und mit seinem Toilettenpapier die Klos verstopft, die ich dann wieder freimachen muss. Einzige Ausnahme ...

... coral reefs. Aqaba is at the head of the Guld of Aqaba. On the opposite shore is Elat and from a viewpoint Mamoud took me to I could see Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and of course Jordan. The Israeli/Egyptian border is at a place called Bidi which is on the edge of the Sinai Desert. Mamoud then drove me along the truck road up into the mountains to see the spectacular landscape of theWadi's (valleys) and mountains. The strata of rock ...

... muezzins calling Aqaba to prayer. We swatted flies. We ate great meals at dinner on the Moevinpick campus. We ventured out to find oud music for Mark and to explore the area around us. We got lazy too. We watched movies in the room and left the window open to the night breezes in Aqaba. There were pretty paintings in the lobby, and fresh flowers floating in the fountains. Four resident ducks would swim in the pool at twilight. Kenan sent us a bowl of fruit ...

... The water was a wonderfully cool contrast to the much much warmer weather. The Miami group swam for a couple of hours and laid in the sun in cycles. At about 12:30 in the afternoon we were all pretty hungry. I decided that I would shower and put on some clothes and leave the Mövenpick area because I wanted to explore Aqaba a little bit. So Brett and I (using my handy dandy guidebook) found a recommendation for a restaurant within the Royal Yacht Club and headed down the ...

... laisse une impression de "pas fini": il est à la pointe de la technologie, de la culture, mais rien n'est raccord... quand la guerre s'arrètera, peut-être pourra t'il enfin prendre un peu soin de lui. Mais tout cela est impregné d'une atmosphère incroyablement bonne enfant: j'ai le sentiment qu'ici les gens savourent d'autant plus leur temps libre que la vie est vraiment dure et stressante. Ah oui, il faut aussi que je vous parle d'Eilat! (é suivre...)

... getting on Farouk again, Eli tells us some interesting information about camels. I don't remember any of it now, but there is one word that has been running through my mind since yesterday morning and it is "adaptive". And certainly the camel's body lives in the desert through adaptation. Just as the antithesis to adaptation is the kibbutz that restructures and changes the environment. Interesting contrasts. On the way back, we don't talk much, each ...

... of charge if you snorkel in from the side). It's especially spectacular in the early morning when the rays of the morning sun are shining right onto the reef. Beautifully coloured parrot fish, wrasses, anemone fish and, most spectacularly, the highly poisonous (to touch) scorpion fish. We'd be swimming through a school of myriads of small silver fish which would part and give way to the startling sight of ...

... in this department is travelling on high risk flights which up until now we'd managed to avoid! By the way - the security checking for us special Ovda people didn't appear to be any different from usual. We just weren't allowed to mix with the gentiles! All that excitement and we hadn't even got on the flight yet! After a bite to eat and a bit of shopping it was time to go for our flight. We usually fly by Ryanair from Stanstead which more often than not involves a route ...