If all roads lead to Rome, every path will soon lead to Eilat, in the south of Israel, stuck between Egypt and Jordan. Eilat is not a beautiful town, rather a dull seaside resort. Its only charms are the desert around, the Red Sea bordering it, and the sunny weather : they have only 20 mm of rain in a year, the temperature rarely drops below 20° ! If you want to discover Israel, Eilat is the kind of tourist town I nearly advise you to avoid. But… I must say that Eilat has its charm. Sometimes it is not so bad strolling around in the sun, without thoughts, a nice book in your hand, from your hotel to the beach, shuffling till aperitif time, opening an eye for lunch before taking a siesta to be in great form at the swimming pool…. Everything happens in an idyllic landscape, opposite the Jordanian mountains, which are red and pink in the morning and blue at the sunset, on the borders between Negev and Sinai deserts, along the legendary Red Sea ! You can enjoy this pleasant Saint-Tropez lifestyle only in the off-season.
When holidays start, hordes of tourists from all over the world mill around the little beaches of this town grown at the end of a war like a mushroom among the stones. And these beaches must be taken up. Hell begins. Eilat is a town where you can loaf in discos and in the sun, a kind of Middle Eastern Ibiza but less rickety and more puzzling. Luxury hotels have grown as in Las Vegas. Attractions have risen where the worst is often next to the best.

As for restaurants, it’s the same: I advise you to prefer, instead of restaurants with well laid tables, restaurants with “good tables”, such as Pedro or the Shipoudai of Eilat, for the best houmous and kebab in the world of houmous and kebab at paltry prices. You can also sit without qualms at the tables of the Gulf Restaurant for the Jerusalem Mixed Grill, of the Lido for couscous (why not?), the local meal at the Fisherman House (a canteen-style setting for fish, salads, and local meal at will) or the Blue Beach, for the falafel and the shawarma. The Blue Beach, as its name says, is a beach, a blue beach.
It’s down town, at the foot of the Sheraton; here you can rent a deckchair, drink a glass at the table or with your feet in the water and eat (excellent, plentiful and nice service) at very low prices (lower than anywhere else, for longer and with a very kind staff). In general eating is not expensive if you choose local meals in local restaurants, that’s what I advise you heartily. But don’t miss the very promising Israeli wine: an honourable mention to white Teshbi (a Sauvignon) which also acts the part of an honourable champagne, and red Efrat, a Cabernet Sauvignon, 10% of which is Merlot. And if you want to get in touch with a nice and polyglot internaut, send a message in English to the International bookshop BJ’S Books of the Tourist Center.

The best thing to do if you don’t want to indulge idling (that’s your own business but it would be a pity not to visit this superb country) is renting a car for at least two days or more if you like: every international car hire company is present or represented in the country. My advice: book from France in American dollars through the international booking central unit to avoid local price fluctuation.

A whole day will be set apart for the sumptuous Timna National Park in Negev (here you can find from 15-minute to four-hour walks, for amateurs, an oasis where you can take some refreshment and you will stare dumbfounded seeing the colours of the rocks).

One more day will offer you the chance to go north to have a swim in the Dead Sea. It’s a three-hour and a half drive but observe the speed limits; policemen are sly and efficient, equipped with radars in the American style, they flash at you in profile and follow you with wailing sirens as Texan sheriffs.
Several stops are necessary (imagine three hundred kilometres straight away 90 Km an hour along a perfectly straight road bordered by rocks!).

You can’t miss the majestic fortress of Massada because of its exceptional view over the Dead Sea and over the desert, the Ein Tamar kibbutz, for its luxuriant vegetation, and the kilometre 101 of Ketura Junction, 89 Km from Elate and 101 from Taba, the Egyptian border where the road starts….

The kilometre 101 is an astonishing roadhouse run by a Pakistani colony that came with all the family (obviously from Pakistan) with a tiger, an eight-metre python so as to recreate a little part of their own country. The Dead Sea is roughly divided into two parts, the smaller and less interesting one very industrialized and urbanized, with the spas of En Bokek and of Neveh Zohar, very pleasant for the amateurs of thalassotherapy and idleness.

If you want to take a swim (even if I eat a lot, I still float!) look, on the other side, at the bigger one, the beach of the En Guedi kibbutz (avoid the thermal centre, a kind of gloomy, sad pavilion, with a foul restaurant in the style of the incurables’ home of Soljenitsyne or Buzzati). You can also sleep and eat in the kibbutz. Don’t forget to pay attention at the car park of the beach: if you want to park in the shade, if there’s still some, you have to go round a park as big as the one of Auchan. Like a true Frenchman, you take the wrong way, which allows you to secure the last place under the trees. Big mistake! The one-ways of the car parks are equipped with grids against assaults, which tear your two tyres if you take them the wrong way. And in the middle of the desert, you immediately feel very silly. As for the best of attractions in Eilat, I suggest you without hesitation the Dolphin Reef to dive without any risks, whatever your level, with wild dolphins (forty minutes of unforgettable dive at a depth of six metres!). The Dolphin Reef became particularly famous for offering autistic and disabled people the opportunity of diving while sitting on a kind of diving armchair. I would say that even only the sun, the Timna Park and the Dolphin Reef are worth the journey.

As for the Underwater Observatory Park, it’s more complicated. The yellow submarine Jacqueline takes you on the coral reef for almost forty-five minutes at a depth of sixty metres….it’s a fabulous tour. The Observatory itself allows you to admire the reef and its multicoloured inhabitants from a round room like a UFO situated six metres under the waves, in which you enter through a spiral staircase. But tourists must spend money so they exaggerate and the cinema which moves to frighten you is awful. You’d better avoid the shark aquariums, where poor, stunted, depressed beasties in menopause are fed up in very sad footbath. Strangely enough, the jewellery situated at the exit has an excellent comparison between quality and price. Hold your wife or draw out your Visa: the pearls and their settings are, it’s true, very beautiful and often original.

Attention! The international airport of Eilat is one-hour drive and there’s no bus. Don’t be too smart and take necessarily the supplement “transfer to the hotel”, or change plane in Tel-Aviv so as to arrive directly at the airport of Eilat Town Centre. A week in Israel as I told you will cost from $ 1.500 to $ 2.500 (all inclusive for two people). Shalom and have good dives!

published in Gazoline 64 January 2001
© Pierre-Brice LEBRUN & Gazoline

However let’s mention Accor Tour, my favourite one, who will accommodate you at the Mercure Mirage, down town, simple and comfortable like a Mercure and very different from the kitsch magnificence of the Palaces