How refreshing to brush away the lockdown cobwebs with a drive through the wide open desert all the way to the rugged red Eilat mountains that give way to narrow strip of coast.
Infections here have declined drastically and as a result we are no longer confined to within one kilometre of our homes. We decided to take a day off to drive down to Israel's southern tip, the port and resort town of Eilat on the Red Sea. We have been missing both the sea and the desert so much during lockdown.
The Red Sea's waters are wonderfully turquoise and clear. There are beaches with corals in the shallows where you can snorkel but even just standing on the jetty over the water you can look down and see schools of fish in a rainbow of colours from matt purples and yellows to iridescent metallics to monochrome rainbow stripes. We even got lucky enough to glimpse a sea turtle.
Normally the bay is full of pleasure craft, but the sea was quiet, a solitary cargo ship docked in the port. In the stillness of lockdown many sea creatures have felt comfortable edging closer to the shoreline with giant manta rays and other larger species sighted by locals.
From Israel's narrow strip of Red Sea coast you can wave over to Eilat's twin, the Jordanian resort and port town of Aqaba. Somewhere out in the desert mountains south of there across the bay you can glimpse the northern tip of Saudi Arabia. Out to the south-west the coast continues over the border in to Egypt's Sinai desert.
It's good to look out at neighbouring countries and feel a little connection to the wider world, even if it is only our small corner of it. To stand at a northern tip of the Red Sea and in my mind's eye see how it continues on south down to Bab Al Mandeb, the Horn of Africa and Yemen. To wonder which of the sea creatures swimming in the bay might have travelled that distance. In these strange times this is the closest we are likely to come to international travel for quite some time.
Once upon a time Eilat sustained itself from copper mining (probably the original King Solomon's Mines) and the port, but in recent decades the town's chief industry is tourism with a skyline of glittering hotels by the waterfront and a cluster of older guesthouses back in the old town centre popular with students and backpackers.
Right now all of them from the fanciest to the most basic are dark, just the odd light on where lone security guards still sit at deserted reception desks. The hotel district is like a ghost town, eerily silent and unlit, like old ships abandoned out to sea. The pleasure yachts and glass bottomed boats rest draped in tarps tied to the moorings of silent quays. My heart aches for all the local residents who's livelihoods depend on tourism.
As always we pray for better days for everyone and look forward to the day when we can once again welcome visitors from around the world.
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