Eilat

We had to return to the crater one more time this morning, and its beauty did not disappoint. In a country this small, it is incredible to see something so big. We went to the Ramon visitors center, which was slightly controlling (you can only go from room to room at the appointed times) but it was worth putting up with that for the amazing display. About half of the display was about Ilon Ramon (I think the only connection is the name of the place and his last name, as he was born in Tel Aviv, to holocaust survivor parents, and grew up in Beer Sheva). Ilon Ramon was an Israeli Airforce pilot (he flew in the mission which destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor) and then was the first Israeli astronaut. From space, he wrote to his family back home, saying from up here, I see a world without borders and totally at peace. I hope someday everyone can see the world as I see it from space.  Sadly, he and the rest of the crew were killed when the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated on reentry into the earth's atmosphere. His eldest son, Asaf, followed his father's footsteps into the Israeli Airforce and was killed in a training mission three months after graduating from flight school. So much sadness in one family. In one part of the exhibit, they showed a really moving video about Ilon Ramon's life and at the end of the movie, the curtain opened behind the screen to reveal a huge curved window looking out on the crater. It made for a very emotional ending. You felt like you could have been looking out onto the surface of the moon.

The movie was cooler than this photo conveys,
but it gives you the idea of what I'm describing.

The rest of the exhibit was about the crater itself and was also excellent. In one room, there was a video projected onto a form on the ground that stretched and changed (maybe it was covered with rubber or spandex), so you could see how the crater was formed over millennia of changes in the earth.

The drive down to Eilat was amazing. The desert, like the crater, is vast, and you really get a sense of the potential of Israel, since most of it is undeveloped, but there are places where the desert truly is blooming, thanks to drip irrigation and some very hard work. we saw IDF tanks practicing in the desert and fake villages by the side of the road for training drills. And we saw the landscape change dramatically as we dropped many hundred of feet in elevation as we approached Eilat. We are lucky that we are in Eilat during a relatively cool week - the high temp today was only 102 (it's been closer to
110 - 112 the past week). We stopped to stock up on groceries on the way into town, so we managed to delay our beach visit today until around 4 pm by which point things were pretty comfortable. We went to the North Beach in the hotel district, which was nice, but a bit crowded and rocky, so we have plans for a nicer beach tomorrow. Swimming in the Red Sea was amazing. There are huge mountains to one side which are Jordan (you can see the Jordanian flag in front of them) and mountains to the other side which are Egypt. The water is cool and clear, and at least on the North Beach, there is a fun party atmosphere, with music playing and a boardwalk selling every imaginable souvenir and beach item.


We came back to the hostel for a picnic Shabbat dinner with an amazing view of the mountains (Jordanian side) turning deep red as the sun set across from them (maybe that's why they call it the Red Sea).