Prague Journal

Wednesday, April 13, 2005.

Ray took us to the Coral World Underwater Observatory, just down the road from our hotel, which has a giant circular aquarium built within a coral reef, and we had a short tour of the area around the reef in a submarine. The observatory area has a marine park and aquarium museum with local plants and animals, and a new exhibit of sea animals from the Amazon. We saw huge groupers, tunas and rays, and colorful fish and coral. There are also some small dolphins and sharks and large turtles.
While in Eilat we had the misfortune to experience Hamsin. This word means fifty in Arabic, for a hot, dry dessert wind from the east plagues the entire region with high temperatures, dust, and short tempers on approximately fifty days total at the beginning and end of the summer. As predicted, this day was hot and overcast, so Helen preferred to stay at the hotel while we went with Ray on a jeep safari to Timna park, roughly 30 km north of Eilat. This area is one of the Arava (Rift) Valley’s leading tourist attractions, with its breathtaking sceneries and unique geological formations, antiquities and archeological finds dating back to early Pharaonic dynasties. Our jeep careened up and down the steep, rocky gravel road, to reddish-tinged rocks that are said to be the site of the biblical King Solomon’s Mines. For 6,000 years copper was mined here, but that ended in the mid-1970s because of competition from Chilean copper mines, which started selling their product more cheaply.
The Timna Valley is one of the driest regions of the world, with less than an inch of rain a year. Acacia trees grow here because they have deep roots that suck water from the desert’s aquifer far below the rocky landscape. There are a few native animals, mostly small rodents, reptiles and insects, but also gazelles, who get water by eating the leaves of acacia trees. We saw only a few gazelles from afar, since we did not go to the nature preserve, which now has wolves, hyenas, ibex and gazelles, nor did we get to the famous rock formation known as King Solomon’s pillars. Instead we saw a lot of the geologic sites and limestone formations and Ray recalled his travels there with Rick’s father over 60 years ago.
Dinner this evening was at a lovely seafood restaurant, with Ray and Helen and Gadi and Yona. Our main course was fish, but the highlights of the meal were the appetizers, a variety of seafoods and salads. The proprietor, a good friend of Gadi’s, brought us a many-flavored ice-cream plate, adorned with sparklers, for our dessert.

posted by JWinn @ 10:42 PM