First day in Eilat

Saturday, April 16, 2016
Eilat, Israel
Today was the day of my first dive, so I woke up early to get some breakfast (included at the hotel), shave my moustache and drive to the dive shop. At around 9:15 am the place was already bustling with activity, with divers and gear everywhere. I met the owner Alex, his dog Zoey and the instructor Max (2 out of the 3 - Russian-speaking). Max got me my gear, did the briefing and we geared up and went to the beach. I think it really shows Israeli (and Russian) mentality to see the beach marked with signs "Absolutely no tents on this beach" in 3 languages just filled with tents as far as eye can see...

Since this dive was a refresher (required by law for divers who didn't dive for half a year), I did some safety exercises before submerging . My last dive was in Brockville about 9 months ago, but it seems that I still have my skills and everything went as smoothly as possible. I saw a bunch of parrot fish munching the corals, moray eels hiding under things, an assortment of colourful tropical fish and one funky octopus blending almost perfectly with the coral it was sitting on. I've never seen a live octopus this close, so it was a nice surprise. There was also an interesting group of garden eels (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterocongrinae), burrowing fish that look like a field of tall grass growing from the sand, only they hide in their holes when you approach. We also went pretty deep at one point, about 30 meters. There's not much life at this kind of depth anymore. Overall the dive went well, the water was pleasantly chill, at about 24C.

After I rinsed all the gear with fresh water and stored it in a locker, I drove back to the hotel. I was back around noon and Julia was still asleep, so she missed the complementary breakfast that day. We ate some fruit and headed to the beach, which was across the street from the hotel. The weather is really hot here, sky is always clear and sun's heat gets unbearable. Cars heat up so much that it hurts to touch the steering wheel. Even though the beach was packed, luckily there were some lounge chairs in the shade. We spent some time at the beach, tried swimming, but water was too chilly. Then we headed back to the hotel, had some lunch at a nearby seafood restaurant (Fish Market) where most of the staff spoke Russian as well. We ordered 2 dishes and got a bunch of free appetizers as well, which already made us full so we couldn't finish the main dishes and took them to the hotel.

After lunch we drove to the centre of the city (our hotel is located outside of Eilat, within 5-6 minute drive), found a parking lot and went for a stroll. Centre of Eilat is filled with fancy hotels, brand name shops, restaurants, crowds of tourists and street musicians. It's definitely a southern resort town. We bought some food from Aroma cafe (there's a bunch of them in Toronto too) and headed back to the car. It's been a fun evening stroll along a promenade, we'll probably do it again!

Comments

Shawn
2016-04-18

Happy to hear the dive went well, hope you took some pictures!

2025-02-15

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