Today's first dive was great: instead of just submerging at the beach across the road from the dive centre, Max drove us to the beach across from my hotel. There, in 70 meters from the shore, there's a sunken military ship called Satil. It was sunk on purpose: for the enjoyment of the divers, and it makes a fun and easy wreck dive. The visibility was really good and the ship was easy to reach from the shore. It's a fairly recent wreck, so it's still in a good condition. There was a ton of fish hiding all around the ship, swimming inside, sitting on decks. One of the fish blending with the corals looked like a small ugly crocodile and surely enough it was called crocodilefish.
We swam a few circles around the wreck and even went inside through an opening in the main deck
. Then we went up along the bridge to the top of the mast, where a giant cloud of baby fish was hovering, probably guarded by their parents. Then it was time to head back to the shore. We've seen a few more groups of divers approaching the wreck and back at the shore there was another large group who had underwater scooters for faster propulsion. It's a very popular diving spot.
For the second dive we drove to another beach that's right next to the Eilat Coral Reserve. From there we swam along the shore inside the reserve, saw the corals and tropical fish and an artificial structure that was sunk to help coral grow. It's also filled with baby fish and sea goldies (that look like goldfish). I took a bunch of videos during that dive, fish look much more interesting in motion. It will be a pain to post-process those videos though.
After the final dive I returned all rented gear, filled my dive log and got the entries stamped and signed. Now I have 20 dives in the log, which is not bad considering I started diving a year ago! I said goodbye to Max, packed my stuff and drove back to the hotel.
There I found Julia, got some water and snacks from a nearby store, and we drove a another Aroma (they are really everywhere here, like Tim Hortons in Canada) for a late lunch. The portions were way too big again and we took some of the food to go. Finally we were ready to go to the next destination of the day: Red Canyon
.
It was only a 30-minute drive, but it was through a mountainous region with curvy roads. Most of the way was along the border with Egypt and we saw the wall of barbed wire and lots of military cars going back an forth, one even with a machine gun on top. After we drove off the main road, pavement ended and the road became really rough bumpy. There was a small parking lot in the end and a box with free maps in Hebrew and English. We took a map and headed into the canyon.
The hike started out from a flatter part of the canyon, where walls were not as eroded and you could see endless rocky desert in every direction. Then canyon became deeper and deeper, the walls were worn smooth by an ancient river than used to run here. In some parts there were ladders and handles installed and you had to climb down them. You could see layers of rock in the walls and small round holes where pebbles used to be embedded before they were washed away by the water. The temperature was very nice, since we started the hike around 6 PM and there wasn't any sun in the bottom of the canyon. The hike wasn't very long: after half an hour we reached the end of the canyon and followed another path back. That second path went on top the canyon, through the walls of surrounding mountains and offered great views of rock formations underneath. There was a couple of narrow ledges where we had to hold to some handles. After the second path ended we were back on the first one and then followed another path to the parking lot. As the sun was setting there were some great views of the mountains and the desert. The nature is pretty bare in these parts, there are only very few trees and shrubs and no visible birds or animals.
After the hike we drove back to Eilat, had some of our food for dinner and reviewed some photos that I took before.
Diving in Eilat, day 2
Monday, April 18, 2016
Eilat, Israel
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2025-02-15
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Shawn
2016-04-21
Looks like this day was the highlight of the trip so far!