Elated in Eilat

We have remained in Eilat close to Palm Beach since we got here on Monday. Our initial excitement at having found there is space on the next sailing of the Grimaldi Ro-Ro ship turned to despair. Grimaldi's conditions state that we have to have travel insurance to cover the dates of the voyage and 10 days beyond. Chris duly purchased insurance online but this was unacceptable. After many telephone calls and emails and a lot of time spent on the laptop, we have finally met all the conditions by getting travel insurance cover through a UK broker with a letter from them summarising the Policy. 

We are very grateful to Marco of Allalouf shipping agents in Tel Aviv who has spent so much time on our behalf as a go-between. He has a great sense of humour which helped. This afternoon we have at last received our tickets and started the process of contacting the forwarding agents in Ashdod who will do all the Customs formalities. The ship is due to sail on 21st but this has already been delayed 3 days so who knows! It is a great relief to actually have our tickets.

As you can see we have not been lounging on the beach. The beach itself where we park at night is a dirty strip of sand but it is further from the road and the great rumbling lorries than the car park where we spend the day. We are also right under the flight path for jets landing but that is probably true for most of Eilat as the airport is in the centre of town. 

This is the longest period we have spent 'wild camping' and Chris is constantly monitoring the voltage. The "hotel" batteries are entirely dependant on the solar panels so at night we have very little power and the fridge has to be switched off.

Yesterday for a change of scene, and to buy a local SIM card, we drove to a shopping mall at the end of the runway and spent most of the day there. We took an evening stroll along the seafront with the holiday makers and ended up eating at a Russian restaurant, where quantity won over quality! It made a pleasant change and took our minds off the previous few hours worry over getting tickets on the ship.

We would have liked to go to Jordan as the border is so close and visit Wadi Rum and Petra but the complication over taking the balloon out of Israel and the unpacking of everything again on re-entry discouraged us, especially as time would be tight. Pity, as it would have been such a good opportunity. We have discovered that the balloon at Wadi Rum is not currently operating due to weather.

Eilat has been a good place to stop this week as the climate is so pleasant but we will probably start heading north some time tomorrow and find pastures new.