Day 6- Thursday

We slept in till about 8:30 and then had breakfast in the cafeteria. We debated on snorkeling in the Red Sea or getting a start heading toward home. We finally concluded we should at least check out the Red Sea while we were here and drove West about 15 minutes almost to the Egyptian border to a the "good" snorkel spot. We walked out on the dock and were amazed at how clear the water was. You could see tons and tons of colorful fish swimming around. I ran back to the car to get my camera. Back at the dock there were a few tourists throwing bread crumbs to the fish. Instantly there were hundreds of fish fighting for their breakfast. There was a staircase from the dock going down into the water. I sat on the bottom stair to try and get a few pictures. I wondered if they would nibble at my feet? The tourist (with the bread) saw what I was trying to do and through a few crumbs my direction. I snapped at least 100 pictures. I haven’t looked to see if any of them turned out yet. They were literally jumping out of the water to get the bread. Very cool. After 20 minutes we decided we couldn’t leave without at least getting in the water. So we put our camera/towels on the beach and joined the fish. I loved the blue/white striped fish, but the black with orange tails were cool too.

Knowing we had a full day drive ahead of us we didn’t stay too long. Our next stop would be at the Dead Sea a good 3 hours away. Sara loved the Dead Sea and how effortless it was to float. I went to a different beach then we went to in June. This place had a longer shallow end and the water seemed a bit warmer. It had a nicer beach too. It was about time for lunch but we decided a picnic back at Ein Gedi nature reserve would be a better spot so we packed up and headed North again. We thought it would be fun to hike back to the water falls again but after looking at the clock we decided not to.

We headed back through the West Bank to Jerusalem and on to Tel Aviv. We really didn’t have an issues at the check points. It must have been obvious that we were tourists. Just past Tel Aviv we stopped for dinner at my favorite burger place in Herzliyya. They just installed flat panel screens at each table (booth) so that you could play games like memory or connect four while you wait for your food. I think the waiter had more fun watching us play they we did. Sara and I are both fairly competitive :-) The drive home from there should have been about 40 minutes but it took over 2.5 hours with traffic. Uggh. What a long day. I was so tired of driving. The frustrating thing about Israeli traffic is that there is usually not explanation for it. When it starts moving again you don’t pass by a policeman who has someone pulled over or a car with a flat tire. It just all of a sudden clears up. Anyway, when we got home we had enough energy to bring the bags in from the car and fall asleep.