Desert rain

So I'm in Mike's relatively early one night, because my sleeping pattern's messed up and I was trying to normalize it (up all night and all day, then drink, then go to bed before midnight). Udi - who always drinks early, so I rarely see him - turned up at around 9 and stayed an hour or so, so we got talking. Turns out he's heading out to the Sinai for a business meeting next day. Would I like to join him? 'Course I would...!

That whole sleep thing never worked out; I just went back to Mike Perry's place and sat drinking coffee and watching videos with him until 4am. Udi and his dog Meggi picked me up from the top of our street at 5, and we drove off through the pouring rain. This particular bout of heavy rain had also reached the Judean desert, so instead of taking the obvious route via Jericho and the Dead Sea and risking the boulder-carrying flash floods there, we ended up driving rather nervously via Hebron out in the Territories. So I've seen a few settlements now - and guess what, some of them are old places that look like - and effectively are - real towns. But others look like army camps and have floodlights stationed all around their (electric?) perimeter fences, and those kinds of settlements I think it'd be hard to argue a case for. Not that it stops people trying...

We drove on past Dimona and into the Negev desert, which goes on for miles but changes its geological structure so often it'd be possible to tell where you were from the shape of the mountains, and the colour and texture of the rocks, and the amount and species of growing things - but only if you knew the area really, really well. And it rained all the way, which Never Happens (allegedly).

We left Udi's car in Taba and walked through the crossing (72 shekels to leave Israel, 35 to enter Egypt) just behind three coachloads of Arabs on their holiday outings, so it took a while to get through. In the end I think we went ahead a little because everyone was scared of Meggi (who is tiny and cute); there's no culture of pet ownership in Muslim areas. The rain stopped, and Ahmed met us on the other side to drive us - alarmingly, on the wrong side of the road much of the time - the final 70km to Nuweiba, where Udi's meeting was to take place. It seemed very unreal to be drinking sweet, strong, black tea and sharing a cigarette outside the office with the Bedouin workers there, watching camels and goats and children wandering the streets ad hoc, while somewhere out back of town an imam sang to call the local Muslims to prayer. That glass of tea worked wonders though, and I went for a long walk afterwards to investigate the place.

Fully acclimatised, I arrived back at the office just in time for Udi and Gasser's initial meeting to end, and we all three (four including Meggi) got into a 4WD and went in search of the perfect spot to build something new along the Taba/Nuweiba coastline. We found two I'd have jumped at if I'd been rich, but nothing along the lines the guys were hoping to find; one of my (and Meggi's) favourites was by a hidden dew pond just a step away from the Red Sea beach ('too damp to build on') and the other on a mountain top overlooking Faraon Island/the Saleh el Din castle ('poor access'). By this time Udi was starting to fall apart a little - like most Israelis I know, if he doesn't eat three meals a day he thinks his throat's been cut - and we drove back to Nuweiba in search of food as the sun sank low in the sky. Gasser's folk had been busy during our absence, and we arrived to find 12 other people waiting for us to get there so's the banquet could begin! Salads, breads, dips all sat on the table and were replenished as we went along. The wine - an Egyptian cabernet sauvignon - was sweet, fruity and very very drinkable, and the meat - different kinds of which came around at five-minute intervals - was spicy and succulent. The company was intelligent and amusing, all except me because I'd by now gone 50-something hours without sleep and was struggling some. A Scots couple present produced half a bottle of single malt whisky when the first round of coffee arrived, and Udi responded by producing his bottle of duty-free vodka. Any other time this would've been great news! We got through a platter of fruit and more coffee, then dessert arrived in the form of a cake. By this time my eyes were closing despite my best efforts, and Udi - who was also tired, having been up since 4am - felt it was time to break up the party. Gasser very kindly offered to pay for us to spend the night in a nearby hotel, and we quickly took up on the offer; Udi tells me I was snoring within 2 minutes of my head hitting the pillow. It wasn't even 9 o'clock by then...

I woke at 4.30 am and decided there was no point in going back to sleep, so got up and dressed and took one very happy doglet for a long stroll around the hotel grounds. We had a car promised for 5.45 to take us back to Taba, so Udi wasn't too far behind me, and by 5.30 we were sitting in the hotel lobby drinking a morning cup of instant coffee and clutching our 'breakfast bags'. The car arrived at 6, and we were in Israel by 7.15 - amazing the difference it makes when you go through the border with an Israeli, I was expecting to hold up the proceedings for at least an hour! - with Udi back behind the wheel. We stopped at Yotvata for a proper cup of coffee (l'foukh, gadol), which woke us both up, and - since the sun was shining - drove back via the Dead Sea/Jericho route, which took a full hour less than meandering around the Territories in the dark the previous morning. The floods hadn't happened to the extent Udi had anticipated, and there were only a few small heaps of rocks by the road to show where some small impromptu wadi had deposited its load. The real thing's supposed to happen this weekend now, which is a bit of a shame because the desert between Jericho and Jerusalem is just greening over through yesterday's rain, so the mountains there will be in flower by then - but too dangerous to visit.