Eilat: Pack your bags – Israel’s winter wonderland is open for business
SPECIAL REPORT: Jewish cowboys, desert landscapes, nature reserves, wildlife and extreme sport: Michelle Rosenberg experiences the best of Israel's Red Sea resort
Eilat is pulling out all the stops to stage a dramatic tourist comeback.
I spent three days in December experiencing the best of what the resort town bordering Jordan and Egypt has to offer, as a guest of the Israel Ministry of Tourism.
From go-karting, camel riding and archery to snorkelling and the extraordinary Timna National Park, it proved an opportunity to return to my family’s (and most of north west London’s) former go-to Christmas vacation spot and see it through fresh eyes.
I have vague recollections from thirty years ago of the Dan Panorama and the Royal Beach, the largely duty free promenade, my mother’s mantra of ‘I came, I saw, I shopped’, sunbathing and the legendary Israel breakfast buffets.
At the time, it was a rite of passage to winter in Eilat, where tourism accounts for a whopping 80 percent of the economy.
But the impact of 7 October, the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict and Houthi Red Sea disruptions affecting the port have taken their toll, with nervous potential tourists cancelling their flights and bookings, leading to a dramatic impact on visitor numbers.
My host, Itamar Elitzur, chief executive of the Eilat Hotels Association, refers to a trip to the city between November and April, as “not just a vacation” but “a mission” to support Israel.
Whilst El Al has a new flight route via Ben Gurion Airport to Eilat, it was an exhausting mission to embark on the two-plane journey from London Luton, but one that every effort is going towards remedying, with budget airline Wizz Air announcing plans to open a new hub at Ramon airport.
Yes, of course you can come to Eilat simply to ‘chillax’, eat and sunbathe. But the Eilat I experienced (and far preferred) is all about getting into nature, beautiful environments and the preservation of fragile ecosystems; in a welcome change from the cold indoors at home relying on Netflix for entertainment, with your kids’ eyes glued to their devices, it’s literally a breath of fresh air to meet the passionate teams working at Eilat’s Bird Sanctuary, a former salt marsh transformed into a new “re-fuelling station” for migratory birds.
As part of the only land bridge connecting three continents, Eilat is a globally important site for species including terns, herons, flamingos and cormorants. Families can enjoy guided tours which provide close encounters with birds and look-outs through bird hides or camouflaged shelters.
Director Noam Weiss describes the sanctuary as “not nature, but nature-based solutions” and demonstrates a ‘ringing station’, where he carefully places a small tracking ring on the leg of a tiny Sardinian warbler, then releases it in the “hope that someone will discover her somewhere else in the world.”
The TOP 94 indoor adventure park in Eilat’s industrial zone offers more than 30 attractions, including indoor wall climbing, archery (I’d recently watched Robin Hood so gave it my best shot without detrimentally affecting my personal liability insurance); go-karting (I came second and still claim it was a stitch-up), rope-park (not a chance), bouldering (ditto) and a mini-bungee jump, which my husband seemed suspiciously enthusiastic for me to do.
Israelis from every cross-section of society flock here and it was a joy to see an Orthodox wife and husband gamely clambering up an indoor rock face.
Next up was the Eilat Underwater Observatory, which captures the imagination no matter your age and regardless of whether you’ve seen Finding Nemo, and the Coral Beach Nature Reserve, where I marched from the changing room to the ladder at the water’s edge, in full snorkelling gear, mask misting up, with the shadowy outlines of Jordan’s border shoreline visible.
The water was, to put it mildly, rather brisk, but the clear waters and encountering just some of the 650 species of fish and beautiful coral was worth every post-swim shiver.
Dolphin Reef induces a child-like wonder in all who venture there; home to two beautiful, bottle nosed dolphins who playfully interact with visitors, who sit in deck chairs on the water’s decking for hours just to watch them. The dolphins are not captive and enter the reserve freely at their own leisure.
The surrounding botanical gardens and wooden tree-house structures for reading, working and winding down, with a view over the Red Sea, are reminiscent of Robin Crusoe, and for those over eighteen, I’d recommend an experience at the Stalbet Al Hamaim pools which offer specialised water treatments, such as the “One-on-One Special”, or Watsu, where a professional therapist guides you through relaxation techniques in the water. I would have happily have stayed there for days.
Terminal Park, the city’s new amusement and entertainment complex on the site of the former airport, features fourteen attractions, including a 50-metre big wheel and a forthcoming street market, with around £30 million (around 150 million shekels) having been invested.
The park aims to integrate community and tourism, hosting events for thousands of people while offering free activities for children and older residents.
If camels were capable of delivering a withering stare, Ruby at the Camel Ranch near the Eilat Mountain Nature Reserve and a short ten minute drive from the city centre, was definitely giving it her best shot.
To be fair, I wasn’t the most graceful of riders and was relieved to eventually dismount and walk off, albeit à la John Wayne, to investigate their rope course and watch some teenagers preparing food as part of a group challenge.
Having flashbacks from a bad experience on a vespa in Florence, I turned down the offer of an electric bike ride, and instead jumped on a golf cart to, true to my pending geriatric age, race one of the guides, navigating winding roads, sunglasses on, the wind in my hair and not a care in the world.
Art afficionados will welcome a visit to Kibbutz Neot Semadar, selected for the prestigious ‘Best Tourism Villages’ list by UN Tourism (the very least we can agree the UN has done for Israel); a list which includes only about 250 villages worldwide.
Founded in 1989, it’s home to about 250 residents – kibbutz members, families, children, and volunteers from Israel and abroad. It is a unique model of an ecological cooperative community that combines art, agriculture, and environmental awareness in everyday life.
It features a frankly astonishing Aladdin-esque architectural masterpiece built by community members over 15 years, an organic boutique winery, a local restaurant-cafe, a co-lodge for those who want to switch off from the online world, art workshops, a shop featuring the work of local artisans, and stargazing next to the Weizmann Institute’s telescope.
Accommodation on my trip was courtesy of the brand-new Isla 42 hotel, which was the perfect base from which to explore alongside tour guide extraordinaire Shai Cohen, who as a proud Eilat native seemed to be on first name terms with every single person we met.
For a day excursion just seventeen miles from Eilat, look no further than Timna Park in Southern Israel’s Arava desert.
Its 60 square kilometres features ancient copper mining and civilisational remnants, with evidence of activity thousands of years old, and spectacularly beautiful landscapes and geological formations including the massive red sandstone rocks named ‘Solomon’s Pillars’, eerily reminiscent of a Star Wars or Dune movie set.
Israel is full of characters and none more so than Ranger Ron Bernstein, a rugged cowboy of indeterminate age originally from the US, who can only be described as a haimishe cross between Crocodile Dundee, Indiana Jones and City Slicker’s ‘Curly’.
He is the best possible advocate for a Timna experience, from its walking sunset and dawn trails, hiking, cycling trails and family attractions including pedal boating and sand bottling, with overnight accommodation, restaurant and campsite all available.
I returned, alas, to London, sure of three things: Eilat is so much more than a beach destination; Shai Cohen was now an honorary member of the Rosenberg clan, and the sunset at Timna Park will stay with me for a long, long time.
- Jewish News was a guest of the Israel Tourist Authority
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