Frank's Christian Thoughts

Saturday, 3 January 2026

Travel Biography Photo Extravaganza - Part 55.

Tel Aviv Beach. Israel 2000 Concludes.

This week's album is in two parts. The first part concludes our visit to the Holy Land after we vacated our hostel room in Jerusalem, and bused to Tel Aviv with all our luggage before making our way to the airport for our flight home. More accurately, with the large rucksack slung over my shoulders. With the national holidays now ended, everything in Israel was back to full operation. Buses ran. Shops were open and trading. The land was buzzing alive and vibrant. Nothing like when we were stuck on the summit of Mount Carmel as we travelled from Tiberias to Isfiya nearly two weeks earlier.

The journey was smooth and uneventful. After we arrived at Tel Aviv Bus Station, we made our way to the esplanade, where we would spend the rest of the day on the sun-kissed sandy beach.

The weather was warm and sunny, and very summery for the middle of October. As I sat on the beach, seeing Alex's pregnancy, I wondered whether we would set foot in the Holy Land again, or would everything take a turn for the worse. Not long after we took off for the UK, a project was underway to build a high, ugly wall on the border between Israel and the West Bank. Known as the West Bank Barrier, work on it began in 2000, and very likely was already underway by the time we stayed in Jerusalem.

However, around 85% of the barrier route is within the West Bank Territories, which means that there is a strip of the West Bank land that is inhabited by Palestinians within the Israeli side of the barrier. By staying in the vicinity of the Old City, one would be totally unaware of the project. The barrier loops eastwards away from Jerusalem and towards the River Jordan before swinging southwest to enclose the Yatta and the ad-Dhahiriya districts of the West Bank Territories, before swinging east towards the Dead Sea to end just north of Ein Gedi.

Therefore, our bus trips to Eilat and Ein Gedi in 2000 were timely. There were no signs of any construction work taking place along the journey. At present (2026), there is a need for the bus to pass through two frontier gates between Jerusalem and Ein Gedi, as the Dead Sea road to Ein Gedi, Masada, and Eilat passes through the Territories.

All that, along with the recent upsurge of Hamas against Israel on October 7th, 2023, has made the Holy Land unsafe to visit. Indeed, there has always been unrest between Israel and its surrounding Arab countries, including Egypt and Libya, going back to the withdrawal of the British Mandate on May 14th, 1948. But I had a wonderful opportunity to take advantage of this window that began at the 6-Day War of June 5th-10th, 1967. It was during this war that Israel defeated Jordan, Syria, and Egypt, and gained control of the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai Peninsula. But most importantly, East Jerusalem, with its Old City, was taken under Israeli control from Jordan. That meant the demolition of the barrier wall dividing Jerusalem between Israel and Jordan. The wall ran just west of Jaffa Gate, barring entry into the Old City from the developing Jewish New City.

One of my late window cleaning customers once told me about his interest in visiting Jerusalem before 1967. To visit the Old City, he, with his wife, had to fly to Jordan's capital, Amman, then bus to East Jerusalem. There was no access to Israel. In turn, had they landed at Lod Airport at Tel Aviv, they would have had no access to the Old City.

So why have I given a brief history of Israel's past? Because it had a direct effect on me, personally. After I was converted to Christ towards the end of 1972, I began to study the Bible. Throughout the whole book, Israel and Jerusalem seem to have taken centre stage. I read how Abraham, his son Isaac, and Abraham's grandson Jacob were given a new name of Israel, and his twelve sons became the fathers of the fledgling nation.

I read how the Jebusite city of Salem was conquered by King David, and made the capital city of Israel, and it was here, a thousand years later, that Jesus Christ was crucified, buried, and rose from the dead three days later. Indeed, according to the Biblical prophets, Jerusalem was to become the Cup of Trembling to all the nations.

The city and its history fascinated me. By 1976, I had already gained some backpacking experience after travelling alone through Italy in 1973 and 1975, looking for hotels as I arrived at each town, and I was never sent away when I asked for a room at the reception. With this experience, in 1976, I was ready to backpack the Holy Land in the same way as I did in Italy. Both in Jerusalem and in Tiberias, as well as in Tel Aviv, I was accepted at all three hotels directly off the street, with no pre-booking.

The Dome of the Rock, 1976.

In 1976, I spent three weeks in the Holy Land. During that time, in addition to the three hotels, I spent some time at a private Arab home in Silwan for a fee which was considerably cheaper than any hotels there. It was while I was staying at this home that I got acquainted with Hezekiah's Tunnel, also known as the Tunnel of Siloam, a site mentioned twice in the Bible.

Those were the days when the tunnel was virtually unknown to the Western tourist. I could go as far as to say that around the mid-seventies, tourism in the Holy Land was very low, due to a history of unrest. This is in contrast to tourism in the present day, when escorted groups now squeeze through the tunnel. But in 1976, with a cave-like entrance at the base of a cliff, anyone could just walk in. However, the younger son of my host took me to the Pool of Siloam, the exit of the Tunnel, and from there he asked me to lead, and so, we both waded into the 2,700-year-old conduit to the Spring of Gihon, and then we waded back to the pool. So fascinating was the experience that I was willing to pay for two more trips down there.

In 1993, I visited the Tunnel again. This time, I completed a one-way journey from the Gihon Spring to the Pool of Siloam. However, while the water in the conduit was only ankle deep in 1976, in 1993, the water level was above waist-deep, which meant that I had to swim out when the floor dipped just before arriving at the pool.

Wading through a 2,700-year-old still-functioning tunnel had an effect on the rest of my life, as did hiking the Grand Canyon in 1978, and snorkelling over the Great Barrier Reef in 1997. In the world of Travel. I call these the Big Three.

There are only twelve photos of us in Tel Aviv in 2000. Therefore, I have collected 29 photos of Israel that I took in 1976. Most of them you might have seen already in Part 1. However, I felt good about reposting them here.

Photos of Tel Aviv, 2000.

Tel Aviv is a modern holiday resort.

Modern Hotel Architecture.

Facing south along the esplanade.

Further down is the ancient town of Jaffa.

My beloved at the beach.

I return from a swim to our luggage.

Facing north along the beach.

My shadow says it all.

Alex insisted on a dip.

The happy couple.

Preparing for sunset.

After sunset, we made our way to the Airport.

Photos of my 1976 trip to the Holy Land.

The Russian Church of Mary Magdaline.

View of Jerusalem from the Mt of Olives.

Chapel of the Ascension, Mt of Olives.

The Mt of Olives as seen from Solomon's Porch.

Alone at the Haram Al Sharif, or Temple Mount.

A lone Orthodox Jew approaches the Western Wall.

At the Rockefeller Museum.

At an Archaeological site south of Jerusalem.

Ruins adjoining the south Temple Mount wall.

I enter Hezekiah's Tunnel under the City of David.

This part of the conduit has a high ceiling.

The ceiling lowers as I peer at some stubby stalactites.

Here, the ceiling is low enough to bump my head!

I wash my eyes at the Pool of Siloam.

The Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem.

Star of Bethlehem, site of the birth of Jesus Christ.

Posing by the Star of Bethlehem.

The Synagogue where Christ preached, Capernaum.

Another view of the same synagogue.

Facing south at the Sea of Galilee.

Fishing boats at rest on the Sea of Galilee.

Peter's house before a church was built over it.

The ferry pulls out of Capernaum for En Gev, then Tiberias.

Nazareth town.

Looking across to New Jericho.

Jericho is known for its palm trees.

Ancient Jericho ruins, a detail.

A dip in the Dead Sea, 1976.

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Next Week. Is this the end of my Travel Biography and Photo Extravaganza? Find out then.

Saturday, 27 December 2025

Travel Biography Photo Extravaganza - Part 54.

Our Day Trip To Eilat Continues.

Rather than put all the underwater photos in one week's album, to avoid or lessen the risk of monotony, I thought it would be better to split the album into two sections. And so, here are the rest of the underwater photos I took at Coral Beach, in the resort of Eilat on the Gulf of Aqaba, close to the border with Egypt.

However, I have also reposted the location as seen from the pierhead, which I consider to be the star photo of the entire Israel 2000 album. The same image also appeared in one of my reviews of the Holy Land on the TripAdvisor website. For a while, it featured as the star photo of all reviews from worldwide, on Coral Beach.

Star Pic. Looking at Coral Beach from the Pierhead.

Compared with the whole of my life, snorkelling was relatively recent. Yes, I tried it out for the first time ever in 1972, just off a rocky ledge at the Spanish Costa Brava. Back then, I panicked and nearly got into trouble after a rogue wave entered the breathing tube, as I was out of my depth. Fortunately, I whipped off the mask and snorkel and hurriedly swam back to shore. I then handed the borrowed equipment to its owner and decided not to go near any snorkelling equipment again.

That was in 1972. It took another 25 years before I plucked up the courage to handle snorkelling equipment. In 1997, while I was on board a catamaran from Cairns, Queensland, to Green Island Coral Cay, I rented the gear. The goggles were lighter, and with separate lenses, one for each eye, I was able to "bed in" quicker, unlike the single oval screen characteristic of scuba divers. Hence, at the reef island, I managed to gain confidence with the snorkel before handling the underwater camera.

Two or three days later, while I was still staying at Cairns, I boarded another catamaran for Low Isles Coral Cay, with the need to change boats at Port Douglas. The sea surrounding the Low Isles was deeper, and the corals were richer and more vibrant. But at both venues, the water was slightly cloudy, as very fine grains of sand were carried by the current. The third venue where I snorkelled was at Border Island, a Continental Island at the Whitsundays Archipelago, a group of islands reached from Arlie Beach, also on the Queensland coast. Here, the water was deeper and quite clear. By then, snorkelling became my second nature.

One more venue where I snorkelled with an underwater camera, other than in Israel, was at Puerto del Carmen, on the Atlantic island of Lanzarote. However, there were no corals in the true sense at that venue. Rather, the little cove consisted of solidified basaltic lava forming a couple of black ledges slanting into the sea. So far, I have not posted any of the Lanzarote photos in the Biography, as this 2006 trip was a single-venue package holiday, and not truly backpacking. However, I am considering whether to post these pics here in this Photo Extravaganza.

I took photos at four of the five snorkelling venues. The exception was at Border Island, as there were no shops or kiosks where I could have bought a camera. The catamaran from Arlie Beach was small enough to be classed as a motorboat and carried a limited number of people.

What was the underwater camera I used on all four occasions like? If I wanted to snap underwater life at present (2025/6), I would need to be well-off financially. Digital underwater cameras are very expensive, and I believe, fiendishly complicated to operate for the best results. Furthermore, I'm rather technophobic. I could spend a small fortune on a device and still return with poor results, or no results at all. But in my day, the average camera carried a cellulose acetate strip on which light-sensitive chemicals respond when the shutter opens. To me, that was real photography. Its results often came with double exposure (forgetting to wind to the next frame after the first picture was taken), fogginess, camera shake, and out-of-focus (soft images). Some of the pics I have taken with acetate film show shaded areas as nearly black, and areas under sunshine too bright.

The underwater camera I used for all four venues was a single-use cardboard box, looking very much like a carton of jelly beans, with a plastic shutter mechanism. The whole device was sealed with a transparent plastic casing, making it entirely waterproof. If accidentally released from my hand while snorkelling, it floats and is easy to reach. When I was in Australia, I recall paying up to twelve dollars for 24 frames. Very cheap indeed, and no professional photographer would even consider using such a device. Yet, due to the excellent calibration of the lens, the submarine photos came out very well, and are fit to be posted here.

This week's album contains the remaining underwater photos of the Gulf of Aqaba reef. These are followed by land photos of Ein Gedi, near the western shore of the Dead Sea.

The area is a nature reserve, which is literally a crevice plunging down from the desert plains of Judea, 200 metres above sea level, to the Dead Sea valley, 400 metres below sea level. Hence, I could describe the crevice as a 600-metre side canyon feeding into the Rift Valley, itself a wide canyon. Two streams flow through the Reserve, which empty into the Dead Sea. One is the Nahal Arugot. The other, which we were more familiar with, was Nahal David. Hiking trails circulate between the two streams, and extend as far as the Calcolithic Temple, a building dating back to Abraham's day, and even earlier. Here, I thought about reposting one of my photos of the Calcolithic Temple, which I took in 1993.

Ruins of the Calcolithic Temple, taken in 1993.

It was in En Gedi where the shepherd boy David hid from the wrath of King Saul, who was jealous of David's superior military feats. The more famous of the two streams is Nahal David. Issuing from a spring, the creek cascades over a series of waterfalls. One of them is David Waterfall, and beneath it, a waist-deep pool at the time, offered free bathing in the cool, fresh water. Because of the freshness of the spring water, I was happy for Alex to swim with me. However, I believe that entry into the pool is now forbidden due to falling rocks.

I visited Ein Gedi in 1993 and again in 1994. In 1993, I hiked to the ruins of the ancient Calcolithic Temple, but in 2000, with Alex approaching 20 weeks of pregnancy, we kept our hiking very short. We kept by Nahal David, and after the swim, explored the environment on a local level without ascending any gradients.

Click here for the Index link for the main Biography, covering Weeks 123-128.

Underwater pics of the Corals at the Gulf of Aqaba (cont).

I spotted a Surgeon Fish, popular among reefs.