Eilat to Yehoram Night Camp

View of the Red Sea and the start of the Israel National Trail

We finally made it to the night camp we planned on staying at. It's been a long day so I'll just start at the beginning.

After flying from Seattle to Frankfurt to Tel Aviv, A and I were running on no sleep. We met up with P at Ben Gurion airport and then taxied to a domestic airport in Tel Aviv to get to Eilat and the beginning of the trail.  Security to fly from Tel Aviv to Eilat was really intense. My gear was grabbed, dismantled and I was questioned extensively about why we were going to Eilat why I had such a small bag for 2 months of traveling and where we were going to sleep. I would recommend just taking a train to Eilat though it takes a bit longer it beats the anxiety of not having all your gear. In hindsight, after a day of hiking I would gladly give them half my gear if it meant my pack wasn't so heavy. 

Once in Eilat. We got some food for the next couple days and then searched the town for two fuel canisters. We finally found some in a stop mall type place. After that we had lunch/breakfast/dinner, not sure which given the timezones we crossed on the way from Seattle. We took a taxi to where the trail started and started hiking at 12. So we hiked through the hottest part of the day.... I would not recommend this. We probably should have just stayed the night in Eilat somewhere but we wanted to get on the trail...Next time. 

Once on the trail we quickly learned that this is not going to be a walk in the park. Within the first 100 feet the trail all but goes straight up. We saw the border of Egypt and then started walking through a canyon. We met a group of girls who were also trying to get to the night camp and we helped them along for a bit until we realized that if we kept waiting for them to catch up on the hard parts we would never make it to camp before dark.

We didn't make it to camp before dark. anyways…

Example of trail climbing

After we tried to up our speed a little we hit wall after wall of basically vertical climbing with rungs drilled into the canyon wall and everything.  We had to use our headlamps for at least two hours because of how fast it got dark. Note to self.....the closer you get to the equator, the faster it gets dark.

When we got to the night camp we passed a huge group of people playing music really loud and then found a spot where we could hardly hear them. We set up our tents and I fell asleep instantly.