First, no more wary wolf was I today. I dove right in to all the red meat time would allow: the Western Wall, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Dome of the Rock/Temple Mount, PLUS both the places reputed to be the burial spot of Jesus.
I’ll write a post about it in the next couple days, hopefully. There should be plenty of time, as tomorrow I’m taking a bus to Nazareth and to Galilee and the Jordan River, which is mostly time spent on the bus, with an hour here or there seeing the sights.
Then, on Thursday, I’m taking a bus south to Eilat – south (not down) near the Red Sea (technically the Gulf of Aqaba), from which point I’m planning to cross into Egypt and take another long bus ride north (not up!) into Cairo.
Here’s where the doofus part comes in: Long ago, when I first started planning this trip, I checked to see if I’d need a visa to enter any of the nations. Nope, or not really, at least – just in Istanbul where I’ll buy one at the airport.
That was before I thought, “Hey, if I’m in that part of the world, I’ve got to see the pyramids.” Which immediately became part of the planning process. <Without realizing I’d never checked about visa requirements for Egypt.> And so the planning went on, buying a flight (nonrefundable, of course) from Cairo to Istanbul on June 30 – smooth sailing all the way.
Until today, when I thought about double-checking visa requirements and, duh - you can see where this is headed - I can’t get to Cairo without a visa. Supposedly I can get one from the Egyptian Consulate in Eilat, but that means that I need to A) find the bloody consulate B) get there before they close, and C) obtain the visa even though I don’t have the required extra photo.
So that’s where the adventure leads later this week. I could end up stranded in southern Israel. At least if that happens I hear there’s great snorkeling just offshore of Eilat. And, yes, I’ll deserve 40 lashes at least if I end up swimming in the blue waters to the south when I could have stayed here and seen some of the places I wanted to see but cut from the itinerary for the sake of time (Dead Sea, amongst other casualties).
Ces’t la vie.
