Travels Routes

The Gulf Of Elat Birdlife Coral Reefs
Suggestions For Visitors To The Gulf Of Elat
Exploring The Desert With The Experts

Elat's rich underwater life and its location at the junction of two deserts make it a unique seaside resort with a year-round tourist season.

Wedged between the magnificent, rugged mountains of Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Sinai, the emerald-green and aquamarine waters of the Gulf of Elat (Aqaba) contain some of the most wonderful coral flora and fauna in the world.
You don flippers and snorkel and wade into the clear waters, gliding between spectacularly coloured schools of fish, some bloated to the size of a football.

The Red Sea is a top attraction for undersea divers from Europe, since it is the closest tropical sea for them. And Elat is a highly developed diving centre, with an underwater observatory that opens up the coral reefs to non-divers as well as divers. Experienced deep-sea fishermen can make use of the high-speed boats purchased by a local hotel to catch marlin, barracuda, sharks and other big fish.

Elat is a border town. Like most such places it attracts refugees from culture, the international backpack brigade, tourists in search of the exotic, and rip-off artists. It is also the home of a growing number of hard-working, honest Israelis who, for one reason or another, opted for a challenging life in this scorched developing region rather than a more comfortable existence in the north.

Prices of goods and services in Elat have been reduced by an average of at least 17 per cent as a result of the transformation of the town into a Free Trade Zone on 1 November 1985.

Tourists benefit, under this new scheme, from reduced prices in stores, restaurants, places of entertainment and tourist attractions, as well as hiring of sea-sport and diving equipment and taxi services.

These reductions are mainly due to the abolition of VAT - currently 17 per cent in other parts of the country - on all goods and services in Elat. Additional reductions have also been made.

At the same time, duty-free stores in Elat are being expanded to offer tourists a wide variety of both local and foreign goods exempt from all taxes and duties against payment in foreign currency.

Under this new scheme, tourists arriving directly at Elat have been exempt, as from November 1985, from paying airport tax and airline companies, including charter operators, have been exempt from all airport taxes (air control tax, landing and take-off fees, porterage and passenger services), thus enabling them to reduce the price of each tourist's fare.

Drivers should of course make it a point to fill up their tanks in Elat - not only at the beginning of a journey but also at the end if possible.

A short drive south of Elat, along the tarred highway, you'll find Coral Beach, with every facility and boats, water skis and wind-surfing and skin-diving equipment for hire. Here, too, you board glass-bottomed launches for cruises over the coral reef, and look at the wonderful underwater life from the observatory.

At sunset along the Gulf, the sea, the barren hills and mountains and sky merge into misty, soft shades. The giant rock-forms turn peach, rust red, apricot and plum above the creamy beige sands. The harsh glare of the desert disappears with the sun and the blanket of night like a squid's cloud darkens the underwater world and its fantastic living forms.

For those who want to be entertained at night, Elat has piano bars and discotheques (in the better hotels and the new tourist centre near the airport), a cinema that changes its programme every two days or so, restaurants that serve huge platters of Red Sea fish, and moody coffee houses. Young tourists tend to gather at the new tourist centre, where the spell of the sea, with the lights of Aqaba across the bay, ships anchored motionlessly near the port and bonfires on the beach are a great attraction. Elat goes to bed late, and some bars and discotheques remain open until the early hours.

Getting There: if you're not driving, there are buses and taxis (sheruts) from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, four to five hours away.

Arkia Airlines offer regular flights to Elat from these two cities, and the trip takes less than an hour. There are charter flights to Elat from Britain, France, Germany and the Scandinavian countries. Climate: temperatures rise to 40C and higher in summer, and rarely fall below 18C in winter. The humidity, however, is low the dryness of the air is good for rheumatism and makes the heat easier to bear. But the combination of low humidity and high temperatures makes people dehydrate very rapidly. Visitors are advised to drink at least four litres of liquids - preferably uncarbonated - a day, especially in the summer months.