Egypt to Jerusalem

Spending the night in Nuweiba, we awake to our beach surroundings and see the following view:

We decide we can take our time leaving Egypt and at least stay until lunch, which is spear-fished straight from the sea by the owners:

We head down towards the bus stop to head over to the border at Taba, and see one of the funniest sights while in town.

A taxi driver from last night, absolutely loaded to the brim with luggage.

We say goodbye to Egypt, take our bags and cross into Israel/Palestine, catching the sunset over Egypt from the Israel side.

We spend the night in Eilat before taking a bus over to the Dead Sea for an obligatory swim. We almost miss our stop.

Obligatory Dead Sea floating picture and salt crystal on bottle of coke.

This wasn't my first time swimming in a hypersaline lake, having previously done so in the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan.

From the Dead Sea, we hitch hike to Jerusalem and are picked up by a Palestinian man with Israeli nationality. He's fluent in English, Hebrew and Arabic and tells us of the many difficulties he and his family face. Most of his family only hold Palestinian passports, which are practically useless for travel - many Palestinians also hold Jordanian passports. They are unable to visit him in Jerusalem as the Israeli checkpoints turn them back.

Coming into Jerusalem, we cross through an Israeli checkpoint, and see that a bus full of Palestinians is stopped and there is a queue of almost sixty Arab people waiting to cross the checkpoint. Just before we're in Jerusalem, we see the West Bank wall; an 8m high wall being built to separate "Israel" from the West Bank.