So Israel it was and how now. I had already noticed that the price level of Istanbul belonged to a different world. Here everything cost even more than in Holland. My 90 dollars would not last long, so I went on the lookout for work, maybe at a kibbutz. In Istanbul I had learned that Eilath in the very south was the hippie paradise of Israel.

I had stood at the roadside for a while and just when I considered hijacking a camel a delivery van stopped. I walked up to the driver somewhat confused, because someone was sitting next to him and there was no space left. ‘In the back, in the back’, he growled as if recouping his impatience on the junior assistant. I went to the back, lifted the canvas and saw the pick-up filled with half a metre of fish. Back to the front again: ‘How…’, ‘On the plank, just get on the plank’. All right then, I was hardly inside the hold when the driver put the pedal to the metal and I had to find foothold, hanging from the roof, on the planking that smoothly obeyed to any occurring centrifugal force. Thus I must have surfed Israel’s avenues for over an hour, during which I noticed there were many sharp bends in the roads, which audibly induced good humour in my benefactors.

Soon I arrived in Ber-sheva, the capital of the Bedouins and the last stop before 200 k’s of Negev desert. It was a town without a heart. Its centre was the market, a worn down utterly shabby plain with limping tables where everywhere chickens were slaughtered with horrifying indifference. Still saddening even now.
Eventually I was funnelled by the Negev Desert down to Eilath.

The first evening I ended up in a dance-café. Only later I understood the girls worked for the landlord and that their profits consisted of being treated by customers to the most expensive drinks. But then my ‘hippie magic’ had cast its spell and my ballroom babe refused to put me to expense. Thereupon we both were thrown out of the house. Together we walked up the beach and to my surprise and disgust there was a light frost. We went to a wooden beach shed that almost opened all by itself. It was stacked with fish nets, pretty soft to lie on, but without any warmth. We thought it was too cold for a cuddle and snuggled up as teaspoons. And apparently it was also too cold to sleep together as the next morning I woke up alone.

To be continued: ‘Close shave’.