Day 10 - a rest day for our tired team
travelling Cairo to Tel Aviv - much more security than we cared for.
Tel Aviv was the slickest airport arrival ever with the help of Levy, our man in Israel, there to meet us inside the security frontline. Then a quick trip to our hotel, BY 14 - super-modern, minimalist, a shower like a monsoon, a great place to stay.
Then Day 12- today, breakfast with fabulous Jewish bread next door at a cafe. Our guide, Graeme Stone (an Aussie-Jewish guy) arrived at 9am and took us on a tour of the coastal plain around Jaffa-Tel Aviv. First the Ramleh War Cemetery where we paid our respects to the 50 NZ Mounted Rifles guys who are buried there. (Terry Kinloch, author of the 2 books on the WW1 NZ Mounted Rifles, said in his book that not many Kiwis were going to visit these fallen NZ soldiers in the Middle East. Today we 4 made a small contribution to reconcile that deficit.
We rolled on to the Old Jaffa food market (couldn’t resist a bag of peaches) and then the Pool of Arches - an underground cistern where we paddled around in boats.
Ayun Kara, the site of a huge battle between the Ottoman Turks and the NZ Mounted Rifles was next on the list - an area of high ground on a group of communal farm near Jaffa. Most of the NZers buried in Ramleh died in this battle - 14 Nov 1917. We are going to an opening ceremony this coming Sunday for a big silver fern statue commemorating the NZers who died in that battle. It is a very classy statue. Finally we did a long walk around the Old Jaffa port area and soaked up a bit of history, fishing boats and not to mention some Mediterranean sun.