A blueberry among sabras: One-night camping on the beach

There were quite a lot of people on the beach when we arrived, but we knew that most of them would disappear around sunset, and that was also what later happened. It was very windy, but we succeeded to get the tent up, and while we were busy doing that, Barak punctured one football and one smaller ball for some neighbours. What to do? I saw them provoke him playing with the balls in the first place, so they really did not have a case complaining about it. He loves to play with balls and has sharp teeth. That's it. These punctured balls instead kept the dog busy from that moment and on.

For dinner we grilled two huge entrecôte each, put a large spoon of garlic butter on them, and accompanied them with a Tishbi Estate Cabernet Sauvignon. Nothing else. Later we made coffee in the finjan. When the sun goes down around here, it happens very quickly, but soon the moon instead lit the surroundings enough so that we did not need any flashlight.

There was a group of people who built a camp some 20 metres away from us, in true Israeli style. Swedes camp as far away from each other as possible, for the sake of privacy, while people around here gladly sits down right in your lap although the beach is everything but crowded. When we were observing them putting their things in order, Yoram concluded that skinny-dipping now unfortunately was out of the question. Nevertheless, as the dark night covered the beach, as well as us, he suddenly surprised me by stripping butt naked and heading into the water. The moon, which was not yet full, gave just enough light to orientate yourself around your own camp, while our neighbours merely appeared in faint silhouette. We stayed without clothes all night; swimming, drinking, talking, sleeping and loving. We were sitting in our camping chairs, feeling the wind from the ocean giving some relief from the heat, while people walked by merely metres away. I think that Yoram was pretty enthralled by the experience. When we slept, all the tent windows were open, but in spite of the persisting wind, we never felt the urge to cover ourselves with anything. During all my previous holidays in other Mediterranean countries, I have never experienced such warm summer nights. The strong wind in combination with the humid air, made the sand penetrate everything, and since you never dried up, everything was more or less sandy in a sticky way. That was just something to accept and embrace.

We were awake and up already before sunrise and going back into the warm water was the first thing we did. We made coffee in the finjan and had pitot with raw tahina and sliced banana for breakfast. I had decided that we would make this trip as easy and convenient as possible, and we succeeded doing just that. No sensitive groceries and no complicated cooking that created a lot of dishes. We had a cooling box that kept water cold for us during the whole time, and that was it.

We stayed all morning and headed home around lunch. We knew that we had quite a lot of work ahead of us, washing dogs and the other things to get rid of all the sand. Although we only stayed one night, it was worth all the carrying and washing. We relaxed and turned off the mobile phone and tried to just be in the moment. I think that my husband, who previously has claimed that he spent his whole army in a tent and therefore never again, now actually has rediscovered the charm and sense of freedom it involves placing yourself on a beach for a day or more. We will do it soon again, for sure.