It was 5 A.M. when we got in and I could smell the desert air as I walked off the plane. It’s always interesting how you can sense the different air. It smelt like sand.
Deplaning complete. Getting across the border was a joke. We got our shit off the luggage carousel in the airport and then went to this outdoor bus parking area. Many tour buses were parked waiting. We all hung around and were welcomed by our Sachlav trip people.
We loaded up the bags under the bus. A bald Jewish guy that looks like George Costanza says “We’re male chauvinists here! Girls we will load your luggage! Men! Help your girls!” Yes sir. We helped the girls load up their luggage, and we were eventually on our way.
I didn’t get a picture of this, but I have a vivid memory of our guard–Katia–looking out into the distance, the elevated freeway visible just beyond our parking lot. That thousand yard stare into the nothingness of the desert. She’s got blonde and brown hair and looks like a chubbier version of a girl I know. On her hip she has a 9mm pistol with a leather holster. It looks well worn.
We hit the road at 0600, a little more awake now. Mickey–our Israeli trip leader–got on the microphone and told us the plan. I think the last time someone used the microphone on a bus was when I was 10 years old–but most of us are adult children anyways. We were headed to meet up with Divon, the CEO of Sachlav, the company providing the trip for us. You can choose from about 12 different providers.
We stop the bus in some weird place that kind of looks like some nature park or military installation. There’s some guy who is putting together a mountain bike on his tailgate–looks serious. Kelci tells us we can and should exchange our money here. I hand some Israeli guy with a shaved head $100 and he counts it and then stuffs it into a leather attache case. He pulls out a manila money envelope with ‘$100’ written on the envelope. Inside I find 350 Shekels.
This really Constanza type guy–not the same as before–has his little silver hatchback open, and is handing out our Pay-N-Save cell phones. I immediately regret renting the phone before the trip and upgrade to the SIM-card with 5 gigabytes of data on the spot. The guy gets in a bit of an argument with Andrew because Andrew had pre-paid but the guy gave him the wrong shit. It seemed like the guy was giving him the “yeah yeah sure it works” treatment to get him to fuck off. But this guy knew his shit. I thought the Verizon phones were carrier locked, but he knew right away they were not.
The group is led up some stairs to a large pavilion. We all sit around Divon in a semi-circle on the cobblestone rocks. He’s sitting with his back at the little circle of cobblestones that surround a tree. He’s in the center of our semi-circle. He’s an older looking guy with grey hair and was overweight with a double chin. He had this friendly smile that I didn’t really trust for some reason.
He talked at length but kept it interesting by asking questions. We found out that Sheldon Adelson is the richest Jew in the world and that he donates huge sums to Birthright–AKA Taglit. Taglit has donated 2 billion in trips based on $4000 per person and 500,000 participants. He did this thing with his hands where he said take any frown you have, and make it a smile–moving his frown into a smile with his hands. Same smile as before.
The take home was basically ‘you get what you pay for’ and to just enjoy the trip and don’t complain. It was very spiritual and it felt good. At the time I thought he basically set the motif of the whole trip. I would later prove myself wrong.
We got on the bus again, and hit the road.
