After vowing to wake up early and swim in the sea by our hostel, we slept in. But no worries, our first activity of the day was the Akhziv National Park Beach about ½ a mile down the road. Another thing on my list was to visit the rogue micronation of Akhzivland. In the 70’s a man by the name of Eli Avivi set up camp just north of the National Beach and declared the ½ square mile an independent nation from Israel based on, what else, love peace and harmony. I had read that he even stamped your passport upon entering his magic kingdom. But as we passed by Achzivland on the way to the beach, it looked absolutely creepyfied. Not “cool, let’s check out that creepy place that claims to be it’s own nation”, but “woa…we’d like to live to sea 27, let’s run passed the rusty iron gates that were stolen from the set of Return from Oz.” So we were there, but we didn’t go inside. That’s good enough for me.
We were sweaty mcsweaty when we got to the park but delighted to find it almost entirely empty. The park consists of castle ruins from the crusader period and an amazing beach with lots of sea plants and various creatures. The beach is a popular place for sea turtles to come on shore and lay their eggs during the night, but we missed sea turtle season by a few months.
The beach did not disappoint and we spent the better part of the morning and afternoon playing In our own private cove and laying under the shade provided by the generous national parks service of Israel. Our bright red sunburns the next day might lead you to believe that we forgot our heads and our sunscreen in our delight and played in the cove with reckless abandon, but I’m sure that’s not true...
While on the subject of losing one’s head, after we came out of the water for the first time Max looked at me and said “um, I did something dumb.” And sure enough, he pulled out his wallet with all of our cash and various important papers from the back pocket of his swimming suit. We both thought it was hilarious. We put coins and batteries and whatever else we could find on the items after spreading them onto a rock and let them dry in the sun. Max remarked just today about the “special quality” his wallet has taken on since being submerged.
After vowing to wake up early and swim in the sea by our hostel, we slept in. But no worries, our first activity of the day was the Akhziv National Park Beach about ½ a mile down the road. Another thing on my list was to visit the rogue micronation of Akhzivland. In the 70’s a man by the name of Eli Avivi set up camp just north of the National Beach and declared the ½ square mile an independent nation from Israel based on, what else, love peace and harmony. I had read that he even stamped your passport upon entering his magic kingdom. But as we passed by Achzivland on the way to the beach, it looked absolutely creepyfied. Not “cool, let’s check out that creepy place that claims to be it’s own nation”, but “woa…we’d like to live to sea 27, let’s run passed the rusty iron gates that were stolen from the set of Return from Oz.” So we were there, but we didn’t go inside. That’s good enough for me.
The beach did not disappoint and we spent the better part of the morning and afternoon playing In our own private cove and laying under the shade provided by the generous national parks service of Israel. Our bright red sunburns the next day might lead you to believe that we forgot our heads and our sunscreen in our delight and played in the cove with reckless abandon, but I’m sure that’s not true...
While on the subject of losing one’s head, after we came out of the water for the first time Max looked at me and said “um, I did something dumb.” And sure enough, he pulled out his wallet with all of our cash and various important papers from the back pocket of his swimming suit. We both thought it was hilarious. We put coins and batteries and whatever else we could find on the items after spreading them onto a rock and let them dry in the sun. Max remarked just today about the “special quality” his wallet has taken on since being submerged.
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