Eilat: what to see, where to stay and how to get around

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Eilat sits at the top of a narrow gulf, and coral should not grow this far north — it does because the gulf is deep, clear and warm all year, and because nothing like a river empties into it. The reef here is the northern limit of coral on earth, and the water is between twenty-one and twenty-seven degrees in every month. This walk is the eight kilometres of coast south of the town, and it is a swimming route as much as a walking one. Three hours with stops, no shade whatsoever, and the reserve is the only place you may stand on nothing.

A short history of Eilat

The Bible mentions Elath and Ezion-Geber, the port from which King Solomon's ships sailed to Ophir. For centuries there was nothing here but a lone police post called Umm Rashrash. On 10 March 1949 soldiers of the Negev and Golani brigades reached the spot and, in Operation Uvda, raised the improvised 'Ink Flag', drawn on a bed sheet. In the 1950s the port and the town were built; it was then the most remote settlement in the country. In May 1967 Nasser closed the Straits of Tiran to shipping bound for Eilat, which was one of the causes of the Six-Day War. In 1985 the city was declared a VAT-free trade zone.

The ten best sights in Eilat

1
Coral Beach Nature Reserve
35 shekels, the northernmost reef in the world, and two marked snorkel trails
2
Underwater Observatory
139 shekels, a chamber 12 metres down on the reef, and the shark pool is included
3
Dolphin Reef
79 shekels to enter the beach, and the dolphins are free to leave
4
Eilat Promenade
Free, it runs from the marina to the Jordanian border fence
5
Eilat Marina
Free to walk, glass-bottom boats from 70 shekels, and the lagoon is man-made
6
Migdalor Beach
Free, the reef starts 20 metres out, and it is the quiet snorkelling
7
Dekel Beach
Free, shaded by palms, and the dive clubs launch from here
8
Almog Beach
Free, beside the reserve, and the sand is coarse coral gravel
9
Eilat Botanical Garden
55 shekels, a rainforest built on bare desert rock, and shaded throughout
10
Mount Zefahot
Free, a two-hour circular climb from the sea, and no shade at all

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What is an audio walk?

Tours in Eilat →

A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Eilat:

Free walking tours in Eilat

The northernmost reef in the world

Coral Beach Nature Reserve · Declared in 1964, and it is the only coral reef reserve in Israel. Two marked snorkelling trails run out through gaps in the reef table, with buoys you may hold but nothing you may touch — standing on coral kills it, and a colony the size of a dinner plate can be fifty years old. The reserve bans ordinary sunscreen, because the chemicals in it bleach coral; shops at the gate sell the reef-safe kind.
Underwater Observatory · Opened in 1975 and it was the first of its kind anywhere: a steel chamber sunk onto the reef itself, with windows twelve metres down, so you look at coral growing where it grows rather than in a tank. The site also runs a sea turtle rescue centre — the turtles are brought in injured by boat propellers and fishing line, and the ones that cannot be released stay.
Dolphin Reef · A colony of bottlenose dolphins has lived here since 1990 in a netted area of open sea — and the important detail is that the nets have a gap: the dolphins can leave and some have, and they come back. There is no show and no trained routine; the policy is that the animals choose whether to approach, which means some days they do not.
Almog Beach · The sand here is not sand: it is broken coral and shell, which is why it is coarse and pale and why it hurts to walk on barefoot. Everything on this coast that looks like a beach is made of the reef in various stages of being ground up, and the finer sand further north has travelled there over centuries.
Migdalor Beach · The reef starts about twenty metres from the waterline here and there is no entrance fee, which makes this the cheapest serious snorkelling in the country. What you see in the first ten metres is a sandy shelf; the drop-off beyond it is where the wall of coral begins, and it goes down steeply because the gulf is more than eight hundred metres deep in the middle.
Taba crossing · The Egyptian border is a ten-minute drive from the hotel strip, and the whole gulf is visible from the fence: Jordan across the water on the left, Saudi Arabia at the far end on a clear day, Egypt on your right. Four countries meet within about fifteen kilometres, which is why the diving industry here is the size it is and why the airspace is complicated.

Granite, sandstone and no water

The mountains behind Eilat are the oldest exposed rock in the country — granite and gneiss formed about eight hundred million years ago, with sandstone laid over it later and then cut apart by flash floods. There is no spring, no shade and no phone signal in most of it, and in summer walking here between nine and four is genuinely dangerous: this is the hottest inhabited place in Israel. Four hours, a car to the trailheads, three litres of water per person, and tell the field school where you are going.

Eilat Field School · Start here, and not for the view: this is where you find out which wadis are closed. A flash flood in these mountains comes from rain that fell thirty kilometres away, in a catchment you cannot see, and arrives as a wall of water in a dry canyon under a blue sky. The staff know the forecast and the closures, and the advice is free.
Mount Zefahot · A two-hour circular climb that starts almost at sea level, which is unusual — most summits in Israel start from a plateau. From the top the view takes in the whole gulf and the town, and the rock under your feet changes three times on the way up: dark granite at the bottom, then a band of conglomerate, then pale sandstone.
Mount Yoash · You can drive to the top, which is the point: it is the easiest place in the region to stand and see four countries at once — Israel, Egypt, Jordan and, on a clear winter morning, the Saudi coast at the far end of the gulf. The road up is a graded dirt track and an ordinary car manages it in dry weather.
Red Canyon · Seven hundred metres of Nubian sandstone gorge, in places narrow enough to touch both walls, with iron rungs and handrails bolted in at the three drops. The red is iron oxide; the same formation further north is white, and the colour depends on how much iron the groundwater carried when the sand was cemented. It takes about ninety minutes and there is a one-way section.
Amram’s Pillars · Four sandstone columns standing in a dry valley, left when the softer rock around them eroded away. The stripes in them are not layers of different rock: they are bands of iron and manganese deposited by water moving through one single sandstone bed, which is why the pattern runs sideways across the pillars and not along them.
Shehoret Canyon · The walls here are almost black, and the rock is magmatic dyke material — molten rock that was forced up through cracks in the older granite and cooled underground, then stayed standing when the granite around it wore away. You are walking inside a crack that filled with lava eight hundred million years ago.

Copper, three thousand years of it

Twenty-five kilometres north of Eilat is the oldest industrial landscape in the region: copper was dug out of these hills from the fifth millennium BC, the Egyptians ran organised mining camps here in the fourteenth to twelfth centuries BC, and the slag heaps are still metres deep. The Victorian-era name Solomon’s Pillars has nothing behind it archaeologically, but radiocarbon dating published since 2013 has put a major phase of production in the tenth century BC — which put the argument back on the table. A full day, a car, and start at eight.

Timna Park · Copper here was not smelted from ore in a furnace you could carry: it needed charcoal, bellows and temperatures above a thousand degrees, in a place with no trees and no water. Everything — fuel, food, water, workers — had to be brought in, which is why the mining was done in organised campaigns by a state and never by locals. The park covers about seventy square kilometres.
Solomon’s Pillars · The name was given in the twentieth century and is not supported by any find. What is at the foot of the pillars is an Egyptian temple to Hathor, the goddess miners prayed to, built in the fourteenth century BC and used for about two hundred years — and when the Egyptians left, the local Midianites took it over and removed the images of the goddess, which archaeologists could see in the layers.
Timna Lake · An artificial lake in the middle of the park, which exists for a practical reason: before it was dug there was nowhere in seventy square kilometres to sit in shade, and visitors were leaving after an hour. There are pedal boats, a tent with mats, and sand you can fill a bottle with in coloured layers.
Samar dunes · The only shifting sand dunes in the whole Arava valley, about three square kilometres, and the sand is unusual — fine, clean quartz that blew in from Sinai. That is also the problem: the same quality makes it valuable for construction, and a quarry has been eating the dune field for years while conservation groups fight it in court. What is left is a fraction of what there was.
Hai Bar Yotvata · A breeding reserve set up to bring back animals named in the Hebrew Bible that had gone extinct here: the Asiatic wild ass, the Arabian oryx, the ostrich, the addax. The wild asses bred here have been released into the Negev since 1982 and there is now a wild population of several hundred, descended from animals that came from zoos in Europe and Iran.
Yotvata · A kibbutz founded in 1951 beside the only significant groundwater in the southern Arava, and its dairy is the reason every car going north stops here. The herd is kept in the desert, under fans and mist, which sounds absurd until you know that cows in dry heat get less disease than cows in humidity — the problem here is only temperature, and that can be engineered.

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Getting to Eilat and getting around

Ramon Airport · 18 kilometres north, and the old city airport closed in 2019
Central Bus Station · Five hours to Tel Aviv, book the seat, and nothing runs on Shabbat
Taba crossing · The Egyptian border is 10 minutes from the hotels, and there is an exit fee
Yitzhak Rabin crossing · The Jordanian border for Aqaba and Petra, and closed on Friday and Saturday

Cheap eats in Eilat

Eilat has almost no street food tradition, and the reason is structural: the city was built as a resort where most visitors eat half board in a hotel, and almost nobody lives in the centre. What there is instead sits along Hatmarim Boulevard and in the two mall food courts — shawarma, falafel, grilled fish from the port, and the dairy at Yotvata forty kilometres north that every car stops at. One useful thing: Eilat has been a free trade zone since 1985, so there is no VAT on anything here, and a meal is roughly fifteen per cent cheaper than the same meal in Tel Aviv. A full plate is thirty-five to fifty-five shekels.

Hatmarim Boulevard · 25 to 40 shekels, open till two, and cash is quicker
Lalo · About 45 shekels, a grill house locals use, and closed Friday night
Pastory · About 90 shekels, Italian, and it is the one that gets booked out
Giraffe · About 70 shekels, Asian noodles on the promenade, and open on Shabbat
Ginger Asian Kitchen · About 80 shekels, the lagoon side, and booking is sensible in season
Mall HaYam food court · 20 to 35 shekels, air conditioned, and open on Shabbat
Yotvata dairy · About 25 shekels, open on Shabbat, and the car park is full at noon
The Last Refuge · About 140 shekels, fish by weight beside the reserve, and book at the weekend

Nature and day trips near Eilat

Eilat is where three deserts, two seas and a continental rift meet, and the consequence is a place that is biologically much stranger than it looks. Coral grows further north here than anywhere on earth. Around five hundred million migrating birds pass overhead twice a year, funnelled between the mountains and the sea, because this is the narrowest point of the flyway between Europe and Africa. And the mountains are the oldest exposed rock in the country. Nothing here has shade or water, and in summer the outdoors is closed between nine and four.

Coral Beach Nature Reserve · 35 shekels, reef-safe sunscreen only, and nothing may be touched
Red Canyon · Free, 700 metres of narrow gorge with iron rungs, and 90 minutes
Mount Yoash · Free, reachable by car on a graded track, and sunrise is the hour
Mount Shlomo · Free, 705 metres, four hours up and back, and no water on the route
Shehoret Canyon · Free, black dyke walls, a 4x4 to the start, and no phone signal
Samar dunes · Free, the only shifting dunes in the Arava, and a quarry is taking them
Hai Bar Yotvata · From 49 shekels, 40 kilometres north, and the predator centre is guided only
Eilat Botanical Garden · 55 shekels, a rainforest grown on bare rock, and the only full shade in town

Things to do in Eilat with kids

Underwater Observatory · 139 shekels, a chamber under the sea, sharks and turtles, and three hours
Dolphin Reef · 79 shekels for the beach, and swimming with them is booked separately
Timna Lake · Pedal boats, shade, and the coloured sand bottles are the souvenir
Ice Mall · An ice rink indoors, open on Shabbat, and this is the plan for one in the afternoon
Migdalor Beach · Free, the reef is 20 metres out, and a mask is enough
Camel Ranch · From 120 shekels, a two-hour ride, and children ride with an adult
Gan Binyamin · Free, grass and shade in the middle of town, and playgrounds
Eilat Marina · Glass-bottom boats from 70 shekels, an hour, and the morning is calmer

Museums in Eilat

There is almost nothing here from before 1949 — the town was founded in 1951 on empty sand — so the historical interest is entirely outside the city: an Egyptian mining district twenty-five kilometres north, a Nabataean route, and the two neighbouring countries you can cross into in the morning and be back from by night.

Timna Park · From 49 shekels, the gate shuts at four, and a car is needed inside
Solomon’s Pillars · Inside Timna, and the sound-and-light show needs booking
Eilat Port · From outside only, and the view is from the promenade’s south end
Aqaba · A 40-minute crossing, a visa at the border, and closed Friday and Saturday
Petra · A long day from Eilat, a passport, and the entry fee is about 50 dinars
Wadi Rum · In Jordan, a jeep and a Bedouin guide are required, and the overnight camps are the point
Mitzpe Ramon · Two hours north, and the ibex walk the streets of the town
Shaharut · An hour north, a village of about 70 people, and camel treks leave from it

Live music in Eilat

Eilat’s cultural calendar is a festival calendar: the town is too small to support a year-round scene, so it imports one four or five times a year and fills every hotel room in the process. The Red Sea Jazz Festival has run since 1987 and is the serious one; there is also a chamber music festival in winter and a classical one at Easter. Outside those weeks, the live music is hotel bars and the promenade.

Eilat Promenade · Free, buskers and stalls from six, and it runs until midnight
Eilat Port stage · The jazz festival main stage is here in August, and tickets go in June
Eilat Marina · The bars around the water, open till two, and no cover charge
Ice Mall · The cinema and the rink, open on Shabbat, and this is the wet-weather plan
Mall HaYam · Open late, on the promenade, and the cheapest drink in the centre
Hatmarim Boulevard · Where the people who work in the hotels go after their shift
Dolphin Reef bar · The beach bar stays open after the dolphin activities end
The Last Refuge · Fish and a drink beside the reserve, and the terrace faces Jordan

Nightlife in Eilat

The night here is shaped by two facts: it is a resort, so the crowd changes completely every three days, and there is no VAT, so drink is cheaper than anywhere else in the country — a beer is about twenty-four shekels. Almost everything is on the promenade or in a hotel, it starts at ten and ends at two, and in the Jewish holidays the whole strip is one continuous crowd. Unlike the rest of Israel, Eilat does not stop for Shabbat.

Eilat Promenade · Free, the whole night happens along it, and it is busiest at eleven
Eilat Marina · Bars on the water till two, and the boats are lit
Mall HaYam · Open till late and open on Shabbat, and no VAT on the bill
Hatmarim Boulevard · The local end of the night, cheaper, and open till two
Pastory · Open till midnight off the promenade, and the wine list is the draw
Giraffe · Open late on the promenade, and the kitchen runs till midnight
Ice Mall · The late cinema, and it is the one indoor option after ten
Dekel Beach · The quiet end, a beach bar under palms, and shut by midnight

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Frequently asked questions about Eilat

What is there to see in Eilat?

The top sights in Eilat are Coral Beach Nature Reserve, Underwater Observatory and Dolphin Reef. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.

How many days do you need in Eilat?

Three to four days are enough to see the best of Eilat without rushing, including at least one walking tour.

Is there a free walking tour in Eilat?

Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Eilat, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: The northernmost reef in the world.

How do you get to Eilat and get around?

The main ways are Ramon Airport, Central Bus Station and Taba crossing. Full details are in the transport section on this page.

Where to stay in Eilat, and for how much?

sleepntrip shows only rooms in Eilat that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.

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