Suez Canal

When we went to Jerusalem on Friday, we had been told that we would be leaving at 10:00 a.m. We thought we’d have a nice relaxing morning before boarding the bus, not having to get up too early. Then the time was changed to 8:45. Okay, that was still good. We’re usually up early anyway, and that meant we wouldn’t be getting back so late. So, no worries. Then we were told that we had to go for an immigration check before the excursions began. That meant that we had to be bussed a short distance away so the Israeli officials could look at the picture on our passports, look at us, say “yep, that’s you!”, and then hand us back our passports. A little inconvenient, but understandable. Then we were told that our bus for the immigration check was leaving at 6:20 a.m. What??? We went from not having to be anywhere until 10:00 to having to be somewhere at 6:20. Oh, well, good thing we’re early risers.

When we were sitting on the bus ready to head to immigration control, a nice elderly lady from Australia sat next to me. She asked me where we were going and I told her “immigration control”. She said (with a straight face), “I supposed they’ll want to draw blood.” Since I didn’t know quite how to respond to that, she then said, “Don’t mind me; I’m a cynic.” After that we had a quite lovely conversation.

The entire day Monday was spent cruising through the Suez Canal. The Suez Canal is a civil engineering marvel that connects the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea, to facilitate traffic between Europe and Asia. There is an incredible amount of ship traffic that goes through the Suez Canal, much more than the Panama Canal. It is a source of great pride for Egypt, since they manage it (even though the French built it). It is a big revenue source for Egypt as it is very expensive to go through. For example, our Viking cruise ship was charged $333,000 for passage.

Because the canal is so narrow, there is only single lane boat traffic allowed. There are two lakes along the length of the canal which allow for north and southbound ships to pass each other.





The sights along the way were absolutely beautiful. It is pretty much all desert, with stark desert scenery stretching back into Egypt away from the canal. Occasionally we would pass small patches of palm trees making for a beautiful tropical scene. So our scenery today consisted mostly of desert, then desert with a few trees, then more desert. It sounds boring, but this desert scenery was absolute beautiful.  






At one point along the canal, there was a beautiful, huge suspension bridge crossing the canal, but an oddity about the bridge is that there was absolutely no traffic on the bridge. It looked like it was completed, but for some reason, no traffic. (With stark, barren desert on one side of the canal to the stark, barren desert on the other side of the canal, the bridge to nowhere, perhaps?)



Because of the narrowness of the canal, our cruise ship had to travel very slowly. We recalled the incident of the cargo ship that had gotten stuck in the Suez Canal a few years ago – you may remember hearing it on the news. It had turned sideways and no traffic could get past it. We could see how a ship turning sideways would definitely block pretty much the entire canal.

Here are some pictures of our passage through the Suez Canal.










Entering the Red Sea from the Suez Canal


Sunset on the Red Sea








Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Wadi Rum, Aqaba

Image
After leaving Luxor, we sailed north through a part of the Red Sea and then entered the Gulf of Aqaba. We sailed to the northern tip of the Gulf where we docked at Aqaba, Jordan. The Gulf of Aqaba is a body of water at the northern tip of the Red Sea, with the Sinai Peninsula to the west and the Arabian Peninsula to the east. Four countries share the coastline of this Gulf: Egypt, Israel, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Sailing through this narrow waterway afforded beautiful views of the stark, desert, rugged, mountainous landscape on either side.   On Wednesday, we took a trip into the city of Aqaba. From a certain location in Aqaba, you can see the four countries mentioned above, plus Palestine. The excursion took us to a place called Wadi Rum. The scenery along this drive was absolutely breathtaking: more desert but with the most beautiful, jagged, rocky, barren mountains jutting up steeply alongside the road. The rocks are mostly sandstone, with bands of granite running throughou...
Read more

Ruins, ruins everywhere

Image
Our hotel in Athens was in the heart of what is called the Plaka district. You can’t even tell from the outside that it is a hotel. There is just a set of doors set amidst other store fronts.  Our hotel entrance Our hotel room The Plaka district is in the shadow of the Acropolis, and has narrow cobblestone streets lined with stores, sidewalk cafes, coffee shops, etc. The streets are very narrow, and people walk in the streets (because the sidewalks are also narrow), but there is vehicular traffic occasionally. So you have to always be on the lookout for cars and especially motorcycles, who will run you down if you get in their way. (I think they are looking for a teacher!) View from hotel window Street view We got an early start this morning and were out and about the streets of Athens by 7 a.m. It was still  dark outside, and we were practically the only ones out walking around. It took us awhile, but we finally found a coffee shop that was open.  After a light breakfast...
Read more

Traversing the Mediterranean

Image
This is going to be a short blog today, as we did not have any excursions. Today was a travel day, as we traversed the Mediterranean Sea, making our way from Athens, Greece to Haifa, Israel. We had total sunshine all day, which made the sea sparkle and lended even more to the beauty of the view. We spent a relaxing day on board, for the most part. We spent some time sitting on the balcony enjoying the beauty of the Mediterranean.  I also located the fitness center and spent some time on the treadmill. The treadmills are set up so that you can look out the window and watch the Mediterranean Sea go by while walking off the gelato calories.  I also took advantage of a lull in the excursion schedule to do some laundry, not that we needed to do laundry so soon, but just taking advantage of the scheduled day off.  Viking offers guest lectures in the amphitheater, so I attended one called “Incidents of Travel in Egypt, Arabia Petraea, and the Holy Land.” It was interesting to se...
Read more