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Sharm el Sheikh
I do not understand why we sailed past this point on the tip of the Sinai Peninsula coming from Aqaba and went down to Safaga first before sailing back across the Red Sea to here. We docked early this morning and watched the hordes of folks get off to see the sights—mostly going to the sandy beaches and looking at marine life and coral reefs from boats fitted with glass bottoms out of Na’ama Bay. That is what we planned to do here, but we were pooped from the long day, heat, and exertion from the previous day, and stayed on board to nap and read and recover.
As you can see from the photo, Na’ama Bay is close enough to walk to if you were willing to walk a mile in over 90-degree temps. We watched several small parties walk that way and gave them our best from the 10
th deck.
In the evening, when we pulled out of port, we could see small boats using the old fashioned Egyptian type sail still out fishing and oil platforms sitting in the Red Sea.
The Suez Canal
We were
awakened at 3:30 am in the morning as 3 pilot boats came along side of our ship and put the pilot onboard in the Gulf of Suez. Apparently, 3 pilots will be used between here and Port Said located at the entrance to the Canal on the Mediterranean Sea. As I have said before, the opening they use to board is right under our stateroom, so we couldn’t miss them.
Woke back up at 6:00 am and by this time, you could see both sides of the canal that looks like a big 100-mile long ditch dug in the desert. It isn’t wide enough for two ships to pass but can accommodate our ship and a tug or pilot size boat alongside. With this much water, you would think that lots of things could be grown along here.
Eventually, we did came to communities and farms on the western bank of the canal--nothing much at all was on the eastern side of the canal along the whole length except a road with bright burnt orange military/police check points. Red helmeted men with rifles were posted every block or so, on the west side. Could not tell if they
were police or military, but they were also up on top of bunkers that were also strung fairly solidly along this side of the canal. They were much more frequent than we have seen on any border, but of course, Israel only withdrew from the Sinai in the early1980’s and the canal was the disputed border between the two counties.
We passed by a variety of pontoon boat crossing places that I think are kept ready so that the canal can be crossed quickly if needed. Here and there you could spot rusty debris from old wars in this area. Two bridges, one a railroad swing-type bridge and the other a suspension bridge, have been built recently to cross the canal; otherwise, occasional ferries cross back and forth. A couple of memorials have been built on the Western bank to honor fallen war veterans.
When we got to the Great Bitter Lake, the ships coming from the north were waiting for us to get through so, they could continue south. 3 convoys, of 19 ships a day, go through the canal; one north and two going south. In the water along the shallows and edges of the lake
were men stooped over harvesting something. We could not tell what it was, but guess it was something like clams or snails as they seemed to be digging something out of the wet soil.
About 3:00pm we crossed out of the canal and into the Mediterranean Sea. Port Said could be seen on the Western Bank in the thick smog and a number of huge cranes stood on the opposite bank.
Headed quickly into open water, bound for Alexandria in the morning.
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