The Amazing Suez Canal

Transiting the Suez Canal

I recall hearing about the Suez Canal when at primary school, although like many topics it was a passing reference soon tucked away into the depths of memory.

Now, 60 years later, I have a signed certificate attesting to the fact that I have transited the Suez. And what an interesting experience it was.

The ship upon which I am a captive for 37 days, the Sapphire Princess, dropped anchor in a 'waiting bay' at the south-eastern entry to the canal at about 5 pm. Twenty or thirty other vessels were at both the northern and southern extremity leaving a clear pathway through the middle for those ships exiting the canal.

Within an hour or so we saw several vessels leave the canal, a couple of ships carrying enormous numbers of containers packed about six or seven high, and a fully enclosed vessel indicating it was an autocarrier - probably full of nice new BMWs and other European cars heading to someone's market.

The Captain of the Sapphire Princess told us we were queued until about 4 am the next day when we would head into the canal.

By very early morning, the televised ship cam in our stateroom indicated dozens of people had gotten up at an indecent time to watch the canal entry. They were crowding the front decks of the ship.

It was a tad early for us, but after an half hour or so, we succumbed as we couldn't sleep anyway. There are 2,500 people on board and I swear they were all on deck.

The Suez Canal is of course, an ingenious invention intended to cut thousands of kilometres off travel. It surprised me to hear from the Captain that it costs $625,000 USD for the Sapphire Princess to pass through the Suez. However, compare that with the cost of salaries, fuel and time taken to come around the Horn of Africa and it's probably a lot cheaper. Egypt is making a fortune from the canal that was designed and created by British engineers working from an idea initially suggested by Napolean Bonaparte.

Egypt earns about 3 billion USD per annum from the canal.

The tidal influence in the canal isn't great, so fitting in with tides doesn't seem to be a problem. The width and depth are sufficient for the largest vessels and the walls of the canal are lined with rock works intended to prevent erosion. On each side for most of the 197 miles, there are piles of sand - like sand dunes that run parallel with the canal and indicate that it is regularly dredged to ensure its depth.

Also along both sides of the canal are regularly spaced Egyptian Army pill boxes, each containing an armed soldier. Many of the soldiers simply stand on top of the sand hills and each side has soldiers perhaps at one kilometre intervals, protecting Egypt from an invasion from who knows whom, because both sides of the canal is Egyptian territory. Maybe they think someone will attack from a ship in the canal, which is why the whole canal has a fence perhaps 100 metres from the canal edge behind the mounds of dredged sand.

When we reached the city of Suez which we were told has 750,000 people there were dozens of apartment style buildings running for many kilometres parallel with the canal. I saw a huge power station, probably with diesel electric generators pumping out very high voltage electricity judging from the huge insulators and power lines.

Along some parts of the canal there are installations in the water that appear to be for unloading oil as they consist of large pipes and swing arms that look like they are used for connecting to a ships outlet ports. Storage tanks appear on shore.

Towards the northern end of the Suez, there is a large lake through which the Suez has been installed, reducing the amount of work cutting out the terrain.

We exited the canal early afternoon and set course to Athens.

This is another experience I can add to my Bucket List.

Robin

Dimensions: The canal is 193 km long, 24 m deep and 205 m wide.

Aqaba, Jordan

Aqaba is a pleasant enough city in Jordan several hundred kilometres from Amman, the capital. Jordan is a very small country known officially as the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and just happens to have within it's bounds a remarkable place called Petra, an area inhabited thousands of years ago by Nabateans who cut buildings into the local sandstone creating some stunning, symmetrical designs, the one called the "Treasury" being most often shown on travel brochures.

There is much more of course than the travel brochures show. Also, Wadi (Arabic for river) Rum is within a stone's thrown of Aqaba and Amman and a popular tourist spot because of its natural beauty.

As we had visited both Wadi Rum and Aqaba some years ago, we didn't see much sense in paying to visit them again, so we did a a one hour taxi tour of Aqaba driven by a very nice man called Ibrahim.

Ibrahim took us to some ancient ruins that we wouldn't have seen if we had eg, taken the open top bus tour of the town, which was twice as expensive. We also visited a Thursday market where locals buy their fruit and vegetables each week. It was nothing flash, just a lot of people in an area selling foodstuffs from the back of trailers, utility vehicles, boxes and so on. The produce all looked fresh and enticing, especially the huge apples and smallish bananas, a couple of which we tasted.

Our first stop a was Mc Donald's outlet (yes, even at Aqaba) where we bought a cup of coffee so we could use their internet which was much better than that provided on the ship. We paid some bills, updated some apps and wrote emails to the family and a few others. Thank goodness for Maccas!

After our tour with Ibrahim, we walked about the township for an hour or so and decided to return to the ship. Christina had bought a couple of pairs of cheap tights and a black shailer to put over her shoulders.

One of the most interesting things about our visit was Ibrahim showing us an area of many hectares that had been purchased by the UAE royal family in which it intended to build a modern accommodation suburb complete with hotels and shops.

It's a huge area and will probably use tens of billions of the UAE's oil money. From what Ibrahim said, I'm not sure that all the locals are impressed with the idea, but in reality there is nought they can do to combat money.

Robin

Salalah, Oman

Unfortunately, the Sapphire Princess only berthed at Salalah for five hours so we didn't bother getting off.  By the time we would have disembarked, we wouldn't have seen much of the area and it would have been time to head back to the ship.

We visited Oman frequently while living at Al Ain and have been to Muscat, the capital, but not to Salalah, which is said to have some lovely countryside. Maybe another day we'll get to spend more time there to explore the sights.

Robin
Heading for Aqqaba, Jordan