Trevor & Jonathans Cruise & Trip to the Far East and Australia 2016

Day 9 - Wednesday May 18th 2016 - Suez Canal Passage

So can you guess what we did this morning?

Ten out of ten if you guessed that we headed up to the windjammer for breakfast and then headed down to Starbucks for the morning coffee ritual.

The big difference though was that we woke up travelling down the Suez Canal, a real marvel of engineering and a scar on the world that really shows how man can really change the earths landscape (in a good way in terms of the benefits to movement of goods etc.)
The first thing that hits you as you travel down the Suez is the differences between the port and starboard sides.
One is relatively green and lush with vegetation and oasis and visible towns where as the other is an industrial desert. The Suez underwent some serious work over the last few years that now allows for two way traffic and it is this desert that separates the two lanes of the Suez Canal. Work is still clearly going on as you pass many trucks and diggers and all other types of

machinery moving sand around.

As you looked across the sands that were sometimes piled high making manmade sand table top hills you would sometimes see the huge container ships passing up the Suez on the other side. You would see not see a ship just hovering containers passing over the top of the sand line. There was a constant stream of container ships but surprisingly we saw no tankers pass us by which was quite a surprise seeing you would expect to see the black gold being transported on mass from Saudi Arabia and Iran and Iraq.

We spent much of the morning gazing out over both sides, passing the many security stations that line the Suez, passing underneath just the one very impressive bridge and watching the old flatbed car ferries load up taking workers and lorries across the short journey.

Whenever you went past a security point you would see sentry boxes with guards from the Egyptian Army manning them complete with machine gun in arms. It makes sense all this security. The effect on world transportation if the Suez got closed would be major and it was comforting to see so many guards and stations. The downside of this of course is the fact that in modern life you even think about terrorist attacks in the first place, It’s just become normal thinking and that’s sad.

As the Suez became pretty much the same we left our conscious lookouts and retired to some sun loungers up on deck 15. It was a hot one today so we did not stay out long but we always found ourselves looking over the side, seeing as the views changed, watching the other boats pass by.

After lunch (ate far too much) Jonathan developed a stomach ache (too much food) so he headed for the cabin and read and finished one of his books for the afternoon again whilst gazing out of the balcony watching the landscape of the Suez pass us by. Trevor went for a swim and then we headed down for an afternoons coffee again always looking out at the landscape around us.

The Suez opens up into the Suez lake roughly half way through the journey and then goes back into a channel until finally you make it into the Arabian Sea and the last landmark, the town of Suez itself. Lines of ships wait out in the Lake and at sea waiting to enter into the Suez, container after container after container ship. Our entry into the Suez had actually been delayed so once we were clear and in the ocean again the captain really put the throttle on to get us to Jordan. You could really feel the change in pace of the ship and this was by far the fastest we had been since being on the boat.

It was time to go back to the Silk restaurant for dinner and the message must have got around about our poor service yesterday as tonight everything from the food to the wine and most importantly the service were absolutely bang on and they even came to our table to check that we were happy with everything so let’s hope that this keeps up.

We walked the decks after dinner as tonight the ship was having a black and white pool party up on deck 14 but to be honest we were only there to stretch our legs and walk off a little bit of that full tummy feeling. The party itself was normal cruise fare with a live Latin / Caribbean flavoured band and the ships entertainment staff trying to get the gusts to take part in choreographed dance moves from line dancing to Saturday night fever disco moves…we left deck 14 and retreated to the piano sounds of Laurence and the Schooner Bar.

Whilst sat having a drink Martin & Michael stumbled upon us and we all sat together and talked the night away until midnight. We all had an early start tomorrow so after one drink we all said good night and headed for bed.

Tomorrow was hopefully going to be the cruise highlight day in terms of excursions and a good night’s sleep was needed. The captain had informed us that due to our late entry into the Suez everything had been pushed back by an hour so we actually did not need to worry too much as we did not need to be at our meeting place until 09:15 but call it an age thing, we were ready for our bed.