Suez, Egypt—Blowing through the Canal

Today we transited the Suez Canal. You don’t “go through” the canal, you “transit” it. So, here we are, meandering down the impossibly long canal (all in all about 140 miles) with mostly sand dunes on both sides. On one side is “African Egypt” and the other side is the Sinai Peninsula, or “Asian Egypt.” And everywhere you look there are guards and army outposts and pontoons for taking men and tanks to the other side, if necessary. The little guard shacks run the gamut from tiny one-man affairs that are simply a roof and three walls (sort of like a miniature bus stop) to large army barracks with all the facilities. Speaking of facilities: we sailed past one of the tiny outposts this morning and there was a lone fellow in an army uniform (big machine gun strapped across his shoulder) with his back to the ship. We thought that seemed odd, since many of the soldiers were waving and whistling at us as we sailed by—nearly all seemed pleased to see other humans, even if we were some 600 feet away. Anyway, here’s this guy with his back to us, and then we realized: he has no “facilities.” The desert (with no place to hide, not a scrap of bush or tree or even a rock) has to serve many functions for him. We thought it amusing that this fellow’s attempt to relieve himself has no doubt been immortalized by dozens of photo-snapping cruisers about the Pacific Princess. Ah, the Egyptians are big on immortality, but I don’t think this is what they had in mind.
We are steaming into a gale-force headwind, which is both good and bad news. The good news is that the ripping wind keeps down the number of flies—there are millions of them everywhere; the bad news is it’s impossible to stand out on the open decks (or even on our balcony) and watch the passing scenery, it’s just too darn windy.
I was expecting that later today we’d be going go through the locks in the canal. I’d seen the elaborate locks at the Panama Canal, and we had locks for boats to go through from Lake Washington to Puget Sound when I lived in Seattle, so I was excited to see what it would be like to go through the locks between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea in Suez. Wrong! There are no locks, because there is no change in elevation, and both the Red and the Med are salt water, so there’s no need for locks. So, there you have it. The Suez Canal is simply that—a canal. It has been the scene of many battles—between the Egyptians and the English, between the Egyptians and the Israelis (at least a couple of times), and between the Egyptians and the pretty much the rest of the world from time to time. After the Six Day War in 1967, when the Israelis took over the Sinai Peninsula (the east side of the canal) the Egyptians simply shut down the canal for eight years. Now, with Mideast oil being the lifeblood of this area, I don’t think the Egyptians could do that without incurring the wrath of their neighboring Arab countries.
We are still scheduled to go to Athens, Greece, for our next stop but most of us are wary. The situation there is calm for the moment but there’s talk of a big protest march scheduled for the day we arrive. We may have to stay aboard the ship in Pireaus, but there are certainly worse things than being detained in a place that has free food, a casino and a freshwater pool.
And yes, the packing has begun. We haven’t exactly messed with the U.S. trade balance in our souvenir purchasing, but we do have much more stuff than we started out with. The packing will entail a bunch of tough decisions—what goes in the trash; what goes in the “charity bin;” and what goes in the 50 pound suitcase. We’ve learned that American Airlines has become really cranky in enforcing their luggage policy and since nothing we’ve brought or bought is worthy of the hefty luggage fees, I figure the next couple of days will involve some difficult choices.