We awoke this morning with our ship headed south through the Suez Canal, about 20 miles south of Port Said.
Ship traffic in the canal is one way at a time between Port Said and Ismailia. Since the northern half of the canal is only wide enough to accommodate one large ship at a time, ships move through the canal in convoys, two southbound and one northbound each day. The capacity of the canal was recently doubled to allow up to 96 ships to move through the canal every day.
Three bridges cross the canal. They are the only land links between Africa and Asia.
Although many of us thought it might be boring to go through the 120-mile long canal at only 9 mph, the transit turned out to be fascinating. More and more people congregated at the front end of the ship as the morning progressed. We sat and watched the constantly changing panorama, with Asia (the Sinai Peninsula) to our port side, and Africa to our starboard (west).
As we headed south, the west side of the canal was marked by signs of everyday life: irrigation canals, donkey carts, mosques, loading docks, ruins of old Turkish forts, date palms, and silhouettes of cities in the distance.
In contrast, the Sinai side of the canal was almost completely devoid of any sign of human habitation, just sand dunes as far as you could see. The only exceptions were the occasional watchtowers along the canal. Each of those was a reminder of the strategic and military importance of the canal. It was sobering to recall that Israel and Egypt had fought with grim determination here only 45 years ago.
Let’s hope those days are behind us for good.
We exited the canal at about 4 pm. By now the flat plains of the Nile delta had become mountains in the distance on both sides of us.
Tomorrow we will be docked in Safaga and headed for an overland journey to Karnak and the Valley of the Kings.