Been There Done That Too…

Suez Canal

// October 31st, 1996 // Egypt, Passage To Africa

This accomplishment of human engineering has been referred to as “The Big Ditch.” Very appropriate. There’s not much to see going through the Suez Canal, no locks, nothing mechanical at all. Just barren desert with an occasional ferry crossing.

Starting early in the morning the transit took around 12 hours total, because like most Canals it’s one way traffic, so at some point in time the traffic going your direction has to pull over and let the opposing traffic by. We were probably stopped for most of the afternoon at the holding area midway through the passage. There were several very nasty, crabby old ladies on board that amazed me – they were actually angry because the brochure said a “daytime transit” and we didn’t finish the transit until late evening. I guess they expected the Canal officials to stop all ships, and reroute traffic so we could finish our transit by sundown. While one reason I love cruising is meeting people, I could definately do without people like the nasty little old biddies mentioned above.

As far as I’m concerned, Twilight was the best part of the whole transit. We were getting toward the southern part of the Canal and there were some towns along the shores. As the sun went down all the Prayer Towers lit up in neon – it was great! One site that was interesting during the day was the memorial to the War over the Sinai – It was a giant statue of a bayonet.

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