Grand Africa Cruise - Suez Canal Transit

Cruise Day 19

Friday, October 28, 2022

“I am not the same having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world.”      -- Mary Anne Radmacher

 Today we are making a transit of the Suez Canal.  The north end of the canal starts at Port Said on the Mediterranean Sea and runs 120 miles south to the City of Suez where it ends at the Gulf of Suez.  It utilizes four lakes along the way although I only noticed three of them; I think the forth may have been near Port Said as we passed there in the middle of the night.  The Suez Canal was completed in 1869 and has been heavily used ever since.

Val and I were up several times during the night to check outside to see whether we had started through the Canal.  The captain said it would be sometime between 4:00 and 8:00 AM.  We woke up around 6:00 and we were already in the canal.  We spent a little time on the balcony before going back to bed.  We got up several more times during the early morning before finally getting up for good around 8:30.  After getting cleaned up I went out on the balcony to take some pictures and then decided to go out on the Lido deck at the rear of the ship to see what was happening on the other side of the ship.

Our first view of the Suez Canal after the sun had risen.

One of the first things we noticed about the canal was that it was kind of like a big ditch.  Unlike the Panama Canal, there are no locks so the Suez Canal is just a long channel.  On the west side of the canal is the low lying Nile River delta the east side is the more rugged and arid Sinai Peninsula.

The first part of the Suez Canal had two channels allowing ships going north to use one side and south on the other.  It then goes to a single channel until after the Suez Canal Bridge (the only highway bridge across the canal for its entire length) and then splits back into two channels.

Our balcony faced the east side so there wasn't much to see except desert and a few compounds that looked like government or security buildings.  When there were two channels there were also roads and connecting channels that went between the two channels.

The other side of the ship (the side we couldn’t see from our balcony) had much more to see as there were cities and roads along the way.  It was much more interesting than I thought it would as we passed under a very high, highway bridge and past some huge swinging railway bridges.  They were so big you could see the one on the other channel.

This is the only highway bridge across the Suez Canal and it links Asia to Africa.  We have just gone under it, I was inside and missed seeing us go under it.

I returned to the room and Val and I went to get our breakfast and then I decided to go out to the bow of the ship and see what was happening from that viewpoint.  Val thought it was getting too hot and decided to stay on the balcony, but when I got out on the bow it was very pleasant with a nice breeze.  I texted Val and after a while she joined me, but unfortunately, the breeze lessened and the sun got higher in the sky and we both decided it was too warm to stay.  The other bothersome thing is the flies, they were swarming everywhere and very annoying.

Rather than trying to describe everything we are seeing I’m just going to do it with pictures.

Looking back north.

The canal goes to two channels after the highway bridge.

We were surprised to see small boats out on the canal next to the large ships.  It looked like most of them were fishing.

Showing off his catch.

We have just passed into western channel.

I believe ships were put in groups to make the canal transit.  I believe we were the first in our group and you can see the next two behind us.

 

 

About the only thing we saw on the east side were these groups of buildings that looked like some kind of canal traffic control stations or something like that, but that's only a guess.

This was quite a large group of buildings and even had some trees.  I have no idea what they might be used for.

These are some views of the west side of the canal.  You can see how much greener it is and more populated.

I was surprised to see this car / truck ferry emerge from the canal between the two channels.  Since there is only one road bridge, these ferries must be the only was of crossing without having to drive to the bridge.

The ferry is docking on the west side of the canal.

The swinging railroad bridge, it is the longest swinging bridge in the world.

The swinging railroad bridge on the eastern channel.

The bow of the ship was opened up for our Suez Canal transit.

This seems like an odd place for a welcome to Egypt sign, but there must be some reason.

This is the Battle of Ismailia Monument in the form of an AK47 with bayonet commemorating the casualties of the Battle of Ismailia in the 1973 war with Israel.

This is Timash Lake, one of the lakes the Suez Canal uses.  The city beyond the lake is Ismailia.

This is the Defense of the Suez Canal Monument dedicated to the defense of the canal against the Ottoman (Turkish) army during World War I.

Val and I took a break from our balcony and headed off to the Lido for lunch.  On the way back I stopped by the Neptune Lounge and canceled our excursion we had planned for Safagar, Egypt.  It was a great tour to the Valley of the Kings and Karmak plus lunch on the Nile, but they are a long way from the port which meant a thirteen hour day with two 4-hour bus rides.  Safagar will be the forth port day in a row and will be right after our overnight trip to Petra, which will be two more long days.  We just don’t know whether we will have the energy to go on another long trip the next day.

We debated long and hard as to whether to cancel or not as this will probably be the only chance we’ll have to see the tombs, statues and structures of ancient Egypt, but I think we made the right decision.  After not traveling much for three years and now being in our mid-seventies, we are definitely beginning to feel our age and we have a long cruise ahead with many more ports to visit.  Now back to our Suez Canal transit.

The twin canals ended at Great Bitter Lake and we sailed by several ships going in the opposite direction.  From the Great Bitter Lake we passed into the smaller Little Bitter Lake and then the last twenty miles of the canal and out into the Red Sea.

We are leaving the area of the dual channels and sailing into the largest of the lakes on the canal, The Great Bitter Lake.  As you enter the lake, there are berms that separate the north and south bound ships as they enter and leave the dual channels.

Looking back at a ship entering the northbound channel.

The lake has quite large number of ships that appear to be waiting.

We leave the Great Bitter Lake and enter the Little Bitter Lake as, you might guess, was much smaller.

We spent most of our time out on the balcony and passed the place where the ship, The Evergiven, got stuck and made headlines for several weeks.  There were dredges and equipment there and they were widening the canal as they didn’t want a repeat of that disaster.

We weren't quite sure what this was, but we guessed these were trucks backed up waiting for a ferry to cross the canal.

This is the area where the Evergiven was stuck and that pipe running out of the canal is from a dredge.

You can see the silt from the dredging shooting out of the pipe into the settling ponds.

This is the dredge they are using to widen and deepen the canal.

As we approached the end of the canal, I decided to go out on the bow again, but the views weren’t very good there so I went back to the Lido Deck and watched us sail out of the Suez Canal and into the Gulf of Suez from there.  At the end of the canal is the large city of Suez and just like at the other end of the canal, there were a lot of ships waiting their turn to go through.

We have reached the city of Suez and the end of the Suez Canal.

The city of Suez.

The end of our Suez Canal transit and we sail out into the Gulf of Suez.

 Our journey through the Suez Canal was a lot more interesting than I thought it would be and we ended up spending a lot of the day out on our balcony or on deck watching our passage through the canal.  It was early evening as we left the canal and the city of Suez behind us and sailed into the Gulf of Suez.

After dinner and the casino, it was another early night as we will be getting up early for a tour tomorrow in the Egyptian city of Sharm el Sheikh.