#ITS STILL WW WEDNESDAY ON THE WEST COAST

[tsunosagun]

calm before the storm

[awintersail]

Jordan, Egypt and the Suez Canal

April 26.  Once again I am playing catch-up with the narrative of our journey.  We are now sailing from Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy to Algiers, where will will spend a very short day tomorrow, our second consecutive brief stop. We only had six hours in Cagliari, but we used it well.  Yesterday and Tuesday we were berthed in Valletta, Malta, our first European port of the cruise.  Originally, we were to spend only one day in Malta, but the Tunisia port call scheduled for Wednesday was canceled for security reasons, and we picked up an additional half day in Valletta.  We had heard about a month ago that Tunis might be skipped, so it was not a surprise.  As described later, Malta was very nice, so it was a fine place to devote some extra time.

But, not to get ahead of the chronology, back to Jordan and Egypt.  The fact is that we didn’t see much of Jordan except  Petra and the ride through the desert and mountains to and from it.  We docked in Al Aqaba, at the end of the Gulf of Aqaba, which is Jordan’s only coastal city.  It is 4000 years old, but looks fairly modern and is taking advantage of the tourist opportunities afford by Petra and Wadi Rum.  Wadi Rum is where T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) and his Arab army camped before launching a successful attack to drive the Turks out of Aqaba in WW I.  The city shares both land and sea borders with Eilat, Israel to the west, and there is a busy border crossing point here.

It is a 3 1/2 hour drive to Petra, much of it through pretty desolate countryside of sand and jagged rocks.  We climbed to an elevation of 5000’ before descending to Petra at 3000’.  When you get there it is easy to see why only the Bedouins knew it was there until the early 19th Century.  Petra was created by the Nabataeans around the 3d century BCE.  It was positioned on a major trading route, and is thought to have been occupied by 20k people.  Now, it is Jordan’s most visited tourist site

It is about a 2 mile walk from the parking area to the places shown in the pictures.  The route is through a narrow, winding path known as the Siq.  At the end of the Siq, the spectacular Treasury comes into view.   Because the tombs of Petra were carved into sandstone, and because the area formerly was subject to annual flooding, many of the original features have been worn away by wind and water, but it it remains a marvel of ancient craftsmanship.  We were fortunate that it was cooler than normal and with a breeze on this day.

From Jordan, we sailed access the Red Sea to the port of Safaga, Egypt on the west coast.  Safaga was the departure point for our trip to Luxor (Thebes in the ancient world), The Karnak Temple, and The Valley of the Kings.  Again, this was a long drive from the port, but took us through the fertile Nile River valley in addition to many miles of uninhabitable desert.  In Egypt, only the Nile valley and lands irrigated by canals from the Nile, are arable.  This constitutes only a small percentage of the country, and means that the population of 98M is concentrated in Cairo (20M), Alexandria (5M) and the other cities along the river.

Like India, Egypt has more people than it knows what to do with, half of whom are under 24 years old, and many are unemployed.  Also, there are far more males than females in the youth population.  Not a good situation.  One solution appears to be to include them in the security forces.  It is not an overstatement to say that armed men were almost everywhere.  Most of the time, we had police escorts of heavily armed men including plain clothes men with prominent firearms protruding from their blazers.  It avoided traffic jams, but we did not know whether we should feel more safe or less safe because of the security.  Tourism is an extremely important (17%) part of the economy, and an attack on tourists would be extremely bad for business.  But was this merely an excess of caution (or of armed men) or was there need for concern?  I suppose if you hire all the men most vulnerable to recruitment by jihadis, you will reduce the number who are tempted to challenge the military rulers.

Our weather luck did not hold at Karnak and the Valley of Kings.  It was hot and hotter; reportedly 105-110F.  At least 2 people from the ship passed out from the heat.  Despite the heat, this was the best ruin I had never heard of.  This site is 4000 years old, and is remarkably well preserved, given its age.  It is the largest religious building ever built.  Comparing it to Petra shows you the difference between sandstone and granite.  Much detail remains and many of the hieroglyphs have been translated.  Truly amazing.

After Karnak, we crossed the Nile to the Valley of the Kings.  It is a huge complex of underground tombs, only some of which have probably been found.  The ancient Egyptians always placed burial grounds on the west side of the Nile, because that is where the sun sets.  The Pharaohs abandoned pyramids and began creating underground tombs when they realized that a pyramid was mostly a large  marker announcing:  “grave robbers, here’s what you are looking for”.   This dodge only worked a little better, which is why the discovery of King Tut’s tomb at this location in 1922 was such a big deal.  It was still intact and the treasures were undisturbed.  There has been nothing like it, before or since.  Tut’s mummified body is displayed n the tomb, as is one of the sarcophagi which covered him.  The remaining items are in the Cairo Museum which we visited 2 days later.  Photography is not permitted in Tut’s tomb, but the other 3 open sites can be photographed.  They include colors which were applied 3500 yers ago and are still bright.

On the next day we took a break from the heat and snorkeled in the Red Sea at Sharm el-Sheikh.  As advertised, the fish and coral here were beautiful: far better than The Great Barrier Reef.  Sharm, as the natives call it, is quite beautiful, and used to be a favorite beach resort for Egyptians and Europeans.  It has a casino and many hotels of all prices.  And, it is pretty affordable.  Unfortunately, in recent years the political instability and fear of terrorists has kept many tourists away.  Our snorkel guides said business is starting to rebound.

The entire day on Friday (April 20) was spent going through the Suez Canal.  Because there are no locks, and the surrounding countryside is mostly desert, this was not very interesting.  We did see the new part of the canal which was recently opened to permit two-way traffic in a portion of it.

On Saturday, we docked in Alexandria, and immediately departed the ship for another all-day bus ride to Cairo, the Pyramids at Giza, and the Sphinx.  Giza is on the west side of the Nile opposite Cairo.  As you might be able to see in the pictures, the city has crept to within a few hundred yards of the Pyramids. Despite the ever-present garbage in Cairo, the historical sites are pretty-well kept, at least by developing world standards.  However, like everyplace we went in Egypt, there were hundreds of people trying to sell us “stuff”, or camel rides, or donkey rides, or offering to take our photo for a tip.   Everything was “a dollar”, until you agreed to a dollar and then the price went up.  These places finally put me into vendor overload.

The Sphinx is right next to the Pyramids, so it did not take long to see it.  It is undergoing restoration, which is partly completed.

As noted earlier, we went to the Cairo Museum, which will soon be the old Cairo Museum.  It is filled with antiquities, but the big attraction is the King Tut display which occupies a large part of the second floor.  Pretty nice.  Lots of people were here but we could have used a couple more hours to see it all.  

Between the museum and our visit to Giza, we had lunch on a Nile River cruise boat as it motored through Cairo.  Lunch was good.  We had 4 police escort boats.  Like I said, lots of security.

Egypt shows signs of entering the world of developed nations but still has a long way to go.  Literacy among the young exceeds 90%, Internet access is widespread, and college graduation rates are high. However, there are no jobs for those graduates.  Birth rates are still too high.  And to make a bad situation worse, 135K Syrian refugees have come to Egypt.  On the other hand, in the rural areas, horse and donkey carts were plentiful, and people were harvesting wheat by hand.  It is as if the 21st century is struggling to emerge from the 19th century.  

That’s all for today.  More soon on Malta and Sardinia.