The main reason I was excited to take a cruise from Athens to Dubai was that we'd get to sail through the Suez Canal. I mean, how often does that come up as an option, right? Because it's a vital global trade route? Because it's an engineering marvel? No. Because it's like a lazy river ride but for giant ships!
Unfortunately, once we were on the ship, it looked like we’d be sailing through the canal at night. Noooooo!!! But in the end, we got to do it during the day. Yay!*
It's an 11-hour journey through a 120-mile waterway connecting the Mediterranean and Red Seas, linking Port Said in the north to Suez in the south. Essentially, it's a huge aquatic conveyor belt. The canal has no locks because both seas are the same level, making everything so much easier.
But first, some history. Connecting these two seas has been on humanity's to-do list for thousands of years. But it took a French diplomat, Ferdinand de Lesseps, to finally manage it late in the 19th century. The Egyptians had managed to build a not-quite-Suez-Canal in the 17th century BCE.** It took 10 years to build, and it opened on November 17, 1869.
While the canal was technically the property of the Egyptian government, British and French “shareholders”*** owned the “concessionary company” that controlled it until Egypt “nationalized”†† it in 1956. Today it’s owned and operated by the Suez Canal Authority,††† a division of the Egyptian government, itself a wholly owned subsidiary of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
But back to us…we set out from Port Said (which, if you follow my Insta, you know Rick and I decided to call “Port Sad”), passing the parts of the city we hadn’t seen yet (admittedly better than the parts we’d already seen), along with the first of many car ferry ports. As the city fell away behind us, we started to see the small towns and the fertile farmland that lines the canal's western side, looking like a vintage tourism postcard.
The other side, though, is purely rugged, dusty desert with the occasional monument or military structure popping up. Seriously, not a lot was happening over there. If the western side is Mother Nature’s lush, green-carpeted front yard, the eastern side is her cat’s litter box.†
Just before the halfway mark, we passed two very cool and very different bridges.
The Mubarak Peace Bridge (or the Egyptian-Japanese Friendship Bridge, Al Salam Bridge, Al Salam Peace Bridge, or just plain Suez Canal Bridge—how many aliases does one bridge need?) is a road bridge that crosses the canal at El-Qantara (which has just the one name, but it means “the bridge” in Arabic, so it’s not a very creative one). It was built with assistance from the Japanese government and was completed in 2001. No surprise, it’s a toll bridge. And the toll has to be paid in hard currency, like dollars, pounds, or marks. No surprise, no one uses it.
The other bridge is the El Ferdan Railway Bridge, which was also completed in 2001. It is the longest swing bridge in the world.º The bridge became non-functional in 2015 when they expanded the canal by adding a parallel shipping lane just east of the bridge. In 2021, though, they built a second swing bridge spanning the new eastern shipping lane, so trains can now cross the canal again. Yay, trains!
A regular canal transit—like for cargo ships—takes two days with an overnight stay in Ismailia. So, a pilot comes onto the ship in Port Said and takes the ship about halfway down the canal. Then, a different pilot takes the ship the rest of the way the next day. Cruise companies have, oddly, very little interest in spending an extra night in Ismailia.ºº Transiting the canal in one day is possible, though it’s considered a special service.ººº So our ship traded pilots while on the move, and we kept going.
Ships transit the canal in convoys so they can maximize traffic. There are a few spots where northbound and southbound traffic can pass each other—a few lakes and parallel lanes—but that requires a lot of careful choreography. And, you know, Egypt. So, you know….
Every ship is accompanied by two tugboats in an effort to prevent another Ever Given debacle. All of that means that our ship had to go reeeeeaaaaalllllyyyyy slow. I think the captain was going nuts.
But, hey, his frustration made for our photo ops! Life along the canal is fascinating. The fishermen seemed completely unfazed by the gigantic ships. There are car ferries all along the way, darting about like water bugs in a pond. The trains go by on the west side, and I imagined every one contained Gal Gadot in a repeat "Murder on the Orient Express" situation.
But the enforced snail's pace means we did not, in fact, reach the end of the canal by bedtime. For us. Which is roughly 5:30. But it turns out all we missed was a giant lake enticingly called the Great Bitter Lake and the city of Suez, which I understand is about as appealing as Port Said. Apparently, once out of the canal, the captain put the pedal to the metal, so we woke up many, many miles south in the Red Sea, completely missing the Gulf of Suez, in the city of Safaga in the Red Sea (which, if you follow my Insta, you know Rick and I decided to call “Port Sadder”).
So there you have it, folks. Our grand Suez Canal adventure. I loved Every. Single. Minute. And Rick loved, erm, the drinks I ordered sent to his pool chaise. Opposites attract, right? Right?
* We were scheduled to depart Port Said at something like 11 p.m. But there was apparently a LOT of negotiating and back-and-forth with the canal agents and canal pilots. There was a lot of foot-dragging accompanied by non-committal answers while the requisite "gifts" were procured and delivered to all the various officials involved. Because Egypt. Then, when the right gifts were humbly accepted, it was super unclear when the pilot would actually show up. First, it was 6 a.m., but no. Then 7. No. Then 8. He finally showed up at 8:30, walked onto the bridge, clapped, and said, "Let's get going! What are we waiting for?" [eye roll] As the captain said, “You never know what’s happening in Egypt until it’s happening.” Truth.
** Damn. Think about that. I'm terrible at math, but I think that's a span of 3,500 years. Or something. What were you doing 3,500 years ago? Probably sucking on a pacifier and not building a globally important trade route, I bet!
*** I’m a little rusty, but I believe that’s French for “colonizer.”
† C’mon…are you really surprised that she’s a cat lady? I thought that would be obvious.
†† “Nationalize” is a fancy word for when the government suddenly fancies itself as a bit of a business tycoon. It's like one day, the government wakes up, looks in the mirror, and thinks, “You know what? I could run that railway (or bank, or oil company, or Suez Canal) WAY better than you can. Besides, we could use the money to quiet the restive masses.” So instead of investing in the business, the government just moves in, says, “We'll take it from here, thank you very much,” and packs you off to work on a collective farm in Outer Mongolia. It’s a bit like your cat deciding he owns your sofa. One minute, you're sitting there comfortably, and the next, you've been nationalized by Mr. Whiskers, who now declares your sofa part of Greater Felinopia.
††† A company known for being very, very bad at creating logos.
º You know there has to be a great joke in there somewhere, but I’m running out of steam with all these footnotes. Maybe someone could leave a really clever one in the comments section.
ºº Famously known as the "City of Beauty and Enchantment," though I think that’s really just “famous” in central Egypt. And only in a 75-mile radius. (I’m back!)
ººº Which may explain all those "gifts" up in Port Said. Though, now that I say it aloud, I just know there had to be a whole 'nuther round of “gifts” in Ismailia.
Write a comment