Safaga, without the Pharaohs
Safaga is the Egyptian port closest to Luxor, the Valley of the Kings, and all the other great ancient temples/tombs in Egypt. However, facing a seven hour round-trip drive trip to Luxor from Safaga, we first signed up for the overnite trip, which would give us about 3x as much time to see things. But the tour filled up, no additional hotel rooms available to expand the tour (it was Easter weekend). We stayed on the ship – not all bad, given that we could barely move after our Petra death marches. So close but so far! We'd been up the Nile back around 1991; a long time ago perhaps, but while we feel more "ancient" than when we were 30ish, the antiquities have hardly aged a bit... we reckon.
We instead entertained ourselves watching the huge lines of Egyptian overseas workers getting off ferries from Saudi Arabia, each man bringing about a pickup truck load of purchases back with him – TVs were the most popular, along with furniture and the odd bathtub.
Safaga as a city seems to exist solely to service the port – there was nothing really to see or do. We'd asked one of the ship staff about city services. She laughed and grimaced a but then said, "Well, walk to the port gate and turn left".
With three days in this industrial port (once we could walk again) we did venture out and visited a local neighborhoods in search of cabin staples: tonic water. Dental floss. Excitement. Turns out that dental floss availability is pretty spartan in developing countries. We had been searching since Mauritius – Seychelles, Maldives, India, Jordan – and struck out. Then, lo and behold, we stopped at a pharmacy in Safaga to a med Scott needed, and chanced to ask if he had any dental floss. A single dusty package lurked on the pharmacy wall. Fortunately, floss does not carry an expiry date.
Kathy had her magic bubble blowing kit, which drew an old man and a teenager wielding a bloody cleaver as well (the local butcher...). Somehow we ended up in a mobile phone shop, taking endless photos of the couple who ran it, and they of us as well as of a couple of random people who came in (all using our camera). They downloaded the pictures we had taken onto their computer, and they returned the favor by transmitting a computer virus to our memory card.
Scott Seeks Some Sharm-el-Sheikh Sharks, Saddened
Ras Mohammed National Park in the Red Sea, lies about 10 miles from Sharm el Shiekh. Scott ever keen for scuba-dive opportunities, had been chomping on the bit to submerge through all our island ports. So we decided to do this spectacular dive in Sharm, even though we knew it would be expensive.
Somehow, through all the various levels of translation between the ship, the Port Agent, etc. etc. we ended up with a mediocre shore dive in defective gear, around thoroughly dead coral in cold water about a km from the ship. And, they imposed a 20% surcharge on top of the already exorbitant fees. This was not our best day.
Suez Cruez
Port Suez is the nearest port to Cairo, and most passengers went there for a visit. Cairo is a crazy place; we were there together for a couple of days back in 1990, and Scott several times on business since. It hasn't improved. We couldn't see the 3.5 hour each way bus ride, so we stayed on the ship, recovering from our dive debacle. We had the place to ourselves.
The excitement for that day was the shipload of camels that pulled into port next to us at dusk – they were stuffed onto the top deck , standing placidly and chewing their cud, or whatever it is that camels do when they're hanging out on ship decks. We have no idea where they came from or where they are going. But, camels are still a big deal in this part of the world – I suppose it isn’t any different than shipping cattle from one farm to another. Think of it: the "ship of the desert" on a ship in the desert. Hmmm.
The following day was our turn through the Suez Canal. Unlike the Panama Canal, there are no locks needed to raise or lower the ship – it’s straight through, mostly with boring desert on each side. More interesting are all the pontoon bridges at the side of the canal, ready to be set up by the Egyptian Army in case of invasion. Recall that Israel captured the Sinai Peninsula, including the Suez Canal, back in the late 1950s. There are many websites that discuss this (here's one) but they are remarkably polarized -- either Arab or Israeli focus. Interesting reading the contrasting points of view.
Palling around with Terrorists in Lebanon
We were a bit surprised that a cruise ship would go to Lebanon. Wasn’t there just a war here or something? Assassinated Prime Ministers and the like? Well, that was about three years ago, and things seem to have stabilized for now. We were torn as to what to do – see Beirut, once "Paris of the Middle East", or go see more of the country. We ended up taking a tour out to Baalbek, the grandest of the Roman ruins in the Middle East.
Up over the mountains that surround the city, our bus took a couple hours to the Bekka Valley. Does that name ring a bell? Besides being the home of the grand ruins, it is the home base of Hezbollah, the group who’s shelling of Israel started the last war. I thought this might be worrisome, but our guide was nonchalant about it – they are just a political party here, the anti-Israel party, they won’t bother us. Election time was nearing, and there were the yellow Hezbollah posters and flags everywhere. Nonetheless, we passed through half a dozen police checkpoints between Beirut & Baalbek.
The valley itself was delightful – a very rich agricultural land situated between the Lebanon & Anti-Lebanon mountain ranges. There were semi-permanent Bedouin tents everywhere – they are the local area’s migrant workers. The Bekka Valley, besides being the home of Hezbollah and vegetables, is also the car junkyard for the entire country – huge lots full of junked cars. (Many of the cars on the road should have been in those yards, too).
The Bekka Valley was a major crossroads in ancient time, and the Romans really wanted to impress. So they built this supersized temple complex, most of which is in ruins but one of the “minor” temples is still standing. This was our first lecture on the layout of Roman cities, a topic which we were to become oh so familiar with over the coming days.
Baalbek was indeed wonderful & massive (as was the local lunch we were served afterwards).
The Long LONG Road to Damascus
If we were surprised to be allowed into Lebanon, we were doubly so, to be allowed into Syria. Aren’t they a junior member of the Axis of Evil or something? We were delighted to be given a chance to visit. Our port of call was the nondescript town of Tartous – gateway to the city of Damascus, another 3.5 hour drive away.
As Lecturers on board, we are able to “escort” tours – record arrival/departure times, evaluate the guide, judge how people enjoyed the tour, check to see the restrooms are clean, etc. In exchange we tour for free (often saving $100 or more), or at least one free/one discounted. Scott was set to escort a bus, and Kathy was travelling as a paying passenger on his bus. But, at last moment, another escort cancelled, and Kathy volunteered to escort that bus, a decision she will long regret.
The area around Tartous is surprisingly green, with the vegetable farms fields, goats, and Bedouin tents. It wasn’t long, however, until we climbed up into the desert-like mountainous area. But, the most exciting action was happening inside Kathy’s bus. The ship’s tours are generally excellent (and their cost in commensurate). But, in a non-touristed country, no amount of money can buy competence if it doesn’t exist. The guide on our tour was a high school English teacher who did guiding “on the side”, a theme we'd encountered elsewhere in the Middle East.
He (let's call him Mohammed, because there's a 75% chance that was actually his name) was a decent fellow, but had obviously never guided more than a handful of people. There is a real art to being a guide for a bus full of older passengers, we've seen both extremes in this competence, and this fellow had no idea. The guide gave none of the usual background information on the culture, history, etc and we were reduced to asking him questions, trying to elicit the least shred of information (usually unsuccessfully). To make matters worse, many of the bus seats were broken, the tray tables wouldn’t stay up, the windows were cracked and dirty, and most crucially of all, the bathroom was out of order.
Finally, after a 3.5 hour ride, we reached Damascus, and headed off to the National Museum, which contains incredible artifacts from early civilizations. Unfortunately, they are in a rather random order, and labeled primarily in Arabic. Our guide did try to explain a few things, but the acoustics were so terrible, it was impossible to understand.
It was becoming ever apparent that the guide had no idea how to manage a group of 30+ seniors, some of whom walked slowly, some who couldn’t hear well, and most of whom (being British) had definite ideas of what they wanted to see and at what pace. It wasn’t long before people were scattered all over the museum (half of them looking for the toilets). And they had to all be gathered together again in 45 minutes, to reboard a bus that was three blocks distant. At this point, Kathy realized what a tough day it was going to be and pondered what evil she'd done in a past life, to deserve this ordeal.
Meanwhile, Scott had a more experienced guide (but more scheming, as he was soon to learn). His major problem was that one of the elderly passengers failed to re-join the bus after the museum tour. A 45 minute search located her on a different bus, wondering where everyone else was. Returned to the correct bus, she was chided viciously, accused of not caring about the rest of the tour, "you do this all the time!" one fellow passenger chortled. Hell hath no fury worse...
Next, it was off to the walled Old City of Damascus. The old city is like a combination of being transported 1000 years back in time, with the ambiance of Harry Potter’s school supplies shopping trip. Magical. Our first destination was though the covered souk. Tourists don’t visit here. There are no t-shirt shops. The women are all fully covered, dressed in black. There are shops full of long, tight sequined gowns (what *do* they wear under those black robes?!), shops selling gold jewelry, shops selling velvet & sequined curtains and bedspreads. The buildings look thousands of years old (because they are). We found a video somebody made while walking through: check this out, then imagine doing it with 5 times the crowd, while attempting to herd three dozen elderly cruise ship passengers in various levels of vexation.
Emerging from the souk, and after some amount of confusion, it was decided we would have lunch before we visited the grand mosque, which required trailing through curvy alleys and backstreets, with Kathy trailing behind the slowest walkers, trying to keep them from getting lost. Scott’s group had arrived much earlier, because the scheming guide hadn’t let the group go shopping in the souk, because he knew a “special store” that had “everything” (which, it turns out, he and his wife operated. What luck!)
Unfortunately for him, there was a senior member of the ship’s staff on the tour, whose specific goal was to acquire port-related handicrafts from the souk, to add ambiance to the ship’s cabin redecorating. She read him the riot-act at lunch, and he grudgingly behaved after that. Middle Eastern men just love being bossed around in public by assertive women. OK, actually this is a lie.
Next stop was the mosque, where women tourists were guided to the “putting on special clothes room”, where foreign women had to don a full length robe & hood (even if we were already properly covered). The mosque was huge and old, full of families having picnics in the courtyard & hanging out in the mosque itself.
Old Damascus is very crowded, the streets twisty and narrow, and it became exceedingly obvious that the guide not lacked group management skills, he had no interest in even trying. At this point, Kathy took on her sheepdog role, trying desperately to keep the group together, accommodating people who walked too slowly to keep up, those who wanted to shop instead of tour, a woman who’d left a bag back in the restaurant, another woman who thought she had to buy a cane then and there. "Like herding cats".
Then it was off to the old palace, now museum. Most intriguing was the “mother-in-law” room, where the matriarch ordered her daughters-in-law around. From the palace, we headed off, group miraculously still intact, to some famous chapel or another. By now, the passengers were nearing exhaustion, being on their feet for most of the last five hours. Our “guide” dashed off through the winding streets, and Kathy trailed behind the ever-slowing laggards. And then it happened – the guide disappeared, and Kathy was lost in Old Damascus with two slow-walking passengers and the ship’s photographer. Without a cell phone, without a clue of where the guide was headed to, and without a map. At least we were lost in an interesting place – on Straight Street, a street so old it was mentioned in the Bible. Incredibly interesting, medieval stores (in both construction and content) with sidewalks less than two feet wide, and the road not much wider. We knew the next stop was a church of some type, so we began visiting all the churches we found, including a beautiful big Greek Orthodox one that was having choir practice - but no tours.
At this point, I admonished my companions that we would never find the bus, the ship would depart, and we would all be forced to become the minor third wives of a hairy, smelly old Syrian men. This motivated us to keep searching. We eventually borrowed a cell phone from a local and called the guide (who, to his credit, had given us his cell number). He gave us incorrect instructions on how to reach him, and we wandered around for another half an hour. Another call, and we finally reconnected just as it was time to board the bus for the 3.5 hour drive back.
We arrived home after more 14 hours, mentally and physically exhausted.
Scott, Kathy, and the ship’s handicraft buyer went immediately to
complain about the guides to the shore excursion officer – who was
puzzled at our reports because all the passengers had reported having
a wonderful time! (Because of all the Escorts’ hard work, not the
Guides').
Incompetent guides notwithstanding, we really, really liked Syria.
Everyone is very friendly (it's the Arab way) it is endlessly interesting,
and few tourists to spoil the view. Even fewer Americans – a highpoint
of the day for Scott was when he found himself in a narrow alley
surrounded by teenage Syrian girls on a school excursion. Once they
learned he was American, he became a rock star – everyone wanted
a picture of him, their picture with him, to bask in his presence.
It has been a long time (actually never) since Scott was a surrounded
by a flock of 16 & 17
year-old girls finding him the most interesting male within 10 miles.
He rather reveled in it.
So, where were the terrorists? We had a clue on a couple of occasions when we were chatting with the guide or with locals about the government. In Jordan and Lebanon, people were willing to talk about politics. In Syria, everyone refused. “The government makes those decisions. There is nothing more to say”. People apparently still "get disappeared" in Syria, hence the reluctance. Still, we felt very safe there – one nice thing about a visiting a police state, is that they keep a lid on crime and terrorist activities in their own backyard. As long as you don’t anger the government, you’re perfectly safe. But it can’t be much fun to be a local.
We got back to the ship around 10pm -- about 15 hours "door to door".
Lounging in Lattakia, Syria
Lattakia was the port of call for Aleppo, the second largest city in Syria, and reportedly even more interesting and medieval than Old Damascus. It was also a 3.5 hour bus ride. We detect a theme. We, however, spent the day on the ship, recovering from the prior day’s trauma. That tour was to leave at 6:30am.
Next up: Turkey.
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