Egypt – Port Said and the Suez Canal

Silver Wind skipped the planned stop at Sharm el-Sheikh due to the captain’s desire to keep an appointment to transit the Suez Canal. It appeared that the canal authorities were a bit vague about exactly when we would begin the transit.  Captain Arma wanted to be there to take advantage of the earliest possible transit time, that is to be close to the beginning of the northbound convoy.  When Michael made the Suez Canal transit twenty years ago, there were two convoys, one in each direction per day.  The canal is single-lane with passing places in the "Ballah By-Pass" and the Great Bitter Lake. There are no locks; it is essentially a big ditch across the desert from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. Michael's ship made a daylight passage and waited in the Great Bitter Lake for the southbound convoy to pass before his northbound convoy could proceed. Things have changed a bit now.  

We arrived in late afternoon at Port Suez at the south end of the canal .  Southbound ships were still coming out of the canal into the Red Sea.  We were told the northbound convoy would begin around 7 pm.  At the last minute, Silver Wind was assigned a spot in the middle of the convoy and did not start the transit until around midnight.  I woke up around 2 am and peeked out.  The ship was in the middle of the canal and I could see sand on the nearest bank.  Most of our Suez Canal transit occurred in the dark.  Michael and I both got up at dawn to watch the end of the transit.  The Silver Wind was motoring along at about 10 knots in a big ditch with desert on either side.  Cargo ships were visible in a line as far as we could see north.  More followed us to the south.  Gradually we passed small villages on the left.  We saw a commuter train go north and half an hour later another came south on the same track.  Every mile or so we passed guard towers built into a wall that protected the canal from approach by land.  All of the towers were manned by bored looking young men with machine guns.

Silver Wind, the only passenger ship that we could see in the line, diverted to Port Said as we reached the north end of the canal and docked at the same pier Michael and I had berthed at in the same ship in 2011 during our Mediterranean cruise.  Port Said was a little bit cleaner and there were no donkey carts in the street.  Otherwise it looked much the same.

Because of the traffic on the canal, we were not scheduled to leave for our next port of call until 7 pm. The original itinerary had Silver Wind staying in Port Said only two hours.  Now we were obliged to stay a full day.  The Tour Desk manager, Sylvia, had managed to arrange a tour along the canal to Ismailia, about half of the length of the Suez Canal away. Sylvia found a tour guide and hired a bus to take interested passengers to Ismailia from the African east bank across the Suez Canal to the east bank which mapmakers have technically decided is Asia.  Michael and I were eager to see another part of Egypt, especially places we had passed in the dark.

This tour convinced Michael that he doesn’t want to visit Egypt again anytime soon.  For the most part I agree with him.  First, there was an armed guard and a mysterious “Company Representative” aboard our bus.  We started out with a police escort.  Just outside the city, the bus stopped at a military or police checkpoint. The armed escort changed from a police car with siren wailing to a pickup truck with six or so very young men with automatic rifles.  Every few miles we stopped at another checkpoint and another truck with different young men with big guns took over the escort duty.  Secondly, the infrastructure was falling apart.  The roads were bumpy. The “peace” bridge, a beautiful modern bridge over the canal carrying a highway that  was to eventually connect Morocco in the west with Turkey to the northeast, was closed and had been closed for over a year.  Fear of terrorists coming into Egypt, our guide said. 

Our bus drove through Ismailia and stopped at a tiny museum.  We were allowed forty minutes to wander the two rooms and small yard all containing artifacts, mostly thousands of years old, some more modern that had been excavated near Ismailia.  The museum was mildly interesting but nothing in comparison to the Valley of the Kings, Luxor or Giza.  The most intriguing aspect of the stop was the way the armed soldiers blocked off the street as if they expected terrorists to appear from any direction any minute.  It didn’t make us feel safe.

The tour bus next took a small ferry across the Suez Canal to the “Asian” side.  We visited a monument to the Egyptian “victory” in the Yom Kippur War of 1973.  This revered national monument, a 100-foot rifle barrel with an attached bayonet, is falling apart.  We were also taken to a recreated Israeli bunker supposedly captured by the Egyptians during the war. Unfortunately, the equipment looked like odds and ends of WW II military surplus and even the signage did not make sense.  We did see lines of earth moving equipment and dredges busy at work widening the Canal.  Our guide proudly stated that the work was being done by Egyptians, not foreigners.  The Egyptian army was providing the labor and expertise to get the job done in just one year.

Our tour was running late due to all those military checkpoints.  The  gentlemen supervising the tour (the armed guard, the mysterious company official  and the driver) decided to try crossing the Peace Bridge as a shortcut back to Port Said.  We drove along a well-paved two-lane road along the east bank of the canal until we reached the approach to the bridge.  These gentlemen got into an animated discussion with the armed soldiers guarding the bridge.  Words were exchanged.  Money changed hands. All to no avail.  We were not allowed to cross the bridge. The tour bus, instead, hurried to make the last evening ferry back to the west side of the Suez Canal.  Fortunately we were somehow able to cut the line and get on the ferry after a scary looking armed individual checked our passports and, I think, accepted a gratuity.  We weren’t going to make it back to our ship by the advertised 7 pm sailing time.  Nothing is efficient in today’s Egypt.

Even the Suez Canal Authority cannot efficiently maintain the ship traffic on the canal.  Instead of two convoys a day, now there is only one in each direction and they all regularly run late.  Captain Arma was told we would leave Port Said at 7 pm but the northbound ship traffic did not finish until well after that. We were finally cleared to depart around 10 pm.

Michael and I felt sorry for, yet admired our tour guide.  She showed us the things there were to see.  Her narrative was good.  She kept to the fine line between official propaganda and telling us what she really thought about current events.  She allowed that the “glorious victory” in 1967 was the taking of one hill on the east side of the canal.  She failed to mention that Britain and France had pressured the Israelis to pull back and not cross the canal.  The saddest and most alarming point she made was that because of the chaos after the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood, ordinary Egyptians just wanted safety and stability. They were happy to elect General Sisi president and return to a military dictatorship. Michael’s and my conclusion is that Egypt will continue to stagnate.  The army is the employer of last resort for male youth.  Women are being marginalized.  The authorities can’t even seem to run the canal effectively and that is their main source of income.  Tourism is sure to decline further.  The outlook is not good.