Egypt

As I write this, we have left Egyptian waters and are heading for Athens. Considering that we had some "problems" in Egypt and didn't really see that much - we took more photos there than anywhere else on
the trip. I will send separate posts regarding our visit to Sharm El-Sheikh and our transit of the Suez Canal - and attempt to attach a representative sample of the photos we took there. It won't be easy for me. For anyone following Oriana's world cruise on the P&O webcam, you would think that the stopovers in Egypt had gone to plan. Overall it has - but unfortunately, in Egypt nearly all ship's shore tours were canceled with very late notice which has caused a lot of unhappiness among some passengers. For us, we had closely studied the timings and durations of the shore tours before departure - and always suspected that their feasibility was very marginal at best.
I believe that it basically all started after we left Mumbai - when the Captain advised us that we had almost 3000 miles to go to Sharm El-Sheikh at an average speed of around 22 knots. Now this is quite close to the maximum speed of the ship - and left very little room/time for any problems should they arise (which they always do). We found our 3 day cruise across the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea to be very pleasant, relaxing and smooth- the heat and humidity of Asia being left behind. I regard myself as reasonably educated in world geography - but must admit that after we turned into the Red Sea, I was surprised by my
realisation of the length and width of it and how long it took us to get to the Sinai Peninsula. It wasn't as interesting a passage as I had imagined - but we started to see a lot of commercial shipping the
further up the sea that we went. Our problems started as we approached the port early in the morning . We had encountered quite strong headwinds (Force 5) overnight - and the ship would arrive one hour late
(not too bad really considering the length of the preceding passage) . Sharm El-Sheikh is mostly known for it's beach resorts/swimming/snorkelling and the world's oldest Monastery right in the middle of the mountains of the Sinai desert. The shore tours involving the beaches had already been canceled as the beaches had been closed due to some shark attacks and the death of a German tourist. Then our slightly late arrival caused the shore tour to St Catherine's monastery to also be canceled. You might not think that a delay of only one hour would cause this - but remember that it was essential that the ship leave on time that evening to be able to make it to Suez by around 3AM on the next day to offload passengers going to the Pyramids. With that disappointment on every-bodies mind (at least on those intending to visit the Monastery), then at the end of day when we were departing the Sharm El-Sheikh harbour, it immediately became apparent that something was not right - the Captain subsequently announced an anchor retrieval problem which would take some time to overcome and the following day's shore tours to Cairo and the Pyramids were canceled. I fully appreciate the problems involved in scheduling visits to ports in this area - caused by a combination of the fact that there is a lot of driving time to get to the famous local sites at places like Safaga, Sharm-El-Sheikh and Cairo (all subject to serious security issues) and compounded by the scheduling problems associated with passage through the Suez Canal (which is vitally important to subsequent cruise timing/planning). But, if cruise lines are to visit these areas and allow their passengers to experience the world famous wonders in the area, they really need to allow more time in the area - either that or don't bother stopping at all but simply sail through the Canal.  In this particular case, P&O, in my view,were trying to kill two birds with one stone - to get those passengers who wanted to see the Pyramids to the Cairo area while those who wanted to see the Canal were transiting it. Sounds good in theory - but I wonder how often it works out well in practice. Please P&O - plan all future cruises in this area to stopover in Port Said rather than Port Suez - and allow all passengers to transit the Canal and visit the Cairo area as well. The planning/scheduling for this cruise was, in my view, deficient from the beginning - and if the Red Sea headwinds and the anchor retrieval problem had not occurred, something else would have interfered with the very tight scheduling of this part of the cruise.