Our very first cruise was through the Panama Canal. A trip of lush green forests and beautiful scenery. Years later, we are now traveling through the Suez Canal; an interesting time to travel this waterway with lots of sand and no lush green forests. The Suez Canal is a trip through Egypt, but no matter how high I went on the boat, I could not see the pyramids. So, that's still on my bucket list.
The Suez Canal is 79 feet deep.
Ships go through in a convoy. Our ship had to park in the Red Sea overnight and then travel through starting at 6:00 am the next morning. Cruise ships have a priority but military transports are always first. We followed a US military supply ship. There are up to 48 ships per day that travel through and on our day there were only 30 ships in our convoy.
About every quarter mile, there is a military guard post. Usually only one side is a developed community and the other is sand, sand and more sand. Our ship was quite wide and we had only about 20-30 feet on each side leeway. A tug has to accompany every ship and when the wind was blowing, we were almost sideways in the waterway; don't know what a tug could do for us if we did get side-to-side stuck.
Anyway, it was a very interesting day sitting in the dining halls and decks and watching the sand banks go by.
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