28.03.2016 Salalah, Oman

Oasis Clubbing

Off the ship at last. Salalah has not changed too much in seven years. In the morning I got a taxi into town and had a look at some tatty souks and a museum which had some good stuff about the history of Omani boat building and the frankincense trade and had acres of ruins of a 12^th century trading port called Zafar. The intrepid traveller Marco Polo visited the place in 1285. It is not known if Mr Polo got ripped off by the local taxi drivers as well or not. He will not have arrived by cruise ship.

I returned to the ship to get the Memsahib so we could eat some local food. The high taxi costs and the less than spectacular restaurant offerings in Salalah encouraged us to take the bikes instead and go for a swim at a nearby beach and then on to the Oasis Club. The Oasis Club is up a hill just outside the port. The intrepid travellers, Martyn, Tim and Steve, visited the Oasis Club in 2009 and it is still much the same. It is about the only place in Oman where you can buy booze legally. We had dinner there on the terrace overlooking the beach and then cycled back downhill to the port in the dark. 

29.03.-01.04.2016 At Sea

Parrot Watch

We sailed out of Salalah late at night and turned into the Transit Corridor around midday and formed up in a convoy of about five boats, judging from the AIS app on my phone. The anti-piracy measures remained unused as they were in 2009. Except we didn’t have any anti-piracy measures in 2009 and no convoy either come to think of it. Fortunately the pirates were too busy at the time clambering onto the Maersk Alabama and bothering Tom Hanks.

Along the way we had a visit from the German frigate “Bayern” which fired off flares as it passed to entertain our passengers. Apparently their Captain knows our Captain. The “Bayern” is leading the anti-piracy patrols just now in the Gulf of Aden.

There was no stopping in Aden for us as it is a bit nasty there and we whistled passed it at 20 knots then did a handbrake turn through the Bab Al Mandab and straight up the middle of the Red Sea. There is a lot to be said for coast hopping up the Red Sea but not in this kind of boat.

Just had to queue up with 2,000 other passengers for a Suez Canal Tourist Permit. I was just getting ready to hand over some Marlboro when I realised there was something not quite right with the officials. It turned out to be an elaborate April Fool prank. Hah hah.

In my ethnographic studies of the Germans I have found a new variant of the “territorial towel”. At meal times you can sit down at a completely empty table but 10 minutes later people will appear claiming that this was their place all along and now they want it back. Then they wait looking grumpy until you get the message. It is very effective and I’m sure a larger scale version worked very well with Poland.  

02.-03.04.2016 Jordan, Aqaba

Rum and Coke

Arrived in Aqaba and after some delays getting off the ship we picked up a 4WD and headed off to Wadi Rum village about an hour’s drive out of town. The scenery would have been spectacular but it was dark when we got there. Wadi Rum village is a scruffy place in the middle of nowhere and not a place you would want to spend the night in a car so it was a relief when Mohamed turned up in a truck and announced that his no-name brother would lead us into the desert to the Bedouin camp. It was all quite spooky but I kept an eye on the GPS to make sure were not heading towards another kind of camp, say in Syria.  The trip was off-road and around some mountains and we would never have found our way through without Mohamed’s brother. We arrived quite late and caught just the tail end of some music and dancing around the campfire and we were shown into a tent for some food. I had some roast lamb and rice which was good. I thought we might have been too late for food which was a concern as there was clearly no possibility of pizza delivery. Our sleeping tent had a double bed in it so it was not too uncomfortable apart from the lack of en-suite facilities. The desert night was cool almost cold and we sat outside for a while in some kind of Bedouin sheepskin dressing gowns and looked at the night sky. I can report that there are considerably more stars over Wadi Rum than most places.

The next day we breakfasted and oohed and aahed at the mountains and sand around us. Then we discovered that our previously arranged camel trek out of Wadi Rum village had been cancelled on us but fortunately we managed to arrange two more camels with the camp guy. Our guide went ahead in his truck and led us back into the wadi. Far away in the distance in the sand were three specks that, on getting closer, turned out to be two camels and their owner.  Our guide said he would take our 4WD on to the village and park it there and we could get it later. It was another spooky moment and I don’t think either of us thought we would ever see it again. We trekked with the camels through the wadi in Lawrence-of-Arabia style and got very sore bums. The camel walks with a pacing gait. That is they move their legs on alternating sides. Some say this is to stop their feet bumping into each other because they have long legs and short bodies. Personally, I think they are perfectly capable of moving like any other creature but they just do it to give camel riders a hard time. Our 4WD was in the village after all and we drove around the desert for a while and then back to Aqaba. We had  quick look at Aqaba Fort of Lawrence fame but it was still in pretty bad shape from the time we British had shelled it in 1916. Then on to the Mövenpick Hotel for a nice lunch at their beach restaurant.   

04.-05.04.2016 Suez Canal

Belly Dancing in Egypt

Overnight we left the Gulf of Aqaba and turned right into the Gulf of Suez. We passed several offshore oil fields which I have a slightly paternalistic feeling towards as my first ever job as a geologist, way back in 1975, was working on the BP/Deminex exploration rig that made one of the discoveries.

While we were passing Ras Gharib, the supply base I flew my first helicopter out of, I was struck down with a bellyache, almost certainly caused by a surfeit of lampreys and happy hour cocktails. I didn’t get to see the view as I was in the ship’s hospital hooked up to a drip and with the portholes shut to keep out pirates. This wasn’t intensive care and just an overly dramatic and Teutonic way to give me some paracetamol and antibiotics. All is well now.  

The Suez Canal was its usual fly-blown dusty self. We didn’t stop in Port Suez, Al Ismailiya or Port Said and popped out into the Mediterranean with open portholes. Contrary to popular belief, Giuseppe Verdi’s opera ‘Aida’ which premiered in Cairo in 1871, was not written to celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. Even so, I’m going to use it anyway as a cool link between the canal and the name of our cruise ship.

06.04.2016 Haifa, Israel

Dawn to Dusk

We arrived at Haifa early in the morning and made contact with cousin Dawn and Adam from Manchester who with amazing coincidence happened to be there as well doing some painting and decorating in an apartment they own in the city. They must have been busy with the brushes as they were a little decorated with white paint themselves. We went to a beach restaurant for lunch and had a drive around and then we gave them the grand tour of our ship.

In the evening we were off to Cyprus.