Category: Travel

We docked at al-Muttrah port in Muscat just after sunrise this morning. We took it easy yet again today, with a brief driving tour of some of the sights of the city. Our drive first took us past the new opera house. Sultan Qaboos is an organist and lutanist. His world-class opera house opened in 2001, and it houses the Sultan’s own symphony orchestra. I wish we would have had time to stop by there. It was a beautiful building, and there is a large shopping mall and arts center behind it. We stopped at the new mosque, another of the Sultan’s projects “for the enrichment of the Omani people.” It’s the country’s biggest mosque and can house thousands of worshippers at once. The landscaping around the mosque was tasteful and colorful, with hundreds of neatly-planted shrubs flowering in many hues. As we noticed in Salalah, the streets in Muscat are spotless. Our guide Khalid explained to us that cleaning crews work three shifts...

Today we berthed at Salalah, a port at the southwest corner of Oman. After 4-1/2 days at sea, our ship needed to refuel, and we were all eager to get off the ship and stretch our legs. Salalah’s weather was very different than what we’ve experienced on this journey so far. We left the hot-and-dry of Egypt and Jordan for the hot-and-incredibly-humid of the Red Sea. Salalah, in contrast, was in the low 80’s today and a little humid, but not oppressively so. They’ve just come off a rainy spell from the Indian monsoons, so the local vegetation was a nice healthy green. The city was very clean and not at all crowded, even though we had come at the start of rush hour. Salalah is a relatively unknown spot for Western tourists, but it is a popular summer getaway for residents of the Arabian peninsula. In July and August, when temperatures easily exceed 104°F (40°C) in cities like Riyadh or Dubai,...

Our trip from Aqaba to Petra on August 28 traversed a land rich in both modern and ancient history. As we started north from Aqaba, the highway ran just to the west of the mountains bordering the Wadi Rum. This area was made famous by the 1962 movie Lawrence of Arabia. Many recent movies have been filmed here, too, including Prometheus and The Martian. It has become a popular tourist destination for rock climbing, camping, four-wheeling, and camping. Our route then joined up with Jordanian Highway 35, which follows the ancient King’s Highway that ran from Egypt to Damascus. This route has been in use for more than 5,000 years. It was a trade route long before the Israelites used it for their exodus from Egypt. Along the highway is Mount Nebo, the place where Moses was said to have first seen the Promised Land and where he was buried. From our bus, we could also see Jebel Harun, which is topped by...

Petra has for years been at the top of the places we’ve wanted to visit. We were so excited about going on the trip that it completely overshadowed any complaints we had about having to meet up with our tour group at 6:10 a.m. I’ll write more about the journey between Aqaba and Petra tomorrow. For now, I’ll concentrate on our visit to this UNESCO World Heritage Site. As we approached the modern city of Petra, our guide Hamzeh told us, “You will hear me say at times on the tour, ‘This man has excellent souvenirs that you may wish to buy.’ When I say that, I am lying. I am saying that only because we have to appear to show support for the local merchants. If you see something you wish to buy, let me know and I will tell you the best place to find it and the price to aim for in your negotiations with the seller.” We appreciated...

One of my minor bucket list items was to snorkel in the Red Sea. I got my opportunity today. Our ship was docked at Sharm el-Sheikh, which has blossomed into a sparkling new resort town at the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula. Instead of yesterday's visit, where we saw structures built 35 centuries ago, nothing in Sharm is older than 35 years. We had been asked to submit our shoe size in advance to ensure that we had the right size swim find on board. Of course, the process turned out to be a totally haphazard jumble of the ship's hands tossing flippers around to everyone to see if anything fit. But we were underway soon enough. Our first stop took us to the south side of Ra's Nazrani. Here the reefs came very close to the surface in spots, and our guide led us through a maze between the coral outcrops. There were at least 10 snorkeling boats anchored side by side...

Another 3-1/2 hour bus ride today, this time from the port of Safaga on the Gulf of Suez to the city of Luxor on the Nile River. In the first 90 minutes of our trip, we crossed the Eastern Desert. Large barren outcrops of granite gave form to a lifeless countryside. The only vegetation I saw was the occasional clump of grass on the desert floor. There was no plant or animal life on the hillsides. If it weren’t for the occasional security checkpoint, you’d think the place was completely uninhabited. As before, traveling on our bus was an armed policeman from the Ministry of Tourism. Then we approached the city of Qena, and suddenly we were in the fertile valley of the Nile. We turned south along a road that paralleled the east bank of a 19th century irrigation canal, through a distinctly rural area that looked as if it hadn’t changed too much in the last 200 years. Date palms...

We awoke this morning with our ship headed south through the Suez Canal, about 20 miles south of Port Said. Ship traffic in the canal is one way at a time between Port Said and Ismailia. Since the northern half of the canal is only wide enough to accommodate one large ship at a time, ships move through the canal in convoys, two southbound and one northbound each day. The capacity of the canal was recently doubled to allow up to 96 ships to move through the canal every day. Three bridges cross the canal. They are the only land links between Africa and Asia. Although many of us thought it might be boring to go through the 120-mile long canal at only 9 mph, the transit turned out to be fascinating. More and more people congregated at the front end of the ship as the morning progressed. We sat and watched the constantly changing panorama, with Asia (the Sinai Peninsula) to our...

Today was our longest excursion to date--13-1/2 hours, about half of which was spent on the road coming or going between Port Said and Cairo. The highway south from the port paralleled the Suez Canal for about 35 miles. We passed groves of date palms and mango trees bursting with ripe fruit. Vendors parked their donkey carts laden with fruit and vegetables at random spots along the shoulder of the highway. We passed many pickup trucks transporting families. Kids waved at the buses as our convoy passed by. I say "convoy" because our buses traveled with police escort throughout our excursion. A plainclothes policeman sat in the front seat of the bus. When he stood up at one point, I noticed an Uzi holstered under his jacket. Egypt's economy depends heavily on tourism, and the country is taking extraordinary measures to ensure that tourists are kept safe. We passed one beat up old pickup truck in which two women dressed in full abbayas and...

One of our adventures in Haifa yesterday was putting ourselves at the mercy of the city’s taxi service, since we had decided to strike out on our own rather than taking the group tour. I’m an Uber guy at home. I like to know in advance what I’m paying, and the question of money never comes up with the driver. Taxis in Athens were a pleasant surprise, as the drivers were extremely friendly and the fares were very cheap. I neglected to ask before getting into the taxi at the port at Haifa how much the ride to the tour meeting point at the Baha’i World Centre was going to cost. I only had a $20 bill on me; I hadn’t had a chance to get to an ATM. A ride of that distance in Athens would have been less than 10 Euros. After all, we could see the place from the port! When we arrived, the driver said, “Twenty dollars.” A...

Hello from Haifa, the first stop on our voyage. It’s my first time in Israel, and I’m very glad to have had even a short time to see this remarkable country. Our bus tour on August 22 took us to Jerusalem and Bethlehem. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, although I’ve certainly seen many photos over the years. Perhaps my first surprise was seeing stretches of the border wall between the Palestinian territory and Israel as we motored south along the highway to Jerusalem. Our guide, Elie, explained that Israelis see the wall as not to keep people out, but to protect people in Israel from arms fire coming across from the Palestinian territory. I pause here to mention that as with anything you hear about the Middle East situation, you have to take into consideration the frame of reference of the person who’s telling you the story. Everyone is telling you their truth. Reality is far too complex to be...