Suez Canal 4 of 5

Throughout this interesting day, we saw a variety of everyday activities as well as some unusual and even comical sights from high vantage point on decks 10 and 14. Here are just a few of them.

We passed several small craft sailing beside or near our ship. They looked so tiny in relation to our huge vessel. Some of these craft were manned by fishermen with their mesh of nets piled high in their hulls. Other craft were tiny rowing boats with several rowers or small single-sailed low lying faluka-type craft that we once sailed on the Nile when we visited Egypt about 20 years ago. The crew of these craft often greeted us with friendly waves, shouts and much excitement, even though they were jostled about by the wake of our ship.

Due to the new tunnel-under the canal construction many trucks remove the mined sand onto ever enlarging sand mounds. When we came across a sand truck perched atop one of these mounds, we were astounded at how precarious an operation this must be fore these men with nerves of steel.

At another point along the canal where there was mainly desert sand hills lining the canal bankside, Ken and I noticed the movement of "some kind of animal" along the top of the sandhill and the these animals slid down the steep embankment right into the water. We assumed it may have been camels but when Ken took a telescopic photograph all was revealed. It was a gang of desert dogs seeking the coolness of the waters of the canal. We watched them for some time. They frolicked about and chased one another around the shallows and we wondered how they would climb back up the steep slopes. We guess that they'd done this before and that they'd probably wind their way back up in a zig-zag switch trail up the sandy desert slopes of the canal bank. Were they wild desert dogs or domesticated dogs belonging to a gang of canal workers camped nearby?

The other thing we noticed was that in the area of the newly created dual-canal section of the route we passed side canals that joined  the two canals ( these are not for general traffic but to provide access for emergency assistance to either canal routes). What we found weird was that when another ship or tall cargo ship was mowing in the opposite direction in the second canal all we could see was the top of the ship's mask or the top few rows of the cargo containers,  floating by behind the sandhills that are piled up between the dual canals. It was uncanny to imagine that the containers were moving through like a conveyer belt because we couldn't see the ship that was carrying the many tiers of containers on top