Saturday reflections

This one has been sitting in the folder for a while—the no longer used El Ferdan Railway bridge in the Suez Canal.

Street photography, Suez style

I tagged this as “street photography” because of the man who was just standing outside, using his phone, with probably no awareness that a nosy tourist on the passing ship was taking his picture.

I love to capture faces and scenes of daily life, and although I know that this is something photographers have always done, I am also always uncomfortably aware of how intrusive it is. This isn't some official record of the world, and nobody asked me to document it.

But I do it anyway; I sneak pictures when the subjects aren't looking, even if I feel a little like a thief for doing it. We call it “taking” pictures after all.

Another way across the canal

A car ferry, docked on the delta side.

I'm not sure I would have the nerve to take a boat across the canal with all of those big ships aiming for me.

The delta side

El Ferdan closeup

Looking through the span of the El Ferdan bridge on the Sinai side.

The Sinai side

The delta versus the Sinai

One thing that became more pronounced in the southern part of the canal was the difference between the two banks. On the western side is the Egyptian mainland, and the Nile delta. There are a lot of trees, and most of the cities are on that side.

On the eastern side is the Sinai. It's rocky desert similar to what I remember from Iran. It looks barren and seems sparsely inhabited.  

Egyptian dream continued, plus bridge

Another favorite picture. The El Ferdan railway bridge no longer functions since the canal expansion, but it used to be the longest swing bridge in the world. I would have liked to see it in action.

Dreaming in Egypt

These are some of my favorite pictures from the canal. The misty weather didn't last long, but it was like floating through a dream.

You can see how the canal becomes wider below the Friendship Bridge; a series of islands divides the northbound and southbound channels.

A change in the weather

It had clouded over, and by the time we got to the Friendship Bridge, it was drizzling a little. That gave an eerie, ghostly look to the water and the other ships (this is looking back at our faithful tugboat and number two ship in the convoy.)

The Friendship Bridge

The Egyptian-Japanese Friendship Bridge (also called the Mubarak Peace Bridge) opened in 2001. It links Africa and Asia across the canal.

It's not just the convoys

Some of the many fishing boats working the canal.

Entering the canal

The canal is one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, so I was surprised to learn that an average of fifty ships pass through it every day—I would have guessed more. Now that I've actually seen it, though, that number makes sense. It takes about twelve hours to transit the canal, and there are three convoys a day, two going south and one going north. The section of the canal right below Port Said in particular is very narrow, and only one ship can pass at a time. You can see in the picture on the left, entering the canal looks like sailing up a river.

Farther south, the canal splits into two channels (an expansion done in 2016) so that northbound and southbound ships can sail without having to stop to let each other pass. I can't imagine how much planning and coordination is required to get the ships through every day, and you can see why a ship running aground here, like the Ever Given did in 2021, would be such a disaster. There's no room to go around!

The picture on the right shows one of the many tugboats that follow every ship to ensure smooth sailing (and the number two ship in our convoy behind the tug.)

New Year's Eve bird blogging

Seagulls on the Suez Canal this morning.

I'm posting this picture because there was no way to take the one I really wanted: the gulls following the ship tonight. It's dark, with lights on shore in the distance and the wings of the gulls are white in the darkness, like a flock of angels dancing. My jaw dropped.

It was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.