Sunday, November 17, 2019; Rounding the Sinai Penninsula
Our ship took a detour last night to evacuate a medical emergency to Hurghada, a coastal city in Egypt, where a transfer to a shore tender was made. We are no longer part of a convoy, sailing on our own. We did have a Maritime Security briefing in the Princess Theater. They explained the security measures being employed and the recommended Best Practices. They tried to reassure us we had little to fear because there were no pirate attacks reported in 2018 in the waters we will be transiting around Yemen and Somalia. A fellow passenger we had talked with earlier in the cruise said that the Chinese navy showed up to escort some of their ships a year or two ago, and basically shot any pirates even approaching an escorted ship out of the water. That seemed to tip the cost/benefit calculus for the bosses running the pirate operations. After the Iranians took a British tanker hostage, a coalition of nations had provided an active Naval escort to convoys of ships but those ceased on November 10. We wished they were still escorting convoys. We were disappointed to hear we did not secretly embark a squad of mercenaries yesterday. We’ll be relying on speed, maneuverability, high freeboard, and high pressure water hoses to make us a less attractive target than the next merchant ship. We are scheduled to do a piracy drill onboard after our Aqaba port of call. I wonder if we’ll have to practice throwing lawn furniture off our balconies at pirate dummies below in the water.
Our sea days tend to be dominated by trivia, but there are any number of other activities we could do around the ship. There is a pop choir, ukulele classes, Zumba, ballroom dancing, sign language classes, photography seminars, and the list just goes on. But we do enjoy the intellectual stimulation, and we do make some good friends over the course of our cruises playing trivia. The morning trivia was another second place finish for us by one point. There were two teams tied for first with a tie breaker of “How many millionaires were on the ill-fated Titanic?” It’s hard to believe that back in those days, you could muster 57 millionaires, but that was the answer. Both teams had guessed under 20.
We headed to the fitness center for some guilt reduction between breakfast and lunch, and then did a 70’s music trivia on the pool deck. This was the first time we have done trivia on the pool deck. We did OK, but were out scored by 3 points for the win. Our downfall was “Live on Mars” by David Bowe. We don’t think that was a top 100 70’s song.
We also did a rock and roll trivia before dinner. Our team made a respectable effort, but finished outside the top 3.
Dinner featured Surf and Turf with fillet mignon and prawns, which was a treat. The best part was we asked for extra asparagus and got some really good asparagus, which is hard to come by on the ship.
The Princess Theatre production was called Born to Be Wild. While we have seen this show before, featuring a pink Cadillac on stage, some of the choreography and songs have been tweaked. The dancers were spot on, but one of the male lead singers sounded like he had a cold, and the mixer board operator insisted on drowning out the lead female vocals with his slightly off key harmonies. It wasn’t the best we have seen, but still a decent show with a good selection of songs, excellent costumes, dancing and production values.
We finished off the night with one last trivia- one on 50’s and 60’s music, but a real trivia, not name that tune type of game. We ended up in our usual second place by one point.
Tomorrow we arrive at Aqaba, Jordan, gateway to the lost city of Petra. We will have to set an alarm to get up early because our excursion meets at 7am. It’s a 2 hour bus ride to Petra from Aqaba. We were informed that if you bring “professional camera equipment” you will be charged an extra $71, so we’ll have to leave the Nikon DSLR behind and rely on our iPhones for photos. In all our travels so far, this is the first time we’ve run into a crazy surcharge for using more than a smart phone or PhD (Push Here Dummy) pocket camera. The Arabs don’t seem to mind gouging tourists whenever and wherever they can. We’ve been warned that although there are donkey carts and other modes of transportation available in Petra, the operators are rather unscrupulous. They’ll tell you the charge is $30 one way, but won’t let you off until you pay another $20 tip to the driver and a separate $10 tip to the donkey, and the return trip could cost you $100, plus tips. So we’ll plan on hiking the 5 or so miles tomorrow.
