The northern end of the Suez Canal, Port Said
I get my first view of the Mediterranean Sea for 10 months in Port Said. I can go north in Africa no longer. I must turn west. When its cooled down a little, to pleasant towards evening I stroll the few paces that takes me to the Suez canal. It doesn’t look promising with high fencing. In fact, there is a lovely raised walkway with shops beneath, that gives a good view of the canal. I then walk northwards to the Mediterranean. At 6.30 families are still playing on the beach – the women fully clothed.
The minibus journey to Damietta doesn’t take longer than around 50 minutes, and is then a mere meander to Ras el Bar on a local servee minibus. Everyone on the bus is very friendly and we manage to have a bit of a chat despite the lack of a common language.
Ras el Bar is surrounded on most sides by water, being on a spit of land. It seems like a rather affluent place with well-to-do Egyptian families holidaying politely. The Nile is delightfully blue. I follow it when the paved and developed waterfront begins. Before that its just sandy banks and people’s homes. The world’s longest river ends here. Sort of. A bit of it ends here anyway. There’s another branch further west, the river breaking up into a delta a little north of Cairo. Since Ethiopia I’ve more or less followed the route of this river, the longest in the world, but just a short part of my trip.
