25 May On Board the Amazing Star Clipper Sailing Ship
This is unbelievably our fifth trip on one of the Star Clipper fleet’s 4-masted barquentines, and this ship, the Star Clipper, was doing its one and only trip from Egypt to the Mediterranean via the Suez Canal. This was its first trip post COVID as it shifted operations from South East Asia to the Med.
This was a trip scheduled for 2021 and we probably wouldn’t have restarted international travel were it not for the chance to sail through the Suez, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Embarkation from Safaga was pretty awful. We were crowded into a small room like cattle and waited for hours before finally learning that port officials were trying to extract illegal bribes from the ship in order to release passengers’ passports. I can’t imagine Star Clippers will ever use that port again.
We were both seasick on waking the first morning after some moderately rough seas. Unfortunately no sooner had we recovered from that we came down with the “super cold” that Christine is still suffering from 5 weeks later. It was still a good trip.
As always the staff were great, as was the ship experience itself. The one thing that let it down was that new suppliers had to be sought after COVID and the quality of the food was often not good. A lot of staff were new because former staff had often gone home and stayed there.
Overview
We sailed from Safaga through the Suez Canal, then had port stops at Port Said, Alexandria, Rhodes, Santorini, Monemvasia, and finally Poros, where we disembarked a day early hoping to spend 3 nights in our booked AirBnB on the island of Hydra. Unbeknown to us there was a transport strike about to happen throughout Greece which meant we had to leave a day early to have an overnight stay in Athens in order to meet a flight to Zurich.
Port Said and Alexandria were not impressive so we won’t bother writing about them except John thought the catacombs at Alexandria were interesting.
Ship Life
Suez Canal
Sailing through the Suez was incredible. The sheer magnitude of the shipping, the structures and sculptures along the banks, many left over from the 6-day war in 1967, were impressive. It felt momentous.
Rhodes
Rhodes was the first stop outside of Egypt and a complete relief after the terrible neglect and crass corruption we’d experienced non-stop in Egypt.
Santorini
Perhaps there’s no such thing as a Greek island that is anything other than beautiful – rating them probably depends on whether you like the buzz of touristy places or the wild beauty of less populated, less renovated environments.
It was the first time Christine felt well enough to leave the ship for a wander around and it was well worth it, with the ascensor making the trip up and down the steep cliffs from the dock to the town both easy and spectacular.
In early Spring, Santorini is no doubt less busy than the height of summer, but it was still buzzing and we had fun looking through all the little shops and taking a lovely walk along the promenade, with drinks as the sun began to set on the beautiful Meditarranean sea.
Monemvasia
Monemvasia could be considered almost the opposite of Santorini, less populated, less developed, great ruins and lots of wildflowers, especially the ubiquitous red poppy. It was really interesting to walk through the cobbled streets and just soak up the atmosphere looking out over the sea from a nice bar.
Poros
The ship was supposed to stop at Hydra, where we were to disembark a day earlier than the other passengers and stay 3 nights in an AirBnB. But supposedly the sea was supposed to be too rough to approach Hydra and it went to Poros instead. The purser arranged a ferry for us from Poros to Hydra, where we found the sea was not rough at all.
Hydra
Steps. Lots of steps. Maybe 200 hundred steps every time we needed to go down for shopping and of course back up the cliff again to our lovely AirBnB. There are absolutely no vehicles on Hydra, so luggage and supplies are carried up and down by mule.
We were both still unwell (4 RAT tests were negative) and felt that our virus had perhaps become bacterial and that an antibiotic might be a good idea. It was very easy to just rock up to the medical clinic, where further RATs were administered (negative again) and antibiotics were prescribed. The doctor said that COVID was rife on the island and that also many people had this virus, with the symptoms indistinguishable. We were even more careful with masks and social distancing after that.
We would love to have stayed even longer – it was just so comfortable and so beautiful and sooner or later I’m sure you’d get used to the steps 🙂
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