Recalls a wonderful trip he took aboard the Celebration
As a grand doyenne of the oceans sails off into retirement, NIGEL THOMPSON
MARELLA Cruises’ oldest ship, the 1,262 passenger Marella Celebration, has just been retired early because of the coronavirus pandemic. The fleet’s smallest ship at 33,933 gross tonnage, she carried more than half a million passengers over the last 15 years, having begun life with Holland America in 1984.
Here, we say a fond farewell to the old girl on a
Red Sea cruise to the ancient wonders of Jordan and Egypt...
NATURE wows you first with the deep, curving drama of the Siq. Then man does his best. And what a best it is.
As you near the end of the Siq – a mile-long gorge formed when a tectonic rift split a mountain in two – you get a first tantalising glimpse of the Treasury, the main sight of Petra, the fabled ‘rose red city’ in Jordan.
The city was lost to the outside world for a thousand years until a Swiss explorer stumbled on it in
1812 and it merits every superlative you can throw at it.
After that epic walk through the gorge – anywhere else this would be a tourist attraction in its own right – the first view of the Treasury, hewn from the pink sandstone, leaves you slack-jawed with wonder, thinking ‘how the heck did they do that?’
‘They’ are the Nabatean people
Nigel Thompson, right, followed the Siq Gorge until it opened out onto the wonderous sight of the Treasury at Petra who built this trading powerhouse 2,000 years ago.
More than 30,000 people lived in the residential areas, though they are now largely rubble, and the other sights include the burial chambers carved into cliffs, where our knowledgeable and boundlessly enthusiastic guide Saad brought the whole place to life.
Petra is a two-hour ride on a cruise excursion coach from Aqaba via the Desert Highway – a modern road blasted through the Arabian Shield mountains and full of lumbering petrol tankers – and the Kings Highway, which was mentioned in the Old Testament and dotted with bedouin tents and piles of stacked rocks marking farmers’ territory.
There’s a comfort stop and inevitable souvenir shop, but also a fine view across Jordan from a lofty 5,600ft.
To be honest, on this Red Sea Magic itinerary from Sharm El Sheikh on Thomson Celebration (as it was on this 2013 trip) you are going to spend a lot of time on a coach if you opt for sightseeing excursions, rather than beach and snorkelling trips.
But of course it’s worth it to see Petra and the splendours built by ancient Egypt’s ruling pharaohs.
Those wonders began in dusty, crazy, traffic-choked Cairo – a two-hour bus ride from the ugly, scruffy industrial Port Sokhna – with a tour of the incredible Egyptian Museum.
You could easily spend a day here,