The Cruise Log
Map of our travels. Click on the piture to see it larger
26th March 2006. The cruise started on Sunday 26th March with a flight to Crete. We saw Santorini from the airplane.
In Crete we took a trip to Knossos, a 3500BC ruin. It was quite amazing to see 5500 year old plumbing and toilets!
After that, we went onward to board our ship, Perla. The ship left port later that evening.
27th March 2006. We had a whole day at sea and the next day we docked at Benghazi.
28th March 2006. We did not manage to book ourselves on the trip to Cyrene; instead we took a walk into Benghazi. Everyone was very friendly and we were drawn into conversation with a few people. Even the police and army people greeted us in a very friendly manner.
29th March 2006. This day we had our 9 hour coach drive to the Sahara. The first stop we made was just outside Benghazi for the 20 coaches to refuel with just 1 fuel pump. This took over an hour. We were not allowed to leave the coach. The next stop was 7 hours later. There may have been toilets if we could have got to them, but we were beaten back by the smell. After another hour we stopped short of the eclipse village because of the traffic. There were no facilities there as had been promised. We could see them in the very far distance, a 15 minute walk at a very fast pace. We and many other people took our comfort break behind a taxi someone had kindly left some distance in the desert. Even though it was 29 degrees C, it did not feel too uncomfortable. It was very interesting actually seeing mirages in the distance. We saw first contact and time flew. We observed the sharpening of our shadows. We saw the shadow bands and we knew that the eclipse was close. We did not see the eclipse border rushing towards us as we did in Falmouth in 1999. We saw the Bailey’s beads and then totality. We could see about 5 prominences. The horizon was orange all the way around. We saw Mercury, Venus and Mars. All too soon, even though it felt as if it could last forever, the diamond ring appeared and again the shadow bands appeared. We mad our way back to the coach, I did not realise we had walked so far. The coach then took us to the eclipse village, which is where we saw last contact. We then endured the 9 hour journey back to the ship. The first stop we made was for fuel and the same bog of eternal stench as the last time. Our second stop was when our driver broke from the convoy to get some fuel. It was there that we saw the Pleiades, Orion and a few other things. This was a full 23 hour day. The Captain was very upset that we had arrived so late. He wanted to set to sea very much earlier.
30th March 2006. The next day was another at sea. I was surprised that so many people had got up as early as I did, especially after the day we had.
31st March 2006. We docked in Tripoli very early the next morning. We had to be up for the trip to Leptis Magna. This trip was much better organised. The same coaches had come across land to meet us. We manage to avoid lucky number 6 which had taken us into the desert. Leptis Magns is a 3 hectare Roman site. It has got too much to see in just 3 hours. I managed to take over 100 pictures, too many to upload here. J also managed to take 3 36 exposure films. Tripoli was one hell of a different place to Benghazi. Very modern and well kept.
1st April 2006. This was another day at sea. There were some lectures today, analysing the eclipse day. There were 2 April fools day jokes. John Mason showed a picture of a comet during the eclipse and the Captain announced that we should be able to see an iceberg on the port side and that it was nothing to worry about.
2nd April 2006. We pulled into Santorini. It was just as magnificent as we remembered. Our mobile phones also managed to pick up a signal for the first time since we left Crete. We called Mana and she managed to capture a webcam picture of our ship pulling into Santorini. We did not go on the scheduled trip of the island as we had been here many times before. We just got the small boat to take us to Fira and from there we took the cable car up to the town. We got a little lost as the town had grown so much since we were there last. We stopped at a taverna and had some very nice food and an ice cold beer served in a frozen glass. We started to have a few naughty thoughts about jumping ship and staying. Very tempting but we decided to go back to the ship, mainly to get some more money which I had forgotten to pick up before we left. When we got back to the island we managed to find our old haunts, but they were closed, too early in the season. We then went back to the ship to watch the sunset. There was another cruise ship moored close by us, just before we left, the Captain to have a ships horn chat with the other cruiser just before we upped anchor and left.
3rd April 2006. We pulled into Piraeus and disembarked and got onto a coach for a tour of Athens. We stayed in a nice café for some coffee whilst the others went up to see the Acropolis. We were then taken to the new airport and then home.
