Bob wrote:

>Not much better today for us to dive in the Red Sea!  I had signed up
for a charter of some Peter Hughbes liveaboard boat (Excel??) to dive
both the Northern AND Southern part of the Red Sea only a couple years
ago.  The SCHEDULED flight had some kind of "stay over in Cairo"
constraints, followed by bus (or camel <G>) rides for hours to get to
the place to board the liveaboard.<

No idea what the flight schedules US-Egypt are, but they might have
required an overnight. But camels should be unnecessary, as Hurgada has an
international airport, and most liveaboards start from there or not too far
away. Unless they depart from Safaga for a Southern tour, that would be
about 2 hrs by bus from Hurgada.

>  Fortunately (or unfortunately as the case may be) the charter was
canceled because only two people
signed up (of which I was one).  That liveaboard did not stay in business
long.<

Wonder what their business model was. The Red Sea is chock full of cheap
boats. Most probably suck. But PH would not get such big name recognition
with the Euro crowds. Or maybe the target market was mainly US and the
political situation killed that. 

>If you want to talk about "ancient travel", it took me 15 days to go
from Hong Kong to New York on my first arrival to the USA cuz my
parents couldn't afford to buy me plane tickets.  :-)  So, I was on SS
President Wilson (my first boat ride) from HK to San Francisco (which
was also the first time I got seasick, right before it arrived San
Francisco :-)), followed by a train ride from SF to NYC, which took
about three days.  :-))

Interesting. I traveled with my parents from Hamburg to Benguela, Angola,
in the 60s. By combi-freighter  "Zeus" of the HAPAG line (no such animal
now in the days of 20ft equivalents). We actually had a choice of air
travel or ship - government footed the bill and back then that cost about
the same to Africa; nowadays sea travel would be many times the airfare. My
father decided sea travel would be more interesting, and it was. Hamburg,
Bremen, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Lisbon, Cape Verde, Dakar, Matadi (Congo),
Luanda, Lobito. Wonderful trip. And the last time that I was ever sea sick.


Did a similar trip in 68 to Mexico. Hamburg, Rotterdam, Free Port
(Bahamas), Vera Cruz.  A really gentle way to get adjusted to time zones.
Ship time simply changed by 0.5 hrs every day. Ahhh, dem old days. The
freighter even had a swimming pool. 

M