April 29th – Stepping Out In Sorrento

On a beautiful spring day in Sorrento, we decided to leave the tourist crowds behind us in town, and so we decided to do a bracing walk over the hills behind Sorrento, up to the untouristy town of Massa Lubrense.

We followed the trails that led up the steep hills, and immediately we were in a beautiful bucolic landscape of fragrant lemon groves, olive trees and the odd vineyard. All the time, behind us we had increasingly spectacular vistas across the Bay of Naples to Vesuvius looming malevolently, and the mist-shrouded island of Capri in the distance.

We hadn't heard it for a while, but I quickly heard the familiar Tracy call of, "I could live here". It was difficult to argue with – beautiful weather, amazing landscapes, and fabulous food are a fairly compelling combination. You'd just have to ignore the threatening volcano, the tourist crowds, the organised crime gangs, and the high price of property along the Amalfi Coast.

Anyway, it took us about an hour and a half to walk up and over the hills and reach our destination, the town of Massa Lubrense – on a quiet Sunday morning not much was open, but it was a pretty spot and a nice place for a much needed drink and rest in a pavement café.

All week long, I'd been fantasising about having a pizza here in Italy, so my disappointment at finding that the town's two pizza places were shut is hard to describe. Instead we had to settle for a couple of doorstep sandwiches which were filling, but not quite the culinary delight we were expecting.

The walk back was equally delightful – just the sort of laid-back, civilised day we needed to round off the world cruise.

April 26th – Alexandria’s Greco-Roman Museum (or lack of)

My previous entry said that we were back in civilisation – I'm not sure that the chaotic, overcrowded port city of Alexandria counts as civilisation, but it's a place where plenty of civilisations have passed through and left behind a few relics of their time here.

Back in Greek and Roman times, Alexandria was once the second most important city in the world (after Rome); but, since those times it's slipped a long way backwards (apart from a brief 19th century flourishing, when some beautiful colonial architecture was built).

For the previous 5 years, over many trips to Alexandria we've been trying to pay a visit to the city's famous Greco-Roman Museum; however, each time, we've been thwarted by the fact that the museum was undergoing refurbishment works. Last time we tried to go there, a couple of years ago, it looked close to being finished, so we had high hopes this time (especially as someone on the ship assured us that they'd visited it recently).

So, we wandered through the traffic-strewn streets, got lost, asked people who'd never heard of it, and eventually found the Museum. Sadly, it was in a worse state than two years ago, and looked like it would be another 5 years before it opened. I guess that the fate of the museum was like a metaphor for the city and the country as a whole – it was once world-beating, then had slowly fallen apart, and then there were grand plans for its revival which had got bogged down due to corruption, lack of funds and lack of vision.

Maybe it will be ready next time we come?

April 25th – Bryan Adams Sings Us Through The Suez Canal

Today we were transiting through one of the world's most strategically important waterways – the Suez Canal. Nearly 10% of the world's shipping traffic passes through this artificial artery which links the Red Sea with the Mediterranean, and behind us in our convoy were some huge oil tankers and enormous container ships.

I was giving a narration from the bridge over the ship's tannoy, pointing out anything interesting along the way – seeing as most of the journey was passing through featureless desert, it wasn't the easiest task in the world to find interesting landmarks, so I also went through the fascinating history of the canal at the same time.

Actually, there were a few things to point out beyond the endless sand dunes – towns, bridges, tunnels, ferries, and also a few old battlefields and memorials from the many Arab-Israeli conflicts which had turned the Canal into a key military objective.

The bridge is normally a fairly quiet and serene place, as everyone concentrates hard on the job of steering the vessel. But, this time round, we had a very jovial old Egyptian pilot on the bridge, who scarcely seemed interested in the navigational side of his job (admittedly, it's not the most difficult navigation in the world as the canal is mostly dead straight, traffic is one-way with a couple of passing points, and we just maintain a stately speed of 9 knots).

Actually, the pilot seemed much more interested in playing us music on his tinny phone. I've never heard any music played on the bridge before, but he thought that some Bryan Adams was an appropriate background theme tune to the Suez Canal. Unfortunately, he only had one song that he wanted to play for us, and it was hardly a classic – "She's only happy when she's dancing". If we heard it once, we must have heard it 50 times. Every time it came to the end of the song we looked at each other expectantly hoping for a new song; every time we got the same power chords and the same profound lyrics about a lady who enjoyed dancing. It was annoying at first, but then it just got funnier and funnier.

So, by the end of the transit, we were back in European waters – after over 100 days at sea, it felt reassuring to be back in civilisation.

April 24th – Shark Dodging in Sharm el-Sheikh

Last time I was in Sharm el-Sheikh about 16 months ago, there were a series of deadly shark attacks that occurred a couple of weeks after we'd been snorkelling there. Since then, the guilty shark has supposedly been caught – how did they know which was the perpetrator, doesn't one shark look like another? Also, they've cracked down on the practices which had apparently been encouraging sharks into the area. The theory is that ships that were carrying over sheep from Australia to Arabia had been tossing any dead sheep overboard, which was attracting the sharks and giving them a blood lust.

Tracy (very sensibly) wasn't prepared to believe my assurances that there sharks wouldn't come out to play today, so she took an aquascope boat trip instead – reassuringly separated from the water and the sharks by a thick wall of glass.

But, I was prepared to believe that it was definitely safe to go back in the water, so I didn't want to miss out on one of the world's premier diving and snorkelling areas. From the port, we took a bus to the fairly tacky resort of Naama Bay – a place which looks more like Benidorm than Egypt. You wonder how a westernised place like this will fare if Egypt votes in an Islamist President in May – tourism is already down about 50% because of the uncertainties caused by the Arab Spring (never mind the shark attacks).

From here we took our boat out to the spectacular Gordan Reef off Tiran Island; a place where the visibility is incredible and the colours of the coral are as good as any I've seen in the world. Although the water was colder than I'd remembered it being last year, we saw an amazing array of vibrantly coloured sealife, and more importantly, no sharks. In fact, the most dangerous looking creatures we saw were some pink jellyfish floating around like plastic bags. Every time I saw one, I started to hyperventilate, until I saw that a few of our party were picking them up and playing with them – in fact, they were quite harmless.

The sea was quite choppy and the current quite strong, so we were all pretty tired after 45 minutes of fantastic underwater views, so we were glad of the opportunity to rest and warm up in the sun as we sailed back to the port, before stopping off again at the Near Garden reef, for a final 25 minute snorkel.

I hope for the locals' sake that Sharm's resorts can resist any attempts by conservatives to shut them down, and that they can resist any urges to further overdevelop them, because these are some of the best underwater landscapes on the planet.

April 23rd – A Pilgrimage to Petra

From Aqaba, we'd organised a private car to drive us the 2-hour trip to the amazing lost city of Petra. Our driver was excellent, but he didn't let the very small number of teeth in his head stop him from trying to chat up Bernadette who was travelling with us, but she somehow proved resistant to his toothless charms.

In between his incomprehensible chat up lines, he got us to Petra at top speed which enabled us to beat most of the coach parties that were all descending on this world famous sight.

After it was abandoned in the 7th century, Petra was then lost to the world for about a thousand years (apart from to the local Bedouin people who kept it secret); but, after it's rediscovery in the 19th century, it's certainly not a secret any more, as you could tell by the hordes of tourists descending on it. Actually, our guide told us that tourist numbers were down by about a half this year, so the locals (who are totally dependent on tourism) are feeling the pinch.

Fortunately, Petra's a big enough site to absorb the tourist crowds, and apart from in front of the incredible Treasury (the photo stop that everyone knows), the crowds disappear the further you go. What makes visiting Petra so incredible, is the evocative approach to the city – as you walk down the Siq, a narrow canyon in the rock, you pass from light to shade overshadowed by sheer towering walls of rock above you, catching glimpses of the odd ancient carving in the canyon sides, eroded into ghostly shapes.

As you progress down the Siq, the excitement mounts as you prepare yourself for the mind-blowing sight about to greet you – and, even though you know what you're going to see, the first glimpse of the Treasury glowing in the distance is an incredibly stirring one. I tried hard not to go for the clichéd tourist reaction of "wow", but you just can't help it – this place has certainly got the wow factor.

But, the Treasury is just the start of it – it's thought that the city would have supported over 50,000 people, so there's a theatre, baths, colonnaded streets, and countless more tombs cut into the red rock that can rival the Treasury for size and grandeur. When you see the dusty and barren landscapes that it's all set in, it seems virtually impossible that a city of this magnificence could ever have been a living entity, but the Nabataeans (the forgotten civilisation that built it all) were masters of water supply, so precious water was channelled down the Siq from the plentiful springs in the mountains – enough to support a city of this size.

For our visit this time, we wanted to explore an area of the site that we hadn't had time to before, and visit the "Royal Tombs" section, high up in the hills behind the site. From a distance the tombs look impressive enough, but once you've climbed up there, you just feel dwarfed by their size and haunting magnificence.

Like the Treasury, they're much more impressive on the outside, with their towering columns, splendid porticos and pediments carved into the contours of the rock; while inside, they were just empty cavernous spaces that almost certainly would have served no other purpose than housing a few bodies of the ancient VIPs who were interred in there. It was amazing to see how the striking patterns in the rock added to the beauty of the tombs.

Exploring this hot and dusty site is exhausting – so, even though you want to visit more and more of its riches, you have to pace yourself and know when enough's enough. So, after about 6 exhilarating but draining hours, we headed back to the entrance, and were relieved to see that our dentally challenged driver was still waiting for us, to take us back to the ship.

Another fantastic day in a place that really needs to be seen to be believed.

April 22nd – Meeting Some Bedouin in Safaga

The scruffy port town of Safaga occupies some pretty barren territory for a place that's trying to turn itself into a holiday resort. It has some decent beaches on the Red Sea, but it's dominated by the miles of arid desert behind it, so there's not much culture to discover here.

What culture there is to discover there, is Bedouin culture – so, I took a bumpy 4x4 trip into the endless sands of the Eastern Desert to visit a Bedouin village. Well, it calls itself a "village", but it's difficult to tell whether what we visited was that genuine. There were a couple of families occupying the few scattered huts, plus a few camels which were handily available to take us tourists on a brief ride into the desert (or at least round the corner behind a hill and back again).

From the families, we learnt more about Bedouin culture and cuisine, and actually, it was all quite interesting. It was fun to interact with the little children who were initially quite shy, but then got steadily more brave and cheeky as they got used to you. By the end of it, they were fairly blatantly posing for photos to get a few tips from us (plenty was forthcoming).

You wonder how long these traditional lifestyles can survive as Egypt modernises – maybe, with these visits from us curious tourists, the modern world has already altered them beyond recognition. You couldn't help suspecting that as soon as we drove off again, they hopped into their 4x4s, and drove off to their modern houses and switched on their satellite TVs. Is that being too cynical?

April 21st – Temples Galore in Luxor

After 5 days at sea dodging the pirates (thankfully, not a skull and crossbones in sight), it was a bit of a shock to the system to finally hit dry land at Safaga on Egypt's Red Sea coast. There isn't really anything to Safaga, but the reason for coming here, was a chance to visit Egypt's ancient Pharonic capital – the stunning city of Luxor.

We took the long 3 hour drive across the desert to Luxor, and on the way we got some glimpses of the basket case that Egypt has unfortunately become. We passed little villages covered in rubbish which seemed like they'd changed little since biblical times – no infrastructure and people riding around on donkeys. We passed countless army road blocks which appeared to serve no purpose – bored army officers not bothering to look up at the traffic they're meant to be monitoring. The cost of Egypt's massive military is a huge drain on the country.

We passed massive queues of cars waiting at the petrol stations – according to our guide, there's no real reason why there should be petrol shortages, it's just a ploy by the interim government to destabilise the country before the elections. And we passed countless posters of various candidates for the upcoming Presidential election – I didn't recognise any of the candidates, but one of them will shortly be ruling the Arab world's largest country and cultural centre. Which way he takes the country will have an impact across the Middle East.

Once we got to magnificent Luxor, all this modern mess and chaos paled next to the grandeur of the temples of the Pharoahs – dating from a time when Egypt led the world, rather than was left behind by it.

Just before we got to Luxor, we stopped off at the incredibly well preserved temple of Dandara, which was around 1,000 years younger than the temples of Luxor (so, was a mere 2,500 years old), and so it showed influences from the civilisations that were to supplant the Pharoahs – the Greeks and the Romans. The colours and quality of the carvings inside the multi-columned temple were incredibly vivid.

Then, after lunch overlooking the Nile, we went to Egypt's largest and grandest temple – the amazing Temple of Karnak. Just small elements of this temple were enough to fascinate you for hours, from the huge pylons you pass through to enter the temple, to the enormous collection of statues and obelisks, to the atmospheric hypostyle hall with its row after row of massive columns, to the amazingly detailed hieroglyphic carvings covering virtually available wall space. But, put together, the array of sights on offer was almost overwhelming.

After this visual feast, we visited a temple that was almost as impressive, but on a more human scale – the Luxor Temple. Again, it was a visual feast, and it was fascinating to imagine how grand this place would have looked before the ravages of three millennia had taken their toll.

The more you go to Egypt, the more you realise how little you know about this intriguing country and its ancient civilisation; but the question you're constantly asking yourself is – how could it have declined from such heights to this depressing level?