Category Archives: Africa

Diving and Exploring Tunis & the Coast

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Today we started the day by going diving. The dive center is near the marina office. We met at 0800 and piled into a large speedboat. The boat took us out about 15 minutes away from the marina to a site called Rochio Venus. It is a nice dive site, with excellent visibility and warm water.

Like in Greece, there isn’t a whole lot of color in the water here. There is a plant we believe is called Posidonia that dominates the area. Posidonia looks like thick, long grass. It is green near the roots, but turns white higher up on the grass blades. We saw it in Crete, as well, but there is not very much of it there. Eric said he felt like we were flying above grain fields.

In and amongst the Posidonia is a round, green, delicate plant about the size of the top of a soda can that looks like a green flower. There is also a Continue reading →

History of Tunisia

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Tunisia is located in North Africa, bounded on the west by Algeria, on the north and east by the Mediterranean Sea, and on the southeast by Libya. It is the northernmost country on the African continent. Around forty percent of the country is composed of the Sahara Desert, with much of the remainder consisting of particularly fertile soil and a 1300 km coastline. The population is approximately 10,000,000. The indigenous people are the Berber people group, who still exist today.

Like all the countries we have been to in the Mediterranean, Tunisia has a rich history. It is believed Continue reading →

Passage from Port Said, Egypt to Crete, Greece

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Day 1

It felt good to be moving on the sea. By morning, the wave speed had slowed down. There was little wind chop, and it was an overall pleasant ride. Wind has varied from 8 knots to 16 knots. What makes it an even nicer ride is that we are running at a normal RPM and speed for a change. Kosmos is happier running in her sweet spot than she is running flat out, the ride is smoother for us, and fuel consumption is much, much better.

We crossed near the 31N by 31E line, which we thought was an interesting numerical moment. We had a beautiful sunset, with the sun especially red.

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It is much cooler here. We actually have to shut the windows at night and wear blankets when we sleep. We almost forgot what that was like aboard, since we have been so used to the heat of the tropics and desert.

There has been a ton of traffic on the radio ever since we left Egypt, mostly from warships calling every vessel that pops up on their radar. So far we have heard ships from Canada, NATO, and Israel. We have never heard so many military groups in one place before. The war ships will Continue reading →

Suez Canal Contest

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We thought it would be fun to have another contest. Do you remember What is in the Bottles? The winner will get a small souvenir from Greece as a prize. Since we didn’t come up with this contest idea until we were already checked out of Egypt, we couldn’t get an Egyptian prize, so a Greek one will have to do.

Here are the rules:

1. One guess per person.
2. Post all answers in “comments” on this blog post.
3. First person to post correct answer wins the prize. We will get your address through e-mail.

Instead of bottles, we noticed some boxes. There are several clusters of these boxes up and down the Suez Canal. What are they? Be as specific as possible.

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Here is a larger version of the picture.