We woke early to find the Coral Princess already halfway up the Aqaba Gulf. Under the cover of darkness, we glided along. The moon was still high enough to create a golden trail toward the ship. Up ahead were the twinkling lights of the three countries that bordered the end of the gulf. Egypt, Israel, and Jordan
You couldn’t help but giggle at the constant announcements of arriving in the “Aqua” bar…. which is correctly pronounced “aka bar”
Since covid, Aqaba now has a cruise terminal…. Goodness me, give them a terminal and now they want to do face-to-face immigration…. Its only purpose (well to us ) is to slow things down. Benefits…. All scanning is done in the cool of the terminal.
We are now well practice in collecting tickets to be able to walk off
the ship. Just like tendering grab a ticket and wait to be called, minus any
Elite priority.
This morning was simple, our tour started later than many others, which
meant that by the time we were ready to disembark the wait was not long. What also helped was that the majority of
guests were on princess tours
Our tour was to spend the day at the Berenice Beach resort with a glass
bottom boat trip, lunch, and use of the resort facilities for the day.
As per my previous post, we had to move as a group of 25, head into
Aqaba to meet Eman and the shuttles to get us to the resort. Being a working
port, it was our only option left.
Berenice Resort is about 15 min along the highway back toward Saudi
Arabia. A little run down but it served
our purpose well. On arrival, we paid our admission fee of 33JOD pp, which
included our glass bottom boat ride, lunch, and use of the Resort up until 9 pm
that night.
We were ushered straight down to the beach where our boat was waiting
for us at the end of the pier. The water
looked inviting and the reef was not that far from the beach if you wanted to
snorkel from the shore.
The boat was just big enough for all 25 of us. For the first hour, the Captain maneuvered the boat over the Coral reef.
The Jordanians being enterprising souls have sunk a yacht, plane, and
army tank onto the sea bed to create an environment for the coral to grow…. Hard to capture in a moving boat, but still
pretty amazing to see.
Arriving back at the wharf we walked back up to the resort for a delicious middle eastern lunch, of salads, dips and char-grilled meat.
Topping it off was an amazing Jordanian version of bread and butter pudding, laced with cinnamon, sultanas, walnuts, and other culinary delights.
We spend the rest of the afternoon in and out of the pool. Apart from all the angst, it was a very
enjoyable relaxing day.
Walking the streets just proved too hot and after a rather large juice, we ventured back to find the bottle shop.
Another great day!
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