From Haifa to Piraeus


When I was trying to set up this part of my trip, I had a brief email exchange with the shipping agent in Haifa. I wanted to know what I could expect on board - I'd heard that some of these cargo ships even had swimming pools and stuff like that. So I dropped a line to my new friend Alicia at Rosenfeld Shipping to ask about the facilities. Her reply was succinct:

David

It's a cargo ship.

Yours

Alicia

So it was with pretty low expectations that I showed up at Haifa docks at 9 on Friday morning to find a little bunch of fellow travelers, a woman with a clipboard and the inevitable Israeli security guy waiting to be taken to our boat. There were a couple of German motorcyclists taking their bikes back from a holiday in Israel, a Dutch man who was driving a Transit van but who otherwise was pretty schtum about what he was up to and an older Israeli couple who were friends of the ship's owner and were going to see him in Cyprus.

After a couple of hours' meandering from immigration office to customs check and back again (the port was all but closed as there were no big ships in that day) we came round the corner to find the M/V Notos waiting for us: 8,111 tonnes, registered in Limmasol and a veteran of the Athens - Cyprus - Haifa run.


I say waiting for us, but only in the way that someone is waiting for you who invites you to dinner and when you show up the kitchen is still cold and they are reading the paper. It stood there at the quayside, big, white-(ish) and proud and spectacularly empty, its rear doors wide open to receive a worryingly large number of containers before we sailed.



Needless to say we have spent most of the day in the port, but that has given us time to explore the ship and watch the lorries bringing the cargo aboard. Mostly we are shipping those big metal containers that could have anything inside but there are also crates of Israeli plums and pomegranates and various little packages for people in Cyprus. There seems to be an enormous collection of bathroom fittings and Mr Popodopoulos of Nicosia will be pleased to hear his lighting units are on the way.


Apart from the Israeli couple, who are in the Owner's Cabin (upstairs, next to the captain and almost certainly with its own en suite jacuzzi), we are staying in crew quarters, which means a deck or two below, simple, a bit scruffy and clean. I'm in a cabin for two with upper and lower berths and a little washbasin, plus a porthole which looks out on to the Med - though admittedly on to the Med across the top of an exhaust vent from the lorry deck below. The showers and toilets wouldn't go down well on a Cunard cruise (well, to be honest they would cause a few grumbles on a prison ship) but they are OK and give you a kind of 'one of the boys' feel when you use them. Thank goodness, though, the sea so far has been calm. And there's a little place - the 'Salon' - where we can sit around and watch TV.


The crew is a mix of two or three Greeks (the guys in charge) and about 20 Egyptians, Russians, Indians and a couple of guys from Japan. Everyone eats together in little shifts and the food is great and comes in huge portions - they are, after all, feeding people who haul big containers on and off ships all day. We are, though, on a kind of NHS hospital food timetable, which is posted on the 'Salon' wall:

Breakfast 0830-0900
Lunch 1230-1300
Dinner 1700-1730

And if you miss those times that's it - there's no shop or 24-hour buffet on board (thanks, Alicia).


We have finally set sail (it's 5pm) and it was sad to see Israel disappearing behind us. But the ship itself is like a little country of its own. We can go just about anywhere as long as we don't get in the way. I am guessing the engine room is pretty much out of bounds and no one has invited us on to the bridge yet, but we are working on that. And you can even get right to the front (yeah, yeah, I know, the bow) for that 'Titanic' moment. But it does look a bit risky and it would be embarrassing to fall in.

Tomorrow we dock at Limassol in Cyprus to take on more stuff. I'm hoping to go ashore and buy a mains adapter. My Israeli one, which was pretty hopeless in Israel, is useless with the sockets here and my iPod needs recharging. No one is clear if we will be allowed off or not. It seems to be up to the Captain so we are going to ask in the morning.


The Day of Pigs

We woke up to find ourselves in port. The day was a bit hazier than before and by the thermometer it was cooler than in Haifa. But the humidity was intense and as soon as you stepped outside you found yourself covered in that film of sweat that's neither tropical nor sporty but simply not nice.


We were to be here, loading up with more containers, for most of the day so the captain gave the OK for three of us to go ashore and see the town. He kept out passports but we were given little laminated badges that said we were passengers on the Notos and told to be back on board by 3pm. Two huge cruise liners (or huge compared to out little cargo ship) had just docked and the immigration staff were getting ready for an influx of day trippers. So we nipped ahead and got to the front of the queue. In fact we needn't have worried. They just glanced at our badges, asked if we were from the EU and waved us through. So much for Fortress Europe, we thought, though the southern half of Cyprus is probably not the best place to land if you are an illegal immigrant and plan on opening a corner shop in Hamburg. The only way is out again or up into the Turkish half, which probably wouldn't help.


I'm afraid I have almost nothing to say about Limmasol, except that it was hot and they do nice ice coffees. We sat by the beach for a while and then I bought an adaptor for my MacBook and was back on the ship in time for lunch.


By the afternoon, the whole of the upper deck, which yesterday was empty, was covered with new containers. Among the new arrivals was a lorry load of pigs, who even now are grunting and snorting around in their pens and drinking from little pipes that squirt water when they get their snouts round them - rather like the ones you get in airports. I reckon there must be 200 of them on the three decks of their container, which is open at the sides. I'm no expert but they seem happy enough, though the appearance of a plate of ham at dinner was a little too much of a coincidence for our comfort.


Now we are on our way again and at least the movement of the ship provides a breeze. I've just got into trouble-ish with the Captain for going for a run on a bit of the deck where some crew members were asleep below. He was fine about it really but I think he thought I was crazy. And to be honest he really doesn't look the running type - imagine a 63-year-old Greek ship captain with a grubby t-shirt and you probably have the right idea. Actually I'm not sure I am the running type either. But after the enormous quantities of food you get at lunchtime, followed, only four and a half hours later, by a similar amount at dinner, you feel you have to do something.


Sunday on the briny blue


By now we have got into the rhythm of life on board. Sleep is idyllic, with the soft hum of the engines and the swushhhh of the sea coming in through your porthole. And the day is punctuated by the crazily close-together meal times. We are served by a shy 20-year-old from Gujarat called Max. He told me his full name but then watched patiently as the 20 or so syllables failed to get into the right order in my head and said, 'but everyone calls me Max.'

This is Max's first job aboard - though whether it's his first on this ship or any ship I couldn't work out - and he doesn't look too happy about it. His immediate superior, Ahmed, all smiles and jokes with us, seems to be breaking him in almost literally and there are frequent orders for Max to tidy this, polish that or Hoover the other. When he serves us our food he does so with a kind of melancholy that suggests life should offer more than a Greek cargo ship on the Med. And he probably has a point. Here he is pretty much the bottom of the pile. On the internal phone directory, which is posted on the wall in the 'Salon', the final entry is for 'Servant', though I doubt even that rings in Max's room.


The rest of the time we divide between sleeping, walking around the decks, reading books and watching the fuzzy television set that gets various random channels depending which land mass we are near. Today, a few of us managed to get up to the bridge and the navigator (or whatever that guy is called on boats) showed us that we were soon to be passing Rhodes. And indeed the whole day we spent sailing through beautiful deep blue seas past the various Dodecanese and Cyclades islands on our way to Athens. Obviously - this would have been the case in any country - the TV was showing the Olympics but, when the Greek flag was raised alongside the Chinese one in the closing ceremony, there were extra enthusiastic grunts of patriotic approval from the Captain and his cronies.

We have discovered that you occupy a funny space as passengers on a cargo ship. One the one hand - and the Captain in one of his rare sociable moments confirmed this - we are totally in the way. A cargo ship probably runs a lot better if there aren't excited landlubbers clogging up your gangways and taking pictures of the pigs. One the other, at least no one has to worry about us and there are no Quiz Nights, daily bulletins, trips ashore and fancy dress parties to organise. In fact they don't even have to be polite, though so far we are all getting on fine.


Like all travellers thrown together randomly for a few days we are happily swapping stories about where we have been, when we were last in each other's cities etc and discussing at length a topic that right now seems to get every traveller from Aachen to Zanzibar foaming at the mouth: the cost of living in London. I've only been away a couple of months but I have lost count of the number of times I have had to commiserate someone on how much it costs to to get the Tube from Covent Garden to Golders Green or advise them on where to stay in London for less that 50 euros per night (er, like, nowhere?). Really, we need to do something about our city. We won't be able to afford to live there soon.

Tomorrow morning we arrive in Piraeus and we and the pigs will be disembarking. My fellow passengers, with their motorbikes and van, will be heading north and west through Greece. I'll be stopping in Athens for a few days, which I am excited about. I've never been there and I have found a hostel right next to the Acropolis. The pigs, I guess, will soon discover where they are headed and will be looking back on their last few days on the Notos with some nostalgia.


Update: Monday morning


It's 11am and we are stuck just outside the port in Piraeus. There's a go-slow on the docks and a queue of ships waiting to berth. It turns out that there is a hierarchy of vessels in this situation. Cruise liners get in first, car ferries next, etc etc. Little ships with containers and pigs aboard are pretty much near the bottom. We may be here some time.

1pm: No sign yet of any movement on shore, so of course we have another hearty lunch. We sit around in the 'Salon' and get slightly nervous about missed connections etc. But really the biggest danger is running out of reading matter. Unexpectedly together for a fourth day, we're finding the conversation moving in dangerous directions. The Captain turns out to be a passionate supporter of Putin and what he is doing in Georgia. The Dutch guy has started to hint at what he was doing in Israel: it has something to do with Old Testament prophecies starting to come true. We are wondering how much food is left in the kitchen.

3pm: The captain comes in and says, 'Ninety-five per cent tomorrow.' We hold on to the possibility of the other five per cent but really it looks like we are here for another night. Piraeus and Athens tantalisingly in view but out of reach. Thoughts turn to hijacking a boat.

5pm: Another meal (of course) and confirmation that we are staying the night. The ship is supposed to dock at 6 in the morning and we'll allegedly be off it by 7. Talking to one of the crew, Sind from Punjab, it turns out this happens quite often in Athens - there just aren't enough parking spaces or whatever they are called for ships - and passengers sometimes go a little beserk. We, so far, are calm, though the two German guys finished off all their beer yesterday in a final-night-on-the-boat drink-in and so now are a little ansty.


Tuesday, 6.15am: Awoken by the very welcome clunk-clunk of the anchor being pulled in (is that 'weighed' or is that when you let it down?). I get up and have one last prison ship shower and go up to what quite possibly might be the poop deck to watch us come into the port. The sun is just coming up over the hills behind Athens (insert suitable Homeric epithet here) and the pigs are starting to squeal in excitement. The last few metres are a wonderful choreography of tug, ship and anchors. Two of the crew position themselves behind two huge winches which each control an anchor on a chain about 100m long and with links twice the size of your hand. When the two anchors have found the sea bed, a third man, leaning over the side, waves his hands in a delicate little ballet (which is impressive, as he is about 20 stone, wears an oily boiler suit and has a roll-up hanging from his mouth) and the others ease out the anchors first on one side and then the other until the back of the boat just touches the dock and we have arrived. It's just like parking, though with a vehicle that weighs 8,000 tonnes and has no brakes.


Now I am in Athens at a hostel that has probably won Hostel of the Year many times over. It's friendly, clean, full of nice people and has a free breakfast. I'll just finish my toast and jam and then it's off to see what all this Acropolis business is about. In the meantime, thanks for reading and have a great day.