Haifa, Israel (Overnight)

We arrived in Haifa for an overnight stay at 7am and docked right in town. Looking out from our balcony, the housing and city rise up a steep, hilly range. There is no port activity and nobody on the streets. We also can’t see anybody in the residential balconies nearby. It is warm already and it is the sabbath.

Over half of the passengers have excursions to places like the Dead Sea, Jerusalem, Nazareth & Masada. These excursions are some distance away and are 9-12 hour days. Everybody on the ship has to go through border control, so they let the excursions go through first, then the rest of us floor by floor. We were due for the 8.30 to 8.45am slot but didn’t get called until 9.15am. It was like going through airport security with smart gates and each person also carefully checked against their passport photo. We were then given an entry card which we needed to keep along with photo ID wherever we go for our entire stay. Certainly, Israel is pretty serious about security.

Due to it being the sabbath today, we had been told that nothing would be open and no public transport until after dusk but we are still surprised at just how quiet it is. So once through border control, we went back to the ship for breakfast – damn we had missed it. The captain then announces a bland comment that there has been an incursion on the Gaza border. They are going to call back the excursions, try and contact independent passengers to get back to the ship - we are leaving the area “out of an abundance of caution”.

We have no internet in Israel (the only country the UK sim card doesn’t cover!!) and the BBC channel in our room doesn’t work. Rumour has it the Hamas has fired 5,000 missiles over to Israel. Mmm seems a lot?? And maybe this isn’t a usual sabbath ghost town – starting to think everybody have fled their homes and are sitting in bunkers?? And we are sitting in the port next to a bunch of frigates….

By 1pm all the excursion groups are back but they are still trying to track down the independents. It could take a while. If we had gone out, we wouldn’t have internet or phone capability and probably wouldn’t have got back till dinner time.

I managed to put $20 on my NZ spark account and get messages out that we were okay through Whats App but after half dozen messages, I had chewed through all that credit. No roaming packs available for Israel and data is $9.20 per 100mb.

Finally, we can see BBC and it was actually 7,000 missiles. Apparently, we are in the middle of a war. Two of the five Israeli frigates parked next to us have gone out to sea and to the south – time we left!!

The captain came on about 3pm and advised we were waiting on a group that have gone overland on a private tour and he expected us to be leaving about 4pm. We were scheduled to move to Ashdod after overnighting in Haifa which is closer to Gaza Strip, we're giving that a miss and going to Alanya, Turkey instead, I am writing this at 4.30pm and no further update. Not sure how long 4,000+ people wait for a small private group to leave a war zone?

5pm update. We are waiting on two people and we will be leaving at 5.30pm whether they are back or not.

6.45pm update. Now we are waiting for ambulance to evacuate a sick passenger - not a great place to get sick. Then we can leave. No mention of the two missing passengers, assume they are back.

7.30 update. We are ready to leave but Haifa only has one pilot and they need to wait for him to come back. Gone home for dinner perhaps? New ETD of 8pm. There is one frigate left... I think I will go down to World Stage and watch the new Indiana Jones movie.

9pm update. We finally got going at 8.15pm and out past the breakwater by 8.45pm. We are off to Turkey.