Day 145 Reaching the Holy Land!
Reaching the Holy Land
I woke up early. Not because I didn’t want to sleep for a little longer, but because I finally have reached the Holy Land.
Eager to get off the ship I went through my back pack to see that everything was in order and so that I didn’t forget anything on board.
After an improvised breakfast we were told that security personell would come on board to do some interviews before we could leave the ship.
All went well thus far but that was about to change in a hurry.
After spending three hours(!) in interrogation with not less than eight(!) different officers I finally got permission to go into Haifa. Security is not something that is treated lightly here and for good cause. Since I know why it’s important and that the officers simply are doing their job I was taking it easy. No point in getting upset. Putting bluntly, it has the potential of being a life or death situation if the security fails. So, they are actually working hard to keep me safe.
During the early morning I went in to the same routine as usual. Refreshing my map being connected with 3G. That I shouldn’t have done. It’s costing a fortune to be connected in Israel with a non Israeli SIM-card! For the first time during the journey my pay as you go card became empty. Which meant that I had to borrow a cell phone and text Rebecca so she could fix it from home. Once that was sorted I had to come up with an alternative solution for communicating while in Israel.
I found a place with used mobiles for sale so I bought an old Nokia and a Israeli pay as you go card. After spending an hour in the shop while the salesman was struggling to get it to work it finally did. For two hours.
So, now I have one phone which is actually broken but still is functional for text messaging, even though it costs an arm and a leg. I also have one not so smart phone which I can recieve calls with but I can’t use it to call or send text messages myself. Things could be worse… like if I was starving perhaps…:-(
However, I’ve reached the Holy Land and no broken or disfunctional phones can reduce my sense of joy and happiness. Now it’s the last leg of this journey, I will reach Jerusalem in eleven days!! And try to keep you updated as best as I can.