instal 8
sat 26 may
well we sneaked into setabul , portugal about mid afternoon yesterday.....no haze ...mountainous hills around town look to be covered with something like wild olives and wilding pines....sort of has that sort of canadian look to it if you can invisage canada turning up on the 40th parallel......great sandy white beaches on way into harbour with not many people on them(reminded me of the way round to the nuggets at home )...town is a picture postcard one ....terracotta roofs are order of day
i told you a lie previously ....some of the crew are allowed shore leave depending on what their role is on the ship.....several of the italian deck officers were away into town like dogs shot up the proverbial as they all have eu passpoarts.....(it was a text book day...wall to wall sunshine.... probably better than any we had in the med because very clear and no haze....25deg which i found out later , the locals count as a winters day as apparently summer doesnt start till june)....jessie, several of the philly crew and ourselves are of course on foreign passports and apparently setabul is not in the shangran area so we all need visa,s for the day....we are told to wait down at ramp for immigration to bring them...10mins max.....after an hour the philies drifted off back upstairs and i nearly wore the paint off the ramp pacing up and down it....i should have bloody known it as looking over the town as we came in you could tell that traffic and people in no hurry to go anywhere and if youve ever been to spain you will know the significance of the word maunjana......eventually the prick turned up about 5.15 and said to me (who was fighting loosing battle to be civil)..."very sorry for delay...i have been very busy immigration"......what a crock of manure....turns out they are like the israelis in that they sit awhile search engine is going through everyones history , if any
....anyway is only short walk into town....very senic as kilroy would say....lot of buildings have mosaic tiles on facades and cobbled pavements....an absolute rabbit warren of extremely narrow streets all opening onto their own little squares....lot of big churches in the plain mexican style(as seen through clint eastwoods spagetti westerns )....zillions of little cafes and tiny shops selling womans ware and watches....man there is no excuse for people not knowing the time in setabul....by now is after 6 .0 pm and its friday night but most shops still open....i suspect that they have siesta during day and stay open later at night (iguess they probably shut from about 12.0 till 4.0ish....anyway we did what namesake said in travel notes supplied with tickets (by the way "namesake" runs "nz freighter travel" from napier....he is blessed with having the same h first name as me )....we did some serious people watching ( unfortunately the open top sightseeing buses dont operate in "winter").....and ive got to say that "grading on the hoof" is most difficult in setubal....the portugese there seem to come in all shapes and sizes and it is hard to describe what a typical one looks like....they certainly wernt as dark and moorish like the spanish or italians as i thought they would be ..so hard to describe...liquorish allsorts maybe
....if you ever do one of these missions take a world atlas (one i have at home would have been ideal as it has brief history of country as well as maps andof course googleearth is no good without web and naval charts only tell you what towns are on the coast.).....anyway i didnt read up anything on portugal but remember from the old school days that they were at one stage a colonial power in europe and asia and did a lot of the shooting of cheeky darkies , sending the gunboat up the river etc etc....in fact i think they were fairly brutal pricks at the best of times .......anyway the legacy of being a colonial power you will find ( britain is a prime example ) is that a lot of the natives of the countries that you have conquered tend to come and live in your own counry over a long period of time afterwards and portugal is no exception and there are a lot of faces on the streets of setubal that are as black as your hat....probably from african countries like senegal etc....virtually the first one we struck when we got off the ship was a woman coming towards us with a large bag of something perched expertly on the top of her head....look mum...no hands.....something you western ladies should try....great for the posture !! and ergonomically very efficient( if it was a crate of beer up top...you would still have both hands free for the groceries !! )
.....well was annoyed that couldnt find anywhere to get a city/outskirts tour and did even contemplate a taxi but thought that would be a prime way to set oneself up with having to extend mortgage on house and besides the thing we found most lacking in setubal ....was a basic understanding of the queens english...so flagged that idea....decided to have our first meal off the ship and i was fantisizing about the "colonel" but alas he was nowhere to be seen....mcdonalds were there (in white oddly enough and no arches) but drew the line at going there.......
...when we first got on the main drag after leaving ship we came across a gaggle of restaurants one of which was called "the capitano cook"....which i thought was a real dag as jimbob cook certainly didnt discover portugal , but i guessed it was the portugeese style of recognising a fellow sea-farer....i made a mental note to go back there later for our meal....but when we got there , capitano cook was deserted of patrons and remembering what carol said all those weeks ago when we were sunday lunching in kent....."beware of empty eating establishments"....we went next door to one that was populated....actually we were recruited by the doorman who was a slightly more olive skinned version of robbie reid (if you don't happen to know robbie , he is a guide on the keppler)......we were hanging out for something different to the cusine onboard (like steak,eggs and chips or similar) but it looked like this was a specialty seafood restaurant and the waitress who apart from very dark hair , was as white skinned as your average pakeha....but no english and she was determined that we were going to have fish so she brought out a large tray of whole fish all around that one to two kilo size, uncooked for us to select from.....we gave in and put tthe steak on things to do in britain....i selected one that looked a bit like a trumpeter......next was the drinks...bedlieve it or not i happen to have an uncanny knowledge of world beer languages and i was ok on cerveca and thought a house red vinno for kate.....she came out with a glass of white which kate said was slightly bubbly and therefore tolerable and gave that the nod but bugger me if "helpful- hariet" didnt scuttle off and come back with a glass of what i guessed was dry white....kate took a sip and if you know kate you will have experienced one of her famous involuntary shudders which is more felt than seen.....no good and hariet still very keen to rush off for something else but we do by now convince her that option one is ok.....bugger me she scuttles off and gets a jug of the stuff..also as seemed to be common where ever we have been sofar drinks also include snacks and this was no exception....large plate of olives and some sort of beans, 2 dips a round of cheese and half a loaf of bread....by now the fish has arrived and bugger me yet again but it is not one fish between us....it is one each...they are cooked opened up like a book , each one about half the size of the otago daily times....accompanying fish is a large salad and two bowls of new spuds.....now hariet was determined i needed a wine and to save a major event , i had a flashback to the 73 beerfest trip as previously mentioned....when martin ,merv and i got to the french riviera , we didnt get around to turning right and we ended up in a camping ground outside barcelona....where we discovered a very good breakfast wine called sangria....and spain is next door to portugal so i threw this word into the conversation and hariet new exactly what i was talking about and produced 2 jugs during the meal.....it is a slightly grenashy type red poured over a sliced up orange in a jug(something you can try at home if you have got a red thats a bit dodgy....slice an orange into a jug....put the wine through your sodaflow machine to give it a bit of a buzz and hay presto !!!).......by now it was coming up to ship boarding time and we were getting a bit anxious as to whether we had enough cash to pay for all of this as we had by now eaten ourselves to a standstill didnt have a clue what the bill was going to be and couldnt see any mention of visa and hoped it wasnt like greece where cash- was -king exclusively......not to worry...the whole lot 52euro...small change in europe for a meal like that........robbie reid now very inquisitive as to where we come from...i pointed over the road at the service station which puzzled him for a moment....then i got his eyesight organised to go higher where the top deck of the ellade was visible across town....." ah grimaldi" says he.....and we sailed out on a great balmy breeze 10.30pm.....definitely put setabul on list for next time though).....
sun 27 may
all day yesterday plodding through north atlantic...sea fresh and cool......today into bay of biscay...sea nasty grey colour white tops and old girl is now having a good roll as anti heeling obviously cant compensate for this swell which along with the wind is now side on or "on the beam" as the pros. call it....is also persisting down with rain and visibility less than 2 cables which is standard passing distance for ships of this size (about half a km i think is 2 cables ).......sea reminds me of a bit of light reading you could take on after tea...."the cruel sea" by nicholas monserat
...there was hardly any radio stations this morning and bugger all ships ....did see a big tanker through the gloom going other way while we were having lunch....and even she was putting up a fair bit of white water in the air (tankers usually ride better as lower in water and they also pay better cause of danger money but crew says they arnt flash to work on as very fumey all the time )
...speaking of radio....if it wasnt for george horton (a little quizz for you)and many other singers right through to the present day like lady ga.......then half these european radio stations couldnt survive....some stations esp spain play nonstop english lyrics songs with only bit of local language between them and a lot of it is old stuff.....i noticed though that there is a distinct lack of elvis songs .....perhaps the europeans have the mistaken view that he is dead!!
...a couple of days ago when i was on the bridge , chabal was up there trimming the ship(there is a very complicated control panel on the bridge for organising the balast and that is part of his job.....you have got to have her as trim as possible so she scoots through the water with the minimum of friction to keep fuel costs down......bit like having your tyre pressure right in your car
...anyway there is a small tv on bridge hooked up to the satelite reciever and its pulling in a italian radio station via web cam.....its playing an american song from days gone by and chabal calls out "do i know this group"(its a bit like when our kids came home from school once with a tape of a new artist called cat stevens , that they had just discovered...yea right)......i said to chabal ...too right i do in fact have one of their albums on my mp3 and have been playing it a lot on the treadmill in the gym lately....i did point out that the big chick who was the lead singer choked to death on a sandwich about 35 years ago!!!....but it illustrates what i have been saying about radio up here ..."classic hits rule "...after we did the music talk i asked chabal what all the hoo-haa was on their tv in mess that day....church services and black and white images of cars riddled with bullet holes...dead bods....and who is corleonie......ah says chabal...is aniversary 10 years ago when very high up govt prosecuter take on the mafiosa and they (the mafia) kill him...i actually remember that ....i think his name was something like falconia and the mob put a radio controlled bomb in a large culvert under a motor way they new he was going to use....it blew a hole about the size of this ship....killed him , his family....all the escorts and quite a lot of casual passerbys as well and 2 months later they executed another leading figure and apparently the italian public were so enraged the govt had a major crackdown......chabal says most mafia bosses are inside....i ask does that mean that the mafia is a spent force.....he says the italian equivalent of "does the wild bear no longer shit in the woods " or as tui's would say....yea right..........the mafia strong holds were right in the southern tip of mainland italy and across the straits of massina in sicily....this company has its head office in naples but the ships are registered in palermo right in the heart of scicily...hmmm...not theorising any more on that issue ...bunk not big enough for me and horses head....but..having watched the sapranos you would have to wonder if "wheels" have had to be greased in the past........those of you who were watching "secret war" on prime about the time i left would have seen the one on the american mafia when america entered the world war 11.......the yanks couldnt get the ports geared up to do anything at speed and mysterious things were happening....a large ocean liner was being converted to a troop carrier (was it the "france" ?) and it caught on fire and burnt to the waterline etc etc.....the problem being that the wharves were controlled by the mafia and some over zealous g-men had managed to get their main boss , lucky luchiana ....banged up for a 70year jail term.....in the end they cut a secret deal with lucky ....the ports suddenly burst into activity and he got reduced to 10 years and wiled away his retirement years back in sicily......the end of that
mon 28 may
came on deck to find we are plodding up the coast of cornwall and devon....looks to be jolly fine day and just like it would be on our own coast on such a morning....clear and no haze.....got a news fix from the bbc..another station going on in some foreign lingo...suddenly realised it was the "boys from the valleys" boyo..
.we have 1000 cars to drop off here (including the alphas and fiats) so hope to get into portsbury(the port which services bristol) for a wander , a full english lunch and an internet cafe to unload more of this torture on you...rh.......