Rygsækrejsen 2015-2016: Caspian sea ferry crossing

torsdag den 16. april 2015

Life on the ferry – waiting, eating, sleeping, waiting, eating….

We actually had a great night's sleep. There were new comfy matresses in the cabins, there were no noise and the sailing had been smooth allnight.

Breakfast time. Time to get excited. Or not. Hardboiled eggs, old bread and tea. Mikkel opted for one of our cupped mashed potatoes and Malene had the muesli we also brought on board.

Oh yeah, Kitchen/cabin lady was not in a better mood today. Rather the opposite.

The day consisted of eating, reading, going outside to look at the ship and the water, sleeping, reading, eating, more looking at the ship, playing backgammon. We did get food. For lunch soup and pasta with chicken. For dinner pasta with chicken. No hint of ketchup, sauce or vegetables! But no complaints it was food. Later in the afternoon the captain came to the common room and put up a note - “Passenger foodstuff times”. Maybe he'd also had a chat with his boss about service. Who knows. Now at least there was a note stating that we would be fed at regular intervals.

And sometimes you figure how to communicate with people with whom you don't share the same language. People in Azerbaijan play a lot of backgammon so of course one of them came to play. Mikkel was teaching Neill how to play – having bit of a hard time explaining the to rules to him because the guy from Azerbaijan was so eager to show how to move on the board. But he was a great guy and several of us ended up playing backgammon with him. Carl also succeeded in communicating with one of the crew members by asking if he could take photos with his 360 degrees camera. One of the crew members was very interested in posing at his desk with all his maps and instruments.

In the afternoon I got to talk with the mechanical engineer. ”How long before we'll be in the port” I asked. 3-4 hours he replied. One hour later we were close to the port but then they dropped the anchor. Not a good sign. Waiting position. More waiting. Dinner. And one more night on the ferry. Apparently it was too windy for the ships to dock. We didn't notice the wind as our ferry was stable as could be. We went to bed with the notice that we might be woken up during the night in case we could sail to the port.

Chicken and rice - basic but it's food

Nico playing backgammon with one of the truck drivers

Note about food times - was actually taken down when we got on board but is back on the wall

Front of the ship

Another ship

Another portion of staple food

Chicken - now with buck wheat or something with no taste

Cup noodles seem to seem to be a better choice

So close to the port - but yet so far away....

onsdag den 15. april 2015

Will we get on a ferry today?

The big question today was: will we actually get on a ferry to Turkmenbashi?

We were told that there would be a ferry and that we could get on the ferry so we were crossing our fingers from the early morning.

Around noon the first group of five people were picked up from the hotel to go to the port even though the ferry wouldn't sail before the afternoon – at the earliest. But it was important that we were all there in case somebody else showed up and wanted ”our” tickets. It's not possible to buy tickets before the ferry is actually in the port and since it is a cargo ferry tickets are limited. At 1.30 we were all in the port and the first couple of hours of waiting started. Not too bad actually. We were sitting outside in the sunshine and had access to our truck which had been parked in port for 3 days and we were also able to buy lunch at the canteen. Very important to get food….as we didn't know if we would get food other than our cup noodles, fruits and snacks on the ferry.

In the early evening we could finally drive to the ferry. But only to wait outside for a while. They still needed to unload more from the ferry. We did have company of a drug sniffing dog and the captain who collected our passports. Hooray it was now time to board. Our truck still had to wait as the procedure for loading the cargo trucks was ”a bit complicated” and thus very slow. Some trucks had to reverse on to the ferry, others has to be lifted to the upper cargo deck using a very slow lift. So Bob – our driver - had to wait with the truck until around 10 pm. He was the last vehicle to enter the ferry. Ramp up – and then nothing happened.

As we were told it was a cargo ferry and not a passenger ferry and the only other passengers than the crew were 10 truck drivers who were quite nice. We did get cabins, there was a common room and we were allowed all over the ship. Also to the see the loading of the cargo from the lower deck to the upper deck.

After a little ”misunderstanding” from the kitchen/cabin lady who refused to give us dinner or sheets as we were supposed to according to our tickets our guides called the Customer Relation Manager of the ferry company whom they luckily had a business card from (a new company had just bought the ferry company) and magically we got dinner and sheets. The kitchen/cabin lady was not all happy with this arrangement - maybe she normally collects extra money for this on the ferry – so she was furious and slammed the plates on the tables. And what a treat for dinner we had pasta, a fried egg, ketchup and feta! Just like being a student at home.

At midnight we were still not sailing. When we went to sleep we knew we had a whole day ahead on the ship since the sailing time is around 20 hours. Again depending on the weather. And that's sailing time - not necessarily hours until docking in port.