Leaving Cyprus

The boat leaves at 1300. We arrived at the port shortly before 1200 only to find that the boat was full and no tickets are available for us. When we came to Cyprus a week ago the boat was almost empty. This is unexpected and leaves us in a pickle. The next boat is Sunday at 1000. Today is Thursday.

We ask if we could stand during the voyage.

No.

We ask if anyone had cancelled.

They had not.

They suggest we wait in the hope that people do not arrive.

They all do.

After the boat had left, although we didn’t know the boat had left yet, they called us over and said there was a spot on the boat. We just need to pay a bit more money and off we go.

We dash over and through immigration because we though we were going to be the last passengers onto the boat. There was one other man in the same situation as us. We are taken to our boat. We can’t find any other passengers, anywhere.

Just room after room of empty seats.

This is a strange sight when they told us the place was packed. We selected a room at random and then two seats in a similar fashion. I go for a walk in the hope of finding other passengers. I find none.

I ask someone if this was going to Tasuçu. It is. We know now that the first boat had long gone; I can’t see it on the horizon. This new boat leaves three hours later at 1600. After an hour and a half I check our distance on the GPS to find we’d only gone a third of the way and not in a direct line either! We are in it for the long haul. The two and a half hour speed boat that left at 1300 had been, for us, replaced with a 1600 departure that would take six hours.

We are dropped off at 2200 and then we walked the 1.5km into town, haggle for a room and then go and get a feed at the only place that was open on a Thursday night in a small port town in Turkey.

Still, it was better than staying in Cyprus until Sunday.

when: Sunday, October 12, 2014