The Caspian crossing

We arrived at Turkmenbashi port around 10:30 am and prepared ourselves for what could be a long wait!  Not much to do around here, lots of trucks, a small restaurant, a waiting room and the delightful outside toilets.  A glimpse around the fence, a large Russian ship was in dock being loaded up, looked quite modern and wishful thinking...but alas no passengers allowed on this due to hazardous cargo..

The waiting around gave me a chance to update my blog (if only I could add the pictures too!), a few cups of tea was had, some played frisby as we waited patiently for news from our guide.   By evening still no news, dinner in the restaurant was a very welcoming hot chicken and potato soup followed by a few vodkas.  A trucker who had been there waiting for 5 days seemed quite keen to keep my glass topped up!  

It seemed unlikely that we would get on a ferry that night, so we set up camp and a few of us staggered  to our tents after the restaurant shut around 11:00 pm only for a rude awakening at 1:00 am (ouch!), we were getting on a ferry so we quickly dressed, packed up our tents and waited and waited and went through customs eventually on board at 4:00 am. 

Now I'd heard rumours about the cabins and cockroaches before and was already prepared to spend the trip on deck but thought I would check out below just in case: dreary, smelly, low ceilings, maggots on the mattresses, dirty sinks and a communal mutant style toilet/squat box.  Guess where I was spending the rest of the night!

We set sail around 5:30 am and were already settled in our sleeping bags by then, a warm calm night, I awoke to see the sunrise a couple of hours later.  A lazy day, a visit to the bridge and more waiting, pot noodles for dinner, watching the sunset and soon we were coming into port in Baku at 8:00 pm. 

After immigration formalities, checked into 'The Rigs' hotel luckily enough getting a single room threw my stuff on the floor, jumped in the shower and crashed out for the night.

Spent a couple of nights  here in Baku waiting for our driver Simon and the truck to arrive on a separate ferry, eventually he arrived just in time to set off bush camping again, having spent over 24 hours on a ferry, a windy crossing, no hot water and very little to eat our journey seemed a luxury in comparison.