Planning Collapse

Baku
August 21st
8km

Today was a total disaster from start to finish. We were supposed to catch a “ferry” from Baku to Turkmenistan, across the Caspian. I put “ferry” in quotes because it is not a passenger boat - it moves trains and trucks across. The ride is supposed to be 12 to 30 hours long, depending on how long it takes to get space at the Turkmenistan port to dock the boat. There is no food or water sold on board, so we were all packing liters of water and bags of food for the trip. The biggest problem is that there is no boat departure schedule. The boats just leave when they are full.

Left our nice, old town accommodation at 7am to make it back to the Velotreki for 8am to load the van with our bags. We all had cycling clothes on for the ride to the ferry, and day bags packs for the boat. We were supposed to leave the Velotreki at 9am, but the van didn't come until 10am. The tour company then decided that there was too much traffic to cycle, so they called for a larger bus and put all the bikes and bags on that. Paul, the historian, said that he was going to cycle down anyways. Me and 7 others joined him. It was an easy, 8km ride downhill the whole was to the water. No traffic problems. The other riders were all really mad that they didn't ride down as well, but many of their bikes had already been loaded and disassembled by the time Paul decided to ride down. It was complete breakdown in organization, with the local support and the tour leaders saying different things and changing their minds every few minutes.

Once we got to the ferry, we sat around all day. 12 hours waiting at a dirty, industrial dock beside a line of transport trucks. There were a few small cafes nearby, and a supermarket about 10 minutes away, but no internet and nothing else to kill the time. The ferry never left though.

It wasn't until 8am that the local support came and asked about the situation. Apparently, the war in Georgia has stopped the trains from Georgia and the ferry won't leave without a full load. No ferries have left for the past few days. It seems like they could have known sooner that there would be no boat today. In any case, we were scrambling around in the dark to find clothes and other overnight items once we knew that we couldn't get on the ferry.

5 riders volunteered to camp on the dock to watch the stuff...and make sure the boat didn't leave. The rest of us went back to the hotel in the old town for the night. They have our cell numbers in case we need to get back there in a hurry.
There has been a huge breakdown in the riders trust of the tour company to plan and act appropriately. Henry, the tour company owner that has been with us ever since we flew into Baku, was supposed to fly back to Toronto tonight. If he does, then I think it is a big mistake. There is still huge uncertainty about how we will proceed from here, and Miles (the tour leader) is already in Turkmenistan with the van. If Henry leaves, then we only have Ben left from the
tour company.

At the hotel, Ben asked everyone to meet at the ferry at 9am. Everyone is ignoring that suggestion. We've already sat for a day on the ferry dock. They can call us if the boat starts to load train cars.

The boat we were trying to get on:

Stewart and Nicole, guarding the bikes and bags:

This is the lovely spot where we waited for 12 hours!!!