This section deserves a “piece of its own”

After a three day wait our patience was eventually rewarded when the ferry finally arrived around 7p.m. on Thursday evening (when in theory our itinery said we should be in middle of Ashgabat). Great we thought! We’ll be in Turkmenistan by tomorrow morning.   
After several hours and much cash changing hands, we waded our way through customs and eventually drove onto the boat. Of course the very fact that we had parked on his deck meant that the captain promptly demanded another $50! We weren’t in any position to refuse at this point. We parked carefully in a very tight corner and waited another few hours whilst trains were shunted backwards and forwards on to the ferry (–in fact it takes two trains with at least 20X70Tonne carriages.)
Ingrid and David went off to find a cabin, which was not quite as bad as we all imagined bearing in mind that this is a transport ferry, whilst we decided to sleep in the truck “down below” despite being told that it wasn’t allowed.
We slept well . . . very well, to be awoken by David at 1.30p.m the following day. The good news- land was in sight. The bad news – we were not moving. Of course we all got very excited and waited patiently for the ship to begin moving again. Which eventually it did . . . only for us to discover but not until about three hours later, that the land we were facing was still Azerbaijan!!! The ship had left in the early hours, sailed for a couple more, turned around (why?) then stopped.
Resigned ourselves to yet another night on board this ship which seemingly sailed itself for no crew were ever spotted (though there were a few prostitutes and maybe ten passengers).
Awake at a more reasonable time on Saturday morning-and yes we could again see land and this time it WAS Turkmenistan. But for some reason known only to the Captain, we were anchored once again.” Never mind, we’ll be off shortly”, we all thought. Well, not quite. We didn’t actually move until around 8p.m.- ten hours later and during which time two other ferries had come and gone!
When we finally did move it took a couple of hours to reach the port and we finally disembarked to commence the ‘paperwork’ involved in getting into the country.
Four hours later and with the help of our guide, Aylar, we were finally free to start driving. Which we did . . . .approximately 500metres to the Customs car park to sleep for the night.

We had survived nearly 48 hours on this rusty, smelly and none too clean ship with no provision for food, water or any other luxuries. However, we did see a sealion and a sea snake whilst we endured the journey.

and now at last the fun of Turkmenistan. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .