Luck and the Ferry

Bad luck is all too obvious when traveling: I miss a train; a consulate is closed for a national holiday; I point at some Chinese characters on a menu and get a grilled cow dick wrapped around a hotdog on a stick; someone in the bunk across from me snores.

Good luck is a bit harder to spot, and thus less appreciated. When things are going well, I just assume that's the way it should be, damn it. I try not to think about how something good could have gone bad because that's far too easy.

Jamie and I were hoping for some good luck for a change on a Wednesday morning in Aktau. I'd been in town a week, and we were due to pick up our visas. The Azeri consulate is the direct opposite of the Kazakh consulate in Urumqi: empty, orderly, civilized, comfortable, pleasant. We had our visas before lunch, a sign of things to come, perhaps.

We were walking around that one-horse port town of Aktau, thinking of how great it would be to get a phone call saying, "Hi, a boat is leaving in three hours. You should have time to pack, buy a bit of food and get to the port. Can you make it?" We were teasing ourselves the way hungry men describe their favorite meals to each other.

Then my phone rang. I was expecting this: a ringing and vibration from my pocket that, once I looked at the ID and saw it was one of our Kazakh friends in town, would smash our instantly risen hopes.

It was our friend Bakyzhan. We were deflated. Then he told us the Avon girls at the travel agency had called him instead of me and there was a boat. We were over-joyed: salvation from somewhere unexpected!

I immediately made phone calls to say goodbye to our local friends, and sent this to one of our taxi drivers: "Hi Saken, our boat to Baku is leaving tonite. It was nice meeting you! Goodbye and good luck with the dog fights!" He picked us up one day then put his bleeding half Caucus Shepherd, half Alibi into the trunk to bring to the vet.

Looked like our luck was changing. We ran to the travel agency, ran to the ATM to get cash, ran back to pay the Avon girls, and ran to Bakyzhan's apartment to pack our stuff. We stocked up on food and souvenirs, and got to the port, making sure to say hi to the truckers that Jamie hitched into town with, and who were all still waiting for their own boat a week later, getting drunk on cheap vodka and watching films in a curtained cab.

All we had to do was wait an extra 40-plus hours in the port waiting room beyond the scheduled departure (thick fog delaying on- and offload of cargo - we called it Gypsy Breath), constantly bothering people because no one could give us straight info in English. Then the easy part of assuming a confident and commanding posture to convince the border official to stamp me out of the country even though I had failed to get some redundant registration stamp earlier in Kazakhstan. Then we just had to spend a night on the boat before we actually set sail - more Gypsy Breath problems.

Fortunately we had our own cabin after Jamie threw a conniption fit about having to share a room with an Azeri guy whom he thought might snore. Our place was complete with woolen Soviet blankets, cold and cold water, an opening porthole window, and orange and plastic wood decor; a interior style that truly said, "Goodbye Kazakhstan, and bon voyage!"