Why I chose the Cyprus-Greece ferry over flying

There was a time long, long ago when the journey was as much part of any holiday as the destination. This used to be true of flying as well prior to 9-11, low-cost mass travel and the clinical homogeneity of today’s airports. Flying is now just something you need to do to get somewhere fast. It has no other redeeming features for the average person. A recent trip down memory lane to the Greek island of Ios with a friend of 45 years ended with taking the ferry back to Cyprus rather than flying home. Aside from the fact we could not remember a thing about Ios other than the hotel where we’d stayed during the early 80s due to alcohol-induced memory loss, the anxiety of flying back dogged my waking hours. It had nothing to do with endless queues or having your knees compressed. We’re all entrained by now to endure those annoying discomforts. But what overshadows every flight I take is the possibility of experiencing Grade III Aerosinusitus, “the bends in the air”. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it’s mild and stops on landing when pressure is equalised. Other times the hot pokers stabbing into your head on descent linger for a week or more. You’ve taken all the precautions, acupressure travel bands, saline nose drops, pain killers, ear plugs, headphones, chewing gum, suggested facial manoeuvres that make you look silly. Sometimes nothing works. It’s a gamble every time and I lost on that particular flight to Athens. The cabins are little more than serviceable “Hand it over to Jesus,” a friend says sometimes about life’s little tribulations. I really tried but Jesus wasn’t on the plane that day. Why would he be when he could just walk from Cyprus to Greece? That’s why I got the ferry back and swore to never set foot on a plane again. I’ve said that before and with family in Ireland the choices are limited. This time however there was another direct way back. Sure it was going to cost extra but I wanted to enjoy the deblurring of memory lane on Ios and not be stuck to a screen researching what could be done to mitigate the half hour from hell on the way home. I’m literally too old for that s*hit, a fact that places me way closer to the possibility of burst blood vessels and exploding ear drums. Anyone who’s seen the 1981 movie Scanners and has Aerosinusitus knows what I’m on about. After navigating the ferry website and with a call to Orthodoxou Travel in Larnaca to assist, I had to book a cabin for four but was assured I could reclaim the port taxes for the three empty beds, which they promptly did the day after my return. The taxes were €36 per person and the bunks €30 per person so the final fare with refund was €150 for two nights aboard the AF Marina’s 30-32-hour voyage. Pricewise, no worse really than a weekend at a hotel. Obviously, it would be really cheap for multiple travellers, or if you were feeling really, really adventurous, the ship has cheaper airline-type seats with tons of leg room but the snowflake within me got triggered by the words “airline seats” on the website. There’s something about travelling by sea that flying can never match. As a child during the late 60s, we travelled over and back all the time to England to see the relatives. They were the boring component, endless home visits and afternoon teas. The 13 hours of buses, trains and the ferry was the real adventure. Even the entertainment and buzz of cruise ships are a distraction in a way. The constant activity detracts from the solitude that can be found on an empty deck watching the sunrise. Better still, the mobile phone doesn’t work well though the ship sells a Wi-Fi package for those suffering from FOMO. I reached the gate for the Italian-flagged AF Marina at Piraeus port before 9pm after dressing down a Greek taxi driver in really bad Cypriot Greek followed by begging and pleading. I’d arrived from the islands at one gate but the terminal for Cyprus was 40 minutes’ walk away. You may plot your route on Google maps but real-life Piraeus does not comply. Every taxi driver waved me off. They could not be bothered to take me the 5-10 minutes to the correct gate. “What time is your boat leaving?” the last guy asked. “9pm,” I lied. Scheduled departure was 1am. “I can make more money going to the airport,” he whined. “It’ll take you five minutes,” I told him. “Don’t you like easy money?” That seemed to work. “Ok. I’ll take you there for 20 euros”. Two hours later I was on the ship and surprised by the small number of foot passengers – 50 at most. There were maybe ten bikers and perhaps 60 or 70 cars boarding. There were no queues at the restaurant or the café at any stage. The ‘casino’ was a pokey room with five slot machines that no one bothered with but the ship and cabins were clean and comfortable. There is not a lot of places to sit on deck The one drawback on the AF Marina was that it seems to be mainly designed to carry vehicles, with the drivers as an afterthought. The interior section is shoved to one end like a container ship and the bulk consisted of a huge empty vehicle deck that passengers could not access. Confined to having your coffee standing up on a working deck stacked with safety and other equipment, there were only a couple of metal benches on either end that looked like they were there for crew to pass their breaktime. They were mostly occupied by the other six people who seemed to like being on deck. The very top deck was filled with the same uncomfortable metal benches soldered to the floor indicating that perhaps the AF Marina was originally designed for reasonably short trips where passengers could enjoy the sea air for a couple of hours… and maybe ignore the black smoke coming out of the ship’s funnel in the middle of the deck. In that sense, the AF Marina was a far cry from the Greek ferry to Ios, the Blue Star Delos whose back decks were filled with tables and chairs with a Flocafe at the centre of each. It’s understandable that given its layout, this particular Cyprus-Greece ferry cannot fill its sparse deckspace with chairs and tables for safety reasons. But there was a feeling that possible revenue streams were being lost. A person can only stand up for so long with a coffee before having to go back inside when with a different ship they might sit out on deck all day and have more than one coffee or a meal or two. Multiply that by dozens who might like to do the same rather than be holed up in an air-conditioned café or a claustrophobic cabin. The rooute is now operated by the AF Marina Perhaps since the ferry is heavily subsidised by the government, onboard profits are not all that important. Just sayin. It’s also understandable that a ferry is designed to get people from A to B and in that sense the AF Marina does its job, and passengers, if they wish, get to enjoy the sea air, smaller queues at the ports and best of all no exploding heads. The real kicker: I got back to Cyprus, including a two-hour jaunt to Nicosia from Limassol port, three or four hours before my holiday companion got back to Ireland after suffering delays and missed connections at Athens and Geneva airports on what should have been at most, an eight-hour journey. The ferry won that round. Now if only there was a company that ran a service to Ireland…