The chaos-ride

Datum: 12.11.25
Position: Càdiz, Spain

At 01:00 in the morning, we were woken up by the beautiful “Reise, Reise AUFSTEHEN.”

At 01:30, we all gathered in the entry hall, still very tired after just three hours of sleep. From the Riad, we walked for about five minutes to the bus stop.

On the horizon, we could already see our partner ship, the Johann Smidt (aka “Johnny”). We will hopefully meet their crew at our next stop: Tenerife.

At 02:00, our bus arrived and the 10-hour ride to Tanger started. Most of us slept for the first few hours of the tour.

Our bus driver accidentally drove us to the wrong port, but thankfully Deli, who can speak French, managed to direct the bus to the right destination. All of that cost us two extra hours!

But no need to worry: After finally arriving at the right place, we still had around three hours until the departure of our ferry.

We took the time to eat sandwiches at a local cafeteria (even though it was already 02:30 p.m.). The lunch wasn’t that good, but we were all really hungry (because we had no breakfast), so we ate it anyway.

After lunch, we had to wait half an hour until the boarding of the ferry started.

From then on, everything went really fast. Unlike the ride to Morocco, we didn’t have to wait one hour to get the immigration stamp, because at the first passport control, the police officer already put the emigration stamp on the passport. That meant we had time to play games for the entire ferry ride!

At 06:00, we arrived back in Europe.

Here is the record of how many times we were checked during our journey back:

• Ferry ticket: 4x
• Passport: 3x
• Backpack scanner: 2x
• Metal detector: 1x

Then, we headed to our last bus to get to the Roald Amundsen. The ride lasted roughly one hour. During the ride, Mona braided a colourful strand into Deli’s hair.

Back at the Roald, we met the new crew members:

• Ronald: Topsgast of watch 1 (he was already there when we left the ship)
• Andre: Steuermann of watch 2
• Stefan: Deckshand of watch 2
• Rüdiger: Doctor
• Guido: Steuermann of watch 3

Afterwards, we ate dinner (pasta with cheese sauce), played games and went to bed.

From now on, we have to sleep in small beds, do “Reinschiff” (clean by ourselves) and “Backschaft” (cook for ourselves) again. Despite the inconveniences that go hand in hand with everyday life on board, we’re all really happy to be back on the ship.