There is a ferry. It runs most days. It is not listed anywhere, has no website, and the man who knows the schedule sells drinks from a stall about forty metres from where it docks.
Why this keeps happening
Because the ferry is not for me. It is for people who live here, who take it weekly, who do not need a timetable because they know it in the way you know when your local shop opens. A published schedule would serve exactly one constituency — travellers — and there are not enough of us to justify the work.
Once you accept this, a lot of overland travel stops being frustrating. The information exists. It is simply held socially rather than in a document, and the retrieval method is asking someone.
How to ask
- Ask three people, not one. The first answer is often the answer someone thinks you want. Consensus across three is usually right.
- Ask people with a stake in the schedule — stallholders near the dock, drivers, the woman selling tickets for the other boat. Hotel staff will guess.
- Ask “when did it go today”, not “when does it go”. The past tense gets you a fact instead of a theory.
- Write the answer down in front of them. Corrections arrive immediately if you have it wrong.
And then be wrong anyway
I did all of the above and still missed it, because that day it left forty minutes early with a full boat. I sat with a coffee and waited five hours for the afternoon crossing, which is fine, and is why I stopped booking the onward connection on the same day.
The single most useful travel habit I have: never connect two uncertain legs. Put a night between them.