Stranded on São Tomé
Cruise passengers who were left behind made it back on board after six days
A Norwegian Cruise Line cruise ship traveling at sea
© Darryl Dyck / The Canadian Press via ZUMA Press
Eight tourists from the USA and Australia are stranded off the coast of Africa. Their cruise ship sailed on without them after an excursion. After almost a week they are back on the ship
For a total of eight fellow passengers on the Norwegian Cruise Line, an unpleasant cruise experience is now over. The passengers from the US and Australia were left on the West African island of São Tomé after they failed to make it back on board in time following an excursion. The ship’s operator, Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL), simply left them there, according to a CNN report. However, as NCL announced, according to a report in the trade magazine “Crucero”, the guests could have boarded again in Dakar on April 2, 2024.
The total of six days that they were unable to be on the ship involved a lot of travel hardship. When the group was not back on board on time after the excursion on São Tomé, the ship’s management handed over the guests’ passports to the local port authorities. From then on they had to organize their onward journey themselves.
Norwegian Cruise Line took stranded people back on board in Senegal
First we went to Banjul in Gambia. However, due to low water, the “Norwegian Dawn” was unable to dock off the West African country as planned. So we continued on to the cruise ship’s next scheduled stop in Dakar, Senegal. Here the eight were able to move back into their cabins after six certainly exciting days.
Exploring Journeys
This is what cruise luxury looks like in XXL format
It remains questionable whether those affected will be reimbursed for the financial expenses for their unplanned stopovers. Airline tickets, renting a van, fees for new visas as well as accommodation and food costs were incurred. But if the original delay was entirely the responsibility of the eight travelers, things probably look bad for them. “In this case I would […] see no leverage for compensation,” says travel law expert Mirko Göpfert in an interview about the case with the broadcaster n-tv. He qualified that this would at least apply if the events had occurred in Germany.