If you’re looking into this ferry, you probably don’t have any other options, so in short: yes, it’s worth it because you’ll end up in Cyprus with your vehicle. However, if you do have another option, you might want to consider taking it. Otherwise, give yourself plenty of time to recover between ferry crossings!

Disclaimer: This post is about the ferry line Akgünler Denizcilik from Tasucu to Kyrenia in September 2024, but we also traveled round-trip on this line in 2019, so I’ll add some extra info about going the opposite direction at the end of the post.

Pre-Boarding Procedures

Before boarding the ferry, you must visit the Akgünler Denizcilik office in the main square of Tasucu. There, they will check your passports and vehicle registration and issue you paper tickets. We arrived at the office at 8 pm for the ferry departing at “11:30 pm.”

From the office, you go to the port (called “Ceyport”). Officers will check your tickets and allow you into the main port parking area. All passengers must get out of the vehicle before the main parking, and only the driver continues into the parking. The passengers enter the building and queue for passport control. The driver continues to customs (which in our case was nothing, no one checked anything) and then to the main parking lot.

After the driver parks, they will enter the building from the back (technically already on the other side of passport control), walk back through and also queue for passport control. For Cypriot passports, the officers automatically stamp a paper, not the passport. Make sure you keep this paper.

Next is vehicle registration, which is at the window on the right before the doors out to the parking. Here, you show your passport, ferry ticket and vehicle registration. If you have any fines (like speed cameras), you’ll be informed of them here and you’ll be sent outside to another queue (the window says “CASH”). When we took the ferry, this queue was HUGE, luckily we had no fines to pay!

Then, you wait.

Loading and Departure

The ferry is scheduled to leave at 11:30 pm. They even have a disclaimer that the ferry must be fully loaded by 11 pm due to staffing regulations at the port. Unfortunately for all the staff and all the passengers, this is not the case.

Vehicle loading started around 11:15 pm. First, the trucks. All the large trucks go onto the upper deck, but there is no ramp, so they use an elevator that fits one truck at a time and takes several minutes to go up and down. As you can imagine, this takes a while!
We loaded at 1:10 am onto the upper deck with the elevator. We were some of the first to load after the trucks, so the parking lot was still full of cars. After packing the upper deck, they loaded the main car deck with the remaining cars in the parking.

The ferry left around 3:30 am. Based on our previous trip in 2019 and some friends who have taken the same ferry, a 3-3:30 am departure is fairly standard for the 11:30 pm ferry.

The Voyage

The upper vehicle deck is somewhat open air (the lower deck is fully closed), so after a quick walk around upstairs to see what was going on we decided to stay in the van and try to get some sleep.

Each ferry ticket has a seat number on it, but it didn’t seem that anyone was paying attention to these. There are passenger lounges from A-E and everything on the boat feels very cramped. There isn’t much open floor space, but anywhere there was had a person already lying down trying to sleep. Most of the lounges were cramped and had TVs on inside them.

If you get on early, you can make a nice bed on top of the lifejacket storage boxes outside, but likely at some point someone will come and start smoking next to you. Some spots on the upper outdoor deck might be quieter as it seemed the people, especially the smokers, congregated on the lower outdoor deck.

There is a small cafeteria selling coffee and some snacks. There are also cabins, but we have no idea what they are like. There are only 2 toilet stalls for the whole boat. When I went to pee in the morning there was no toilet paper, and I assume this is normal because most of the women in the queue with me were holding their own roll of toilet paper and were kind enough to offer me some.

The season hugely affects how busy the ferry is, so if you take this ferry in the off-season then you’ll likely find the inside areas comfortable enough. However, in the summer when the boat is rammed and it's 40 degrees outside, it’s not very pleasant.

Unloading

We arrived outside of the port in Kyrenia around 9 am, but we didn’t dock until 10 am. Luckily unloading is slightly faster than loading, but we still weren’t off the ferry until 11:15 am. We were near the end of the unloaded cars so the up-side was that all the queues from passport control and other procedures were gone by the time we unloaded.

You drive off the ferry, then you enter a sea of large trucks and essentially no one knows where to go. My best advice is to drive through the trucks as far as you can towards the exit gates. Park and then enter the building on your left for passport control. If you will be or would like to visit the Republic of Cyprus in the future, then ask for your passport stamp on a separate paper. The passport officers are prepared for this and have sheets of paper ready.

If you need car insurance for the north part of Cyprus, you need to queue outside at the insurance booths (“Sigorta”). Unless you live in Cyprus and already have insurance for the north (like us), then you are required to purchase this insurance. Insurance is paid in euros and only cash is accepted. Insurance from mainland Turkey is not valid in the north part of Cyprus.

If your car is registered in the Republic of Cyprus, you must also queue at the insurance booths to purchase a Release Order. When we arrived, this cost 70 Turkish lira (but I assume the price changes regularly). This had to be paid in cash, in lira (yes, one thing must be paid in euros, and the other in lira…). Luckily, we had exactly 70 lira on us, so I’m not sure what happens if you don’t have cash…

Then you return to the random line of cars. Once you have all your documents, you search for openings between the trucks and cars to work your way closer and closer to the exit gates. The driver gets out and goes to the small office window titled “Arac Girish Islemleri.” Whatever they did at this window took a long time.

Finally, a customs officer will check your car. They may be a bit aggressive, unpacking a lot of stuff, like they did to the people in front of us. Or they may just take a quick peek like they did with us. Show your Release Order, your passports, then you leave!

We left the port at 11:40 am, nearly 16 hours after we arrived at the ticket office the night before. Phew!

Other Ferry Options & Going the Opposite Direction

The same ferry company also offers a catamaran trip that leaves in the middle of the day. This boat is smaller and faster and takes only foot passengers and small cars. If you can, we would absolutely recommend choosing this option. It’s more expensive, but I assume it’s a significantly more pleasant journey.

If you are taking the ferry from the north part of Cyprus to mainland Turkey, the pre-boarding procedures are fairly similar. The office you visit to get your tickets is right outside the entrance to the port and then you do the same as the other side (passengers get out, driver continues, everyone goes through passport control, etc.).

For cars registered in the Republic of Cyprus, you must have a yellow slip for your vehicle. This is some sort of export document, but you get it from the crossing between the south and the north, from the officers on the north side. We didn’t know about this paper when we took the ferry in 2019, so we had to drive from the port back to the crossing to get it. Luckily the ferry leaves 4 hours late so we had plenty of time.

If you need a visa to enter Turkey, we recommend doing it online, unless you want a multiple-entry visa. The online visa is single entry, whereas the one you buy in person is multiple-entry and slightly cheaper. In 2019 when we purchased visas, they had to be paid in cash in… US dollars (ha!). It took a long time for us to purchase the visa at the port in Tasucu because no one could find the one person who sells the visas…

Like in the north part of Cyprus, you’ll need to purchase new car insurance for mainland Turkey when you arrive, unless your vehicle has a green card.

Overall

The ferry experience is really not very fun, but in our case it’s super worth it to be able to travel with Freddie. Be prepared to wait and practice your patience.