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A Norwegian cruise ship arrives at the French port of Marseille in the Mediterranean in this 2021 file photo.
CNN
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Eight cruise passengers left behind in the African island nation of Sao Tome and Principe have been fighting for days to catch up with their Norwegian Cruise Line ship as it heads up the west coast of Africa.
Passengers were delayed returning to the ship on March 27, according to a statement from Norwegian Cruise Line.
“Eight guests who were on the island on their own or on a private tour missed the last tender back to the boat so did not meet the 3pm boarding time. local time,” the statement said.
“While this is a very unfortunate situation, guests are responsible for ensuring they return to the ship at the posted time, which is widely communicated via the ship’s intercom, in daily communication and published shortly before disembarking.”
Norwegian Cruise Line said the passengers’ passports were handed over to local port agents for guests to collect. The cruise line said guests are responsible for the cost of moving to the next available port to return to the ship. The cruise line said it was working with local authorities and contacting stranded passengers.
According to stranded South Carolina couple Jill and Jay Campbell, who have been contacted CNN affiliate WPDE about their situation, a group of eight stranded passengers spent 15 hours traveling through six countries to trying to reconnect with their ship on Sunday in Gambia.
But the ship was unable to dock due to high tide and spent an extra day at sea. The Campbells told WPDE that the team will then try to reach Senegal, where the ship is set to sail into port on Tuesday.
The Campbells told WPDE that several members of the group are elderly, another is a paraplegic and one woman is pregnant. They said one team member had been without his heart medication for five days and had become ill.
CNN reached out to Norwegian Cruise Line for more details, but did not immediately hear back.
The group’s wild ride began after a long tour in Sao Tome and Principe on March 27.
“We were like, ‘We’re running out of time,’ and they said, ‘No problem, we can get you back in an hour,'” Jay Campbell said of tour organizers. Campbell told WPDE that the tour operator contacted the captain to say the passengers were on their way but would be delayed. The ship was still in port when they returned, but Campbell said the captain wouldn’t let them board.
“The harbor master tried to call the ship, the captain refused the call,” Campbell told WPDE late last week. “We emailed NCL, the NCL customer service emergency number, they said ‘Well, the only way to get in touch with the ship is to email them, they don’t respond to our emails.’
The Campbells told WPDE that the team ran out of their medication and that most of the passengers did not have credit cards accepted in Sao Tome and Principe, so the Campbells spent thousands of dollars on their Visa card for lodging and necessities for the team.
The Campbells said an additional passenger, who was on a different tour, had a medical emergency and was treated in Sao Tome, also leaving her stranded. The Campbells said they were able to contact the passenger’s daughter back in California to coordinate her return to North America.
The couple boarded the ship on March 20. The website CruiseMapper.com shows the cruise ship Norwegian Dawn sailing Monday to Dakar, Senegal.
CNN’s Sarah Dewberry contributed to this report.