The boys documented their bizarre experience with selfies. Photo / Facebook
The boys documented their bizarre experience with selfies. Photo / Facebook
Warning: Language may offend
Three British men claim to have accidentally travelled to Syria this week, after they boarded the wrong boat following a night out in Ayia Napa, Cyprus.
Club reps Lewis Ellis, 25, Alex McCormick, 19, and James Wallman, 23, say they got on the boat transfer to the Syrian port of Tartus believing they were embarking on a dolphin-watching trip.
Mr Ellis told the Daily Mirror: "'The last club closed at 7.30am so we just powered through to our 9am boat trip and ended up blagging our way on to the wrong boat. distance away, so they decided to make their way to the port and take their chances.
"I mean it was 8am and the last club had closed and we thought: 'we can still go dolphin watching. We'll blag our way onto a boat and go dolphin watching'," Lewis said.
"So we blagged our way onto this random boat. And we're on there for f***ing hours before we realise that we aren't in Ayia Napa anymore so we start f***ing panicking a bit. We said to the crew, like, 'why are we so far from land? We're miles away and we've got no wi-fi'."
Photo / Facebook
"We were wearing boardshorts, hungover, looking like we were ready for a boat party.
"Everyone was foreign and it was pretty much half way out from the island when we asked 'how come we're so far away from land?'"
Mr McCormick, from Colchester, told the paper: "We got pretty far out and at that point we were looking at each other thinking 'what the f*** do we do now? We were panicking and saying to these guys 'you need to turn around.'"
After arriving in Tartus they claim they only found out what their location was when one of them posted a status update to Facebook and it was geotagged from Syria. They say they were deposited back to Cyprus yesterday afternoon.
The boat that took them to Syria is in the background. Photo / Facebook
But... doesn't this story sound a little too good to be true?
It does, doesn't it?
Perhaps unsurprisingly this unlikely tale has picked up coverage from dozens of news organisations, both in the UK and overseas - including the Sun, the Star, Metro, the Mail, TIME, the Herald and NEWS.com.au.
Mr Ellis has been gleefully sharing the stories on his Facebook page - where he also let slip that, somewhat disappointingly, the whole thing is a fabrication.
Mr Ellis has previous form as a wannabe 'prankster'. Earlier this year he made headlines after filming himself swimming in a decorative pool at Manchester's Trafford Centre for his YouTube channel.
Syria has been embroiled in a civil war since 2011. 50,000 Syrians have lost their lives in that time, with more than 11 million others forced to leave their homes.
