On to Cochin

We left Nagarcoil in the late evening on Sunday to catch an overnight train to Cochin.  This was a newer train than the one we had taken south, and it was in better condition and without our roach friends.  I actually slept a little, except for the fact that we arrived at our destination at 4:00 am.  The problem was that the ship did not dock until 8 am, so we were whisked to a hotel for the remainder of the night.  I was so happy to get a shower and change out of the clothes I had been wearing all day and night.  This was one of the advantages of travelling on a SAS trip vs going independent.  I'm sure some people ended up sleeping in train stations, and one of our guys said he and friends had just found an all-night bar in Japan when they needed a place to stay after a train ride.

We got a wake-up call at 7:30 after a brief rest and headed down for breakfast where we ran into another group of SAS folks who had arrived earlier than we had.  It's interesting to note how you feel when you see familiar faces in a strange place.  It's such a feeling of friendship when you walk in a strange place and hear "Warner".  Those are feelings I will always remember.

Our first stop was by immigration to get our port passes.  Unfortunately, they were a 10 min drive from the ship in a little building.  Our bus took us there, but the independent travelers were going to have to get there on their own and then get to the ship.  They closed at 6pm, so anyone who arrived late would have to hole up in a hotel overnight. When we got back to the ship, we collapsed for a while and then headed out to "do Cochin".

We found that Ft. Cochin was a short  ferry ride away, so we walked to the ferry station about 5 blocks away.  That seems like an easy thing to do, but we had 3 layers of security and about 50 layers of taxi and tuk-tuk drivers who could not believe that we wanted to walk anywhere.  Semester at Sea folks are good income for the drivers and they have come to depend on our ship for several important days of good money.

Fr. Cochin is a Colonial ere town that now caters to tourist, but it is easy to navigate and is pretty quiet.  Our ferry took us first to Vypeen Island and then to Ft. Cochin.  We were among mostly motorcycles and few people, but it was a cool experience. One of the features of this fishing village was the Chinese fishing nets that are set up on the shoreline.  They use a lever system to drop the nets in the sea along the edge to catch passing fish.  Then they lever it up.  It was fun to watch, but the catch was pretty small.

Cochin is in the state of Kerala.  Before this trip, I wasn't really aware that India had states.  Each of these is very different with Kerala being one of the richest.  It is also governed by an elected Communist government currently.

Being a tourist place, Ft. Cochin had hundreds of little shops, so Nancy joined her friend to check them out.  In most of the places we visited, goats roamed freely.  We did see a number of dogs but not many breeds.  In some places, they looked like they could all be traced back to one family--they looked so much alike. The dogs and goats are all smart to survive.  I watched one goat stop and look both ways before crossing a road.

Guess what else was evident.  Yes, cricket was being played in multiple places.  You can see a church in the background of this game, and it had armed guards all around it.  We found out the next day that it was one of two places in India that had been identified to be on alert for terrorist attacks.  I'm glad I didn't know while we were walking around.

As the sun was setting, we boarded our ferry and looked back on the beauty of the Chinese fishing nets.

Two pooped voyagers were happy to see the MV Explorer beckoning us home.  We ate a quick dinner, and I fell asleep fully dressed at 7 pm, fully intending to catch up on my blog. That was not going to happen.