Day 99, Year 5: World Wetlands Day
Date: Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Weather: Daytime Temps in the 80’s; 75 degrees F Overnight
Location: Bolgatty Hotel Anchorage, Cochin (Kochi), India

February 2 is World Wetlands Day. Now there’s a bit of information I’ll bet you were just waiting to hear. But I find it fascinating that I found this out by buying The Hindu, one of India’s best daily papers according to other cruisers. In today’s issue, and maybe everyday, there is a Young World insert like Parade Magazine in weekend US papers, but this one is a complete newspaper for children. What a great idea. And in this children’s newspaper I learned that the Vembanad Kayal here in Kerala (Carol-uh), a brachkish water system that weaves in and out of this large urban and industrial area, is a threatened wetland. There was a section for News This Week, a course on peace education based on Gandhian values, children’s book reviews, a fun page, a Nancy cartoon, a math page, and of course, a Sudoku puzzle. From the fun page-What is as big as an elephant but weighs nothing? (answer at the end of this log)

Now to what we did today. We both hopped in the dinghy early to rid the sides of the boat of salt. Mark held the dinghy and I did the washing and rinsing. I still have some stainless polishing to do and we have to wash down the dodger and bimini, but then we can declare Windbird clean on the outside. At least for now. Then we went to town to try and find a SIM card for our modem that would allow us to have internet on the boat. We first went to the Vodophone office close the waterfront. They are they major provider of phone systems here, but they told us we could not buy a SIM card for our AT&T modem. They insisted that we must buy one of their modems that can only be used in India. So we hailed an auto rickshaw and said we wanted to go to Varney’s Supermarket on Mahatma Ghandi (MG) Road. We used the supermarket as the destination thinking that would be a place any taxi driver would be familiar with. But no. We drove south along the waterfront for what seemed like forever before turning back inland. We kept telling the driver to turn left, but he kept saying no, no. When we did turn left we were evidently on MG Road but far from where we wanted to be. The driver pulled over and let us show our map to another driver, and he just motioned to keep going. We finally got to an area that looked slightly familiar, so we hopped out and then had to walk only a short distance until we found VIJronics, the little shop that we had visited on Saturday and whose owner thought he could help us find a way to get the right SIM card for our modem. Well, he could and he did, but it took three hours of waiting. This is a little shop but it must be one of the busiest in Cochin. The owner, Azism, rents phones, so every couple of minutes someone came in to rent a phone. He was working on his Acer laptop on getting our modem set, renting phones, and talking on the phone continually. He was definitely the picture of multi-tasking. I finally left and went next door to do some clothes shopping which must have taken at least 45 minutes. When I returned, Azism thought he just about had us all set, three young men came in who were from the home office of Tata Dacomo, the type of SIM card we needed to buy, and they needed to take over Azism’s computer. They apologized to us and said it would only take 15 minutes, but time just went on and on. Finally, Mark and I went to a hotel down the street and had lunch (which costs about $2 US for the two of us). When we returned to VIJronics, the place was empty, but it still took a bit of time to get everything set up. So three hours later, we hailed another auto rickshaw and went back to the waterfront. I bought some fresh veggies as we walked to the dinghy. Once we got back on Windbird, it took Mark a little time to figure things out, but we do now have internet. We thought it was going to be 3G so we could do video Skype calls, but it is looking like it is only 2G. We’ll have to figure that one out on another day. But for now, we’ll declare today as a success, even with all the waiting, as we now have internet on the boat for what appears to be about $5 US for the month.

No word on the freezer compressor today. We were told to check back again tomorrow. So tomorrow morning we think we will take the ferry to Fort Cochin. Mark will go to Kondo Syokai Marine, a boatyard and boatbuilder. According to the Indian Ocean Cruising Guide this yard builds the junk rigged Gazelle designed by Tom Colvin and it appears to be the only place here to find out anything about getting marine repairs done. We have tried to call with no luck, so a face-to-face visit is needed. While Mark does this, Judy of Freebird and I will do a little window shopping in the fabric area. She went there yesterday and said the shops are phenomenal. So that’s the tentative plan for tomorrow.

Answer to the elephant riddle: an elephant’s shadow