Did We Mention There'd Be Monkeys?: Kochi

For our third term break, I went down with the Fernandez family (from Chile) to the coastal city of Kochi. Kochi is a lovely seven-hour drive from Wellington over bumpy roads and the worst highway bathrooms on the sub-continent. Fort Cochin is the old part of the city which used to be a European settlement. First we walked through the old Jewish market district, called Jew Town. The neighborhood is full of old European-style buildings which now house souvenir shops.

L: Street in Jew Town - R: Dutch palace

From there we walked up to the waterfront which is full of fish mongers and old-school Chinese fishing nets. These large canti-levered nets don't really seem to be in use for much other than tourist pictures now, but at one time they were a state-of-the-art fishing technique. We paid some of the fishermen to take pictures and operate the net.

Fresh fish on the waterfront.

Pulling the ropes on the fishing net with the two Joses.

Group photo: Jazna, me, Jose, little Jose, and Gaby

Chinese fishing nets.

We then found St. Francis church, where the Portugese explorer Vasco de Gama was originally buried.

And I was very excited to see my first snake charmer in India.

After two days in Kochi, we drove an hour south to the town of Alleppey. From here, you can rent a house boat to spend the day on the lake and traveling through the backwaters. Unfortunately, the holiday weekend saw hordes of visitors to the area and there were no boats available. We made a call to classmate who happened to be from Alleppey, and his dad managed to hook us up with a premium boat which happened to be owned by the south Indian cinema actress Revathy. Apparently she doesn't use the boat much, so they rent it out occassionally. Anyway, the boat was very nice, had air conditioning, and we enjoyed a relaxing overnight cruise.