COCHIN, INDIA

Hi everyone,

Yes we have made it into Cochin India.  What a terrific place to be.  The people are friendly, it’s warm and muggy, but when the sun goes down out comes the mozzie battalion with full vengeance!  Walking down the main street is like a looking at a technicolor coat with all the beautiful saris, and yes Shae and I have invested in one.   As this place is predominately muslin, we are not allowed out without covering our shoulders and wearing dresses/skirts/shorts past our knees, so as to not offend the local people.  We have managed to look around at a place called Fort Cochin, Jew town and do a little shopping in what they call Broadway.  We have really enjoyed our time here and wish we were able to stay a little longer but this is not the case.  Unfortunately the information that we have been given by the Blue Water Rally directors (this is why we joined the BWR and paid for the information and support to be correct) had been incorrect regarding NZ’ers getting visas on arrival.  This was only if you flew in to 4 nominated international airports that you can receive a visa in this manner.  So Gavin and I had to fight tooth and nail with the Indian Immigration with the wonderful help of The New Zealand High Commission, to obtain an emergency visa.  The NZ High Commission have been absolutely fabulous.  As we had been waiting for our prop to arrived from Belgium via NZ, NEVER EVER EVER use DHL!!  They are a very incompetent company internationally and do not understand that when a product is under warranty as it is faulty that there is no charge, yet the incompetency and the understanding of the basics of english does not register in their intellectual ability.  So waiting for an urgent propeller to be delivered before our departure and requesting a commercial invoice to the value of the product, even though it’s a nil charge, they cannot compute.  Then to find out after all this time that they had the original invoice stating value of product.  This has now put us in a compromising position, we now have to collect the prop from Mumbai under emergency visa status again with the assistance of the NZ High Commission.  DHL India’s lack of customer service in abhorrent.  Basically 4 days of pissing around waiting for them to organise themselves in DHL India undermining the credibility of a NZ company stating that there is something not right about this shipments nil value (even though it states quite clearly on the invoice WARRANTY REPLACEMENT OF FAULTY PRODUCT NIL VALUE) is not acceptable.   Our shipment was held to ransom, in plain DHL India english, you don’t supply the invoice you don’t get your shipment.  Then on top of that we paid for an express delivery, what an absolute joke.  Anyway enough of that enjoy the photos…