This will be the longest segment of the cruise, almost 3 weeks.  We left Capetown at 6:00PM and enjoyed a calm day at sea on the way to Port Elizabeth.  The city was named by the grieving first governor, not for the queen but for his wife, who died in child birth while they were on a sailing ship to this, his first command.
 
Early explorers found the broad bay on the southeast coast of South Africa and stopped to replenished water supplies.  They probably hunted for meat as well.  Like Capetown, it is cut into the continent, but faces sort of northeast and is sheltered from the heavy weather that blows from the southwest.  Yet the wind does blow, offshore, and that combined with miles of gorgeous beaches makes the area a water sports haven. 
 
Fort Frederick was built in 1799 but never fired a shot in anger.  A century later thousands of locally raised horses were used and perished during the Boer War.  Now, the city is completing a 40,000 seat stadium that will host six of the preliminary games in the World Cup football (soccer) matches.  There is some industry, including a VW vehicle assembly plant (left hand drive Polo cars), two tire manufacturing plants (General and Goodyear) and dozens of small companies that fabricate components for the cars.  They expect to complete a new port facility with an associated manufacturing complex next year. 
 
We took the basic tour that included a drive around the new stadium, a quick photostop at the statue memorializing the horses lost in the Boer War, a walk through the remains of the fort, and a short visit to the huge flower display in the square in front of city hall.  We rode through an older section of multi-million dollar homes (all with high walls topped by electrified and barbed wire fencing) but most of the areas through which we drove were modest houses on small plots, interspersed with two or three story buildings with stores and offices on the street level and living quarters above.  For the most part, the downtown and adjacent urban areas were well maintained, relatively free of trash and the roads were in good condition.  
 
We drove along the ocean front south of the city.  No buildings may be built on the beach, to which the public has free access.  On the other side, close to the downtown area, there was a variety of restaurants, bars and stores, many displaying signs offering water sports (including three diving shops).   Further away there were apartments, condos and a few older beach houses.  As in many locations, the beachfront small houses are being bought up for their land value and are replaced with multi-family units. 
 
It was taken for granted that they would not show us the black neighborhoods that were forcibly established during apartheit.  Blacks were required to live in areas remote from the white-only residential areas.  The government had to build railroads so that the blacks would have transportation to their jobs in the city.  These railroads are still in operation.  There were two different narrow gage track systems leading into the port.  A small locomotive was shuttling six car sections that were loaded with new 100 meter-long rails that were being unloaded from a freighter.  The segregation officially no longer exists but financial barriers prevent all but the most successful blacks from moving into formerly “whites only” neighborhoods.  Residual social pressures also tend to maintain the old status quo.  Thousands of black families have migrated to the cities in hopes of finding jobs.  They have little choice but to live in absolute squalor in black towns.  Unemployment is officially listed at 40% but the consensus is that this is understated.
 
We again enjoyed a day at sea before our early morning arrival at Durban.  The ship was near the pilot station at 3:00AM but was not scheduled to enter port until 6:30.  The channel is narrow and the port authority strictly controls all ship movements.  At 7:10 we heard the helicopter that lowered the pilot by cable and harness, onto the top deck.  Within minutes the ship had gained speed and was heading for the orange and white, center of the channel marker buoy.  We were nearly an hour late by the time we were cleared to walk through Shed N, which is the passenger terminal.  Most of the interior of the single story clear span building, that was almost the size of a football field, was filled with makeshift tables on which local entrepreneurs had laid out goods for sale.  Sadly, almost all of what they offered was tourist trinkets, generally factory made African motif stuff like bracelets, necklaces, machine-duplicated wooden items and a plethora of T-shirts.  Some of the labels we looked at said “Made in China”.   At least the people tending the tables were not aggressive as we walked through the gauntlet toward our waiting bus.
 
We chose the shore excursion to Tala Game Park, a sequel to our visit in 2006.  The driver easily negotiated the nearly empty streets of downtown Durban on a Sunday morning and we were soon on the N3, their version of an interstate.  The elevated road allowed us to look down on the Indian “flea” market and some of the less choice neighborhoods of the city.  Apparently the immigrant Indians were not relocated during apartheit, so they are a major population component in the city.  The land use gradually changed to suburban and then countryside where the principal crop is a lower growing variety of sugarcane that was imported from Mauritius. 
 
Tala Game Park is a private reserve, owned by the CEO of Tyson Foods, which encompasses about 2700 acres of rolling countryside.  It is completely fenced with an eight foot equivalent to Turkey wire, supplemented by two strands of electrified wire.  The guide said the animals quickly learn to stay away.  About half of the estate is covered by natural growth of various grasses with scattered low trees and Acatia bushes.  The rest is a former sugar cane farm that is slowly reverting to natural. 
 
A nice lady, wearing a typical white collared black waitress dress, which somehow seemed incongruous in surroundings emulating African bush, offered strong coffee or tea, which we sipped on the way to the obligatory visit to the lavatory.  Then we were loaded on to a four wheel drive truck modified with a body that had four rows of seats, five across.  At the last moment, the lady who was directing the loading asked for two volunteers to shift to a Jeep that had seating for nine.  We quickly accepted. 
 
Emily, an overweight blond in her late twenties, dressed in brown work clothes, complete with an embroidered Tala logo above the left shirt pocket, introduced herself and then sort of flowed into the driver seat.  After a short description of the reserve, she turned the key.  The engine started on the third attempt.  We followed the truck onto a slight rise where we spotted a lone Widlebeeste and a couple of Zebra, an Ostrich and several antelope.  In the hollow below us, two Zebra that she identified as males, were having a difference of opinion.  There was some running around and I think a few nips were inflicted but neither attempted to kick.  A well placed Zebra kick could be fatal.  The truck followed the twin tracks in the grass but Emily eased our smaller vehicle out of the well worn path and headed cross-country.  We passed a small group of juvenile Warthog, whose whiskers splayed either side of their snouts, as precursors to the tusks they would later grow. 
 
As we crested a small rise, Emily saw Rhino, their gray bodies almost fully covered with the wet black mud from the small wallow in which they were immersed.  We were able to approach within about 50 feet, staying in the vehicle, of course.  Two daughters, nearly full size but with only a small bump where the horn was starting to grow, were standing next to the wallow.  They occasionally nudged each other with their immature horns as they moved back and forth on stubby legs that supported their huge bodies within inches of the ground.  Momma was in the mud.  After several minutes, she stood up and we could see the large horn, sticking upward from the tip of her broad nose.  It was about six inches in diameter at the base, rapidly tapering to about two inches in diameter eight inches from her nose.  Above that point, it tapered to about one inch diameter at the full 18 inches of length.  There was a second short horn that was only about 8 inches high, further up her nose.  Their heads were about ten inches wide and over two feet long with small beady eyes, on the sides, about halfway to the six inch long ears that were erect.  They sort of swiveled to catch various sounds.  Emily said their hearing was excellent but the eyesight was poor, although they can detect motion quite well.  It was exciting to see these large creatures close-up.  During our first visit, four years ago, we couldn’t approach nearer than 200 meters. 
 
At the bottom of the hill we came upon a lake in which Hippos were fully submerged in shallow water but standing on the muddy bottom, periodically raising their nostrils above the surface to breathe.  At one point, one raised its head clear of the water and opened its huge maw, exposing stubby teeth which are used to masticate succulent lake bottom plants and grasses.  Like the Rhino, their huge bodies are supported on stubby legs.  However, they are capable of speeds approaching 20 miles per hour for short distances and are normally very hostile.  The Hippo is considered the most dangerous animal in Africa, even more so than the Cape Buffalo, causing over 1000 human deaths a year.  A large number of Egyptian Geese swam near the shoreline while some waddled onto the nearby grass.
 
The rest of the tour was unrewarding as Emily explored various dirt roads, using a handi-talkie radio to exchange information with other drivers about animal locations.  Nobody could locate either Cape Buffalo or Giraffe, the two remaining animal populations we hoped to see.
 
The bus driver took the local route, as opposed to the N3, on the way back to the ship so we could see some of the neighborhoods.  Most of the houses were masonry or combinations of masonry and wood with a variety of roofing, including clay tiles, roll roofing or shingles and both corrugated and standing seam metal weather surfaces.  Neighborhoods tend to be ethnic in make-up with separate areas for Indian and whites.  Now, as in other areas of South Africa, there are no legal restrictions on where any family may live, and indeed many successful Indians and Blacks have moved into formerly all white areas.  However, the old adage, “birds of a feather flock together” still operates and there is strong inclination for people to stay within their ethnic areas.
 
I am taking the liberty of including excerpts from South Africa at Twenty, an article by Gwynne Dyer that may add some understanding. 
 
    “We astounded the world in 1990 and in 1994, and we shall do so again,” wrote former South African president F.W. de Klerk on the 20th anniversary of the day in February, 1990 when he announced the end of the apartheid system. But in 1990 and in 1994 the astonishment was about the fact that disaster had been avoided, and even now it is not astonishment at the country’s success.
 
    South Africa has the second-highest murder rate in the world (after Colombia), the education system is one of the worst in the world, and AIDS accounts for 43 percent of all deaths.  It may be true that South Africa is doing better than was expected, but that only shows how low expectations were when Nelson Mandela was freed from prison twenty years ago…….
 …………………..
    In the end, South Africans’ shared interest in a peaceful and prosperous future triumphed over racism and tribalism – and a fairly peaceful and prosperous future is what they got. There have been two lawful and orderly changes of president since Mandela took office after the 1994 election – and with only 6 percent of the population of sub-Saharan Africa, South Africa accounts for more than a third of its GDP.
 
    However, it is not exactly an economic miracle. As the only industrialised country in Africa it has always towered over the rest of the continent economically, but its growth rate in the past fifteen years has been only a modest improvement on the near-stagnation of the later apartheid years. A new black middle class has emerged, but the gulf between the comfortable minority of all colours and the poor black majority has only widened.
 
    South Africa does not control its borders effectively, and the result is that at least 10 percent of its population are undocumented foreigners……… They are often better educated and more enterprising than the locals, and the resentment of poor South Africans exploded into vicious anti-immigrant violence in May, 2008.
 
    There will almost certainly be further violence unless most of the illegal immigrants are sent home, but the ANC says that it owes the other countries of southern Africa a debt of gratitude for having given its members shelter during the years of the anti-apartheid struggle. Those countries now depend heavily on remittances from their citizens who are in South Africa illegally, and the ANC cannot bring itself to expel them.
 
    That is a high-sounding moral motive that we can all admire, but the presence of the illegal immigrants also serves to divert the anger and envy of poor, black South Africans from the homegrown middle class, black and white alike, that has been the real beneficiary of  economic growth since 1990. Almost 40 percent of black South Africans are unemployed, and they are well on the way to becoming a permanent under-class.
 ……………
    Education for black South Africans was always poor, and during the final fifteen years of constant anti-apartheid protests there was a “lost generation” that scarcely went to school at all. The end of apartheid should have changed all that, but it didn’t. The money was spent on providing houses and services to keep people quiet, not on building a school system that would give them a future.
 
    According to the World Economic Forum, South Africa’s education system ranks 119th out of 133 countries. Only a quarter of South African children finish high school, and a mere 5 percent go to university. Most of those high school graduates and university students are now black South Africans, but the country is becoming a two-tier society with a hereditary under-class that gets only the crumbs from the table.
 
    The thing about South Africa that is truly astonishing these days is that the poor put up with it. 
 
Three pleasant days at sea brought us to an anchorage off Zanzibar, the Spice Island.  We had been there twice before and chose to tender in and shop a bit in the temporary bazaar outside the port gate, after which we rode in the shuttle bus to town and back, surreptitiously taking photographs through the vehicle window, and then only when the van was moving.  Many people strenuously object to being photographed without their permission.  The vehicle’s marginal air-conditioner waged a losing battle against the 90F temperature and the tropical sun. We were happy to return to the comfort of the ship. 
 
Arab settlements existed on the island from as early as 800AD and the Kizimkazi Mosque dates from 1107.  Vasco Da Gama lost a seaman during a contentious visit in 1498 and visited again in 1502, exacting revenge by sinking an Arab dhow returning 400 passengers from a pilgrimage to Mecca.  The Portuguese established a supply and trading base there in the 17th century, losing control to the Omani Arabs in the 19th century.  It continued to be an important port for Arab traders and became a slave market after the Moresby Treaty of 1822.  The hapless individuals, usually captured by rival black tribes in central Africa, were marched 1000 miles in chains to Zanzibar where they were sold to traders.  It was reported that the slaver could make a profit even if 80% of the slaves perished during the trek.  The practice was outlawed in 1863 but continued until the British occupied Tanganyika after WWI.
 
The cultural and commercial center of the island is historic Stonetown where the narrow streets force drivers to hug the walls of the buildings or even back up to allow opposing traffic to crawl by.  Almost all of the buildings are a mixture of coral and gypsum but the nearly snow white surface eventually becomes stained by a black mildew. They are noted for their exotic doors, often varnished bright work or colorfully painted.  The Old Fort was built around 1700, became a prison and site of execution in the 1800′s and was converted to be the train station around 1900.  Today it is a cultural center.  Nearby is the former palace, which is now a deteriorating museum, and the House of Wonders, built in 1883 for Queen Fatuma.  It featured the wonders of interior plumbing, electric lighting and an elevator.  The British used it as their headquarters until the revolution in 1964 when Tanganyika merged with Zanzibar to become Tanzania.  It is now a craft center but is deteriorating from lack of maintenance. The twin spires of St. Joseph’s Cathedral, built around 1895, extend above the rest of the town and are easily seen from our ship at anchor.  The waterfront appears to have been little changed in the last century or two.  Behind the block or two of historic buildings, cramped along the waterfront, there is a wide boulevard with modern apartment buildings, some individual houses, stores, warehouses, several Mosques and many restaurants, although I didn’t see any buildings that appeared to be recently built.  At the port, a new steel and concrete wharf, complete with a large crane and a stack of shipping containers, has replaced the sunken steel barge that served as a dock in 2006.
 
The population is almost entirely black African or dark skinned Arab with some Indians.  Fishing is a major food source for the locals who, almost every night, sail into the Indian Ocean in 25 foot long, narrow boats, many of which are still built using the ancient technique of drilling thousands of holes in the edges of the boards and literally sewing the hull together with coir, a tough string like material made from cocoanut husk fibers.  The holes are sealed with gum and powdered lime mixture while the exterior is soaked in Lime juice to deter marine growth.  They are equipped with dirt streaked cotton lateen-rigged sails.  A few even mount a small outboard on the stern.  When they return with their catch, they pull the boats up on the beach.    
 
Tourism provides some income but the growing and processing of spices is the major component of international trade.  The island is the source for nearly all of the world’s cloves and also produces cinnamon, cardamom, cumin, pepper and ginger. 
 
The sun was about 30 degrees above a hazy horizon when Serenity weighed anchor for Mombassa, just a casual overnight sail to the north.     
 
This year, the shore excursion department did not offer the day-long, grueling trip over some of the worst roads in the world to the Tsavo National Park.  So we signed up for a repeat of our 2001 visit to Shimba Hills Reserve.  It wasn’t a complete bust, but close.  We did see a small herd of Sable Antelope, considered a rare sighting, three giraffe, a dozen or so Cape Buffalo and some baboon.  There was plenty of fresh scat in the roads but the forest elephants are usually seen only in the late afternoon and early morning.  Of course, we did not expect to see lion.
 
One unique experience was to take the cross-channel ferry off the island of Mombassa.  In previous years, the route was over the small bridge at the western end.  There are two ferry boats that bring tens of thousands of black workers across to the island every morning, along with a variety of trucks, busses and private cars.  They load the vehicles first, and then open the flood gates for people to board.  Vendors offering souvenirs, water, food and newspapers walk among the vehicles but regular passengers are crammed on the narrow decks either side of three lanes of vehicles or on a second deck that is partially over the vehicles.  The 40 by 200 foot vessel is little more than a motorized barge with skeleton frameworks each end that raise and lower the full width loading ramps.  The front ramp is raised during loading, probably to prevent some driver from going over the edge, however, the technique used, is to lower the ramp near the opposite shore and merely drive the hull onto the sloping concrete approach roadway, allowing the steel ramp to scrape to a stop.  The lead vehicles start to move as soon as the ramp touches, hitting the bottom on the run, as it were.  It takes about 10 minutes to make the half mile crossing.
 
We were exposed to the changing kaleidoscope of the roadside.  In the city, almost all the buildings are single story shops and restaurants, usually clay tile or concrete block walls with a corrugated roof.  Small groups of men gather, to pass the time of day, at shops that probably offer strong tea and some easily prepared finger food.  Most of the signs are emblazoned with Coca Cola logos, so they may offer cold soda as well.  Other merchants display their wares, such as furniture, mattresses, displays of food, racks of yellow plastic water jugs, and building materials, piled on the margins of the pavement.  There is seldom a sidewalk.   People walk, sort of aimlessly, or merely sit with whatever comfort they can achieve, preferably in the shade.  Gasoline stations, posting 88 Kenya Shillings a liter (about $4.43 per US Gallon), are few and are surprisingly clean in comparison to the squalid surroundings.  
 
In the country, scattered housing and an occasional village, occupy the roadside.  Almost all of the houses in the villages are small buildings, less than 600 sq. ft, with a few rooms, to single room shanties.  The better ones are concrete or tile block with corrugated roofing.  Others might be a collection of scrap plywood, plastic, or corrugated nailed over poles.  There are isolated well built, two or three story houses with manicured yards and expensive cars behind protective masonry walls with iron gates, but they are the exception.  Outside the villages, the most basic shelters are mud and wattle (mud mixed with animal hair, straw and cow dung, plastered over sticks tied into sort of a framework) with simple thatched cover.  Almost everybody in the country walks, toting whatever needs to be carried.  The better off might have a crude wooden hand cart with wheels scavenged from a bicycle, motorcycle or a car. We saw many people carrying or pulling loads of yellow water jugs from some central source, back along the roads to their homes.  In the city, away from the downtown area, trucks regularly fill up at hydrants and deliver water to rooftop plastic reservoirs—the water is essentially free but the recipient pays for delivery.  Every community has signs identifying various levels of schools.  A few are municipal but most are run by a religious sect.  They are scattered throughout the countryside as well.
 
Unfortunately for the city, Serenity, and the cash flow it brings, was the first cruise ship to visit Mombassa in a year.  In addition to being inside the southern boundary of the internationally declared piracy zone, the quality of sightings in its wild animal parks is much lower than in the parks accessible by air or sea in more southerly areas.  However, it is an active cargo port.
 
PIRATE!  Say that word to the average American and he will conjure an image of a stocky, peg-legged, scruffy bearded individual wearing a red waistcoat over a frilly white shirt.  A curving broad sword and a flintlock pistol will be tucked inside his belt and there will be a green parrot on his left shoulder adjacent to a black tri-corner hat.  He will scan the sea or command his roughish crew while standing on the quarter deck of a wooden caravel flying a black flag with the skull and cross bones.  Aaarrrgh!  Quite a stereotype. 
 
Since the dawn of time, some instinct in man has impelled him to steal, whether it was an individual from another individual or, in the extreme, a nation from another nation; a la, how America acquired the Hawaiian and other Pacific Islands, Puerto Rico, and albeit temporarily, the Panama Canal Zone and the Philippine Islands.
 
Soon after Spain started shipping the treasure of the New World their ships were attacked by pirates.  England and other European countries gave royal commissions, as privateers, to certain captains to prey on the loaded galleons, yielding high returns to the monarchy.  Eventually, there is a point at which stealing ends, often when society, as a whole, will no longer tolerate the insult.  The privateers went out of existence when Spain simply ran out of treasure to ship, the Marines cleaned up piracy on the Barbary Coast and Southeast Asian countries finally organized to suppress the hijackings in the Strait of Malacca. 
 
Pirates need boats, of course, but they also need a protected base from which to operate and from which they can convert their ill gotten gains to something of value to them, such as money.  They need sufficient deprivation and/or incentive to take the risk and targets of opportunity. Today’s Somalian pirates operate from bases whose security is assured by warlords, operating in lieu of the governmental vacuum in southern Somalia.  European and Japanese factory ships fished out the waters off the coast, depriving the natives of both sustenance and a source of income.  Tens of thousands of refugees, fleeing from the persecution in neighboring countries, have stressed the available resources.  Slow cargo ships, often carrying millions of dollars in cargo, in addition to the value of the ship itself, and the ransom potential for the crew, were an obvious incentive to take the risk, which to date has been minimal. 
 
Multi-national naval forces have had some effect by establishing protected shipping lanes and escorting convoys but hundreds of ships choose to go it alone for various reasons.  In addition, there are non-violent takings of cargo.  Pirates take a ship, sell its cargo then repaint it, rename it, forge some convoluted documentation and register it under one of the flags of convenience.  Their agents seek shippers who, for example, have a cargo that must be urgently moved to meet a delivery schedule but their usual shipping is busy.  The agents produce believable documentation and negotiate a contract.  The ship arrives, loads the cargo, issues bogus bills of lading and departs—never to be seen again.  The ship diverts to a warlord protected harbor, the cargo is removed and sold in the underground or black market and the process is repeated.  Currently the term piracy also is applied to the theft of intellectual property.
 
Why don’t ships carry weapons?  One answer is that doing so could escalate the level of violence.  To date, the pirates seem to be content to take the ships and cargo and ransom the crew.  Ship owners have accepted the risk as a cost of doing business and regularly pay off the pirates to retrieve everything, or at least the hull (which is usually the most valuable asset at risk) and the crew.  Many takings are quietly resolved without any report to authorities because shipping companies know there will be no effective retribution and insurance rates will skyrocket.  To date, there has been very little killing and as long as the status quo exists, the world seems resigned to tolerate the situation.  International action to effectively terminate the piracy would certainly involve massive invasion forces and huge drains on already strained economies.  There would be an ongoing commitment to restore an effective government and provide sustenance to millions of people.  It is cheaper just to pay them off.
 
Serenity has canceled its proposed call in the Seychelle Islands, to avoid the waters considered to be open to pirate attack.  The added distance meant also canceling the call in the Maldive Islands.  The ship left Mombassa and retraced its course, southbound for a day and a half before turning east to skirt the northern tip of Madagascar.  She will sail 1500 miles to the Chagos Bank before turning north toward Cochin, India.  We will have eight days at sea.
 
Serenity has been modified to prevent access to the vulnerable winching machinery space, deck 5 aft, by installing rigid metal grates over the openings in the hull.  Fire hoses, of questionable value against AK47 wielding boarders, have been laid out along the decks and there are rumors about unspecified other defensive measures such as nozzles releasing noxious gas or liquid sprays and intensive sound emitters that can stun attackers.  However, the ship’s most effective defense is speed and maneuverability.  No ship has ever been successfully boarded when it could maintain 13 knots or more.  Serenity is now proceeding at 19 knots.  The roiling in the water that Serenity can create by directing its azipods sideways would swamp any small boat alongside at the stern and the water that the propellers thrust behind the stern are turbulent to the point that no boat could be controlled when directly astern.  There are four Indian security personnel, hired through a company in Capetown, who maintain a 24 hour watch on deck 6 aft, with direct communication to the bridge.  We don’t know if they are armed.  The bridge also has wings that extend beyond the hull, allowing full view along each side, and TV cameras that cover the stern.
 
LAND HO! Can you imagine how exciting that could be to a crew that had spent months at sea, 4 hours on, 4 hours off, sharing a hammock swinging under the deck beams, in clothes that were constantly wet, enduring the motion and sounds of a creaking assemblage of wooden beams and planks, eating food that was stale rotten or worse and thirsting on rations of stinking water from a mildewed wooden barrel. 
 
We woke up in Cochin (KO-chin) harbor, already secured to the mile long wharf, constructed in British colonial times, probably within feet of the same location Serenity was berthed in 2008, except this time the ship was facing in the direction of departure.  I looked across half a mile of sort of muddy water at a tanker, discharging at the petro dock.  Cochin imports crude and produces gasoline, diesel and kerosene for home cooking.  I could see the heart of the downtown modern city through the pall of pollution.  The sun was an orange button slightly above the horizon. Small ferries, loaded with passengers, were scuttling about. Directly across, and behind the bow of the tanker, I could see early morning traffic crossing the modern concrete bridge that connects the mainland with the southern end of one of the long peninsulas that form the huge harbor.  Trucks, their yellowish headlights like animal eyes reflecting light in the darkness of night, crawled over the flat plane that will eventually form the new container terminal.  Unseen in the gloom of early dawn were the untouchables, gathering at the Chinese fishing nets that are either side of the narrow harbor entrance, hoping to harvest some fish during the period an hour or so either side of high tide, when the current through the inlet is minimal.  Of course, the real catch is deposited in the hat that is passed among the gawking tourists—that’s us!
 
After our usual pre-breakfast of fruit, coffee and banter among the fellow members of the VVEBS (Very Very Early Bird Society) we went to the dining room for a couple of Belgian waffles.  They’re poorly formed and uncooked in the middle, possibly because the batter is cold and cooks more slowly. The outside is super crispy almost burned black, probably because the waffle iron is too hot.  We’ve complained through our waiter and head waiter but they haven’t improved, although they have tried to make them better.  We endure them occasionally because we like waffles.  The pancakes aren’t much better, but they are alternatives to cereal or eggs.  Actually the breakfast menu is listed in single spaced type on two pages, so there are plenty of choices—we’re just sort of set in our ways.
 
The morning shore excursion was a duplicate of the one we have taken every time we have been in Cochin.  It was complimentary (i.e. we paid for it in the price of the cruise, so we might as well get our money’s worth).  At the deck five gangway, each passenger had to present a landing card and a copy of his passport to a thoroughly bored immigration officer, who alternately inked a worn rubber stamp and then slammed it against the papers. These were again checked, 200 feet away, by a soldier at the gate in the wire fence isolating the ship’s boarding area from the busses.  It actually went rather smoothly. We were directed to freshly painted bus number four of fourteen busses, negotiated the four steep steps, each one set at an angle so there was a quarter turn while climbing into the bus.  We settled into a seat beside a window that was spotlessly clean.
 
Some parts were missing from the small control panel over our heads that had two reading lights and switches but not the adjustable vanes that direct the flow of air.  The air conditioning system was powered by a separate diesel engine, so the main engine could be turned off when the bus was parked.  Clever and effective.  The rest of the interior was clean and recently re-upholstered but there was no mistaking that this was a tired old Tata.  Barbara, the bridge instructor, confirmed that there were 26 aboard and we lurched forward while some were still finding a seat.
 
Cochin hasn’t changed perceptibly.  The streets are narrow and loaded with pedestrians, bicycles, motor scooters, motor cycles, three wheel Tuk-Tuks, busses and trucks of every description.  Many of the trucks are personalized by their owners by displaying their name on the upper panel of the windshield and painting the cab in bright colors with intricate designs.  Almost all are made by Tata.  In common with other third world countries, trash and garbage was everywhere.   We did see people, usually women, sweeping leaves and other trash into a pile, adding the detritus to that which was swept into the pile the day before.  Vacant lots were frequently dumping grounds and small trash fires sent acrid smoke drifting in the air.
 
We were taken to the old Portuguese church, Catholic of course, which is now maintained as a tourist attraction, as well as being used for services.  Inside the masonry walls, the property is well maintained and clean with a well tended garden of succulents around a mortared stone obelisk in the front yard.  Inside, the décor is rather plain.  There are two rows of unpainted wooden benches.  Neither the seats or backs have any sort of cushion.  Worshipers are provided some relief from the heat by wooden frame-works supporting cloth fan panels that are pulled from side to side with ropes that pass through the outside walls.  We then walked, occasionally bothered by mildly aggressive vendors, about a quarter mile to the Chinese Fishing Nets.  A couple of passengers were brave enough to help lower a net into the water, for which a contribution was expected. 
 
Next stop was the Dutch Palace, a two story masonry walled former house, built by the Portuguese, that was later restored by the Dutch.   The first floor is now a Hindu temple and off limits, while the second was formerly a series of bedrooms with exquisite oil murals depicting Indian social life.  These were also off limits.  Steep rock slab stairs led two columns of tourists to the second floor, one side up, one side down.  There were handrails but they were tantamount to useless.  At the top, there was a vestibule, choked with people so there was barely enough room to turn around.  A uniformed guard collected tickets before a doorway, with a foot high sill, leading into a white plastered room.  The intricately carved ceiling was supported by wooden beams, each element necessarily similar to the others for structural uniformity, but each also carved in a slightly different pattern.  Our guide explained that the original oiled Teak wood was stained dark and varnished to protect it from further damage.  Two hundred or so tourists, both from the ship and natives on holiday, crammed into the six long narrow rooms and sort of flowed along, observing the contents of a few glass cases and the portraits of six Kings of Cochin.  The rooms were above 90F; people were sweating, some clearly had not showered before coming (or even in the last month); there was no circulating air and it was stifling.  Several aging passengers were obviously extended beyond their capabilities and were being helped by others.  We finally got to the stairs and met our group outside the gate.  Some continued on a shopping tour and a visit to Jew Town (politically correct or not, that’s what the signs say) to see the synagogue.  There was a substantial Jewish colony but almost all emigrated to Israel after WWII.  There are only four families left with a total of ten worshipers, all now well into their eighties.  We went back to the bus and enjoyed the cool air.
 
Kerala, the state in which Cochin is situated, is mostly Muslim and ruled by the Communist Party.   It is in constant political friction with the National Congress Party which governs the rest of India.  As a result a lot of energy and treasure is directed toward programs that ostensibly improve peoples’ lives, such as state provided medical care and a wide variety of less ambitious Party run social programs.  The status of the infrastructure, for the most part, is as the British left it in 1947.  There are some exceptions, of course, such as a new bridge completed four years ago, that takes the heavy traffic off the century old steel lift bridge, which is now limited to cycles and Tuk-Tuks.
 
After dinner, we enjoyed a show featuring Kathakali (cat-ah-cah-LEE’) Dancers from a local school.  Kathakali is a traditional art form.  The first presentation was by a single, barefoot slightly pudgy actor, dressed in a simple costume consisting of white cotton sleeveless top and matching pantaloon bottoms, both of which were extensively decorated with colorful appliqué and gold thread embroidery.   He demonstrated nine emotions (love, contempt, pathos, anger, valor, fear, disgust, wonder and peace), using a combination of extreme eye positions, rapid head movements back and forth ending in unusual positions, exaggerated facial expressions, body position, arm extensions and hand contortions.  He was accompanied by a topless man seated on the floor, to one side, with at a snareless drum cradled in his folded legs.  He used two slightly curved sticks to create different rhythms and tones that accentuated the actor’s movements.
 
In the second act, two actors told the story of a man who was beguiled by a young girl that turned herself into a demon to destroy him, incorporating the classic combinations of movement and expression previously demonstrated.  The male character was heavily made up with bright red accentuated lips, green face, mascara laden eyelids, dark eye shadow that extended back over his ears and a yellow triangle on his forehead.  He wore a multi-tiered white headdress with bands of gold accented with red inserts separated by a green band.  It was two feet tall and had a round fan at the back, like the tail of a peacock.  He was dressed in puffy red clothing with gold arm bands and a gold beaded fall from a pearl necklace.  There were golden fingernail extensions clamped on the left fingers (a couple of them flew off during the dance).  Below the waist was a five foot diameter spherical shaped skirt over pastel green pantaloons.  Truly a sight to see!  The female wore a modest white dress with a flaring skirt that was also extensively decorated.  The finale of their somewhat long presentation came as she turned her back to the audience, pulled her long hair from its previous bun and revealed herself as the demon.  They left the ship in full costume, the gangway was immediately removed and the ship slowly sailed toward the ocean, half an hour late.
 
We had another calm day at sea and woke up as Serenity was being made fast in Murgamo (or Margamo).  There were only two shore excursions offered, an indication of the variety of spectacular tourist destinations available.  We chose the Hindu temple in a village in old Goa, the Portuguese name for the area, followed by a visit to a spice farm.  Neither attraction was particularly interesting but it afforded us an opportunity to view the Indian countryside.  It’s pretty depressing.
 
The entire dock area was awash in coal dust that was picked up by passengers’ shoes and brought back on board causing extra clean-up work for the night crew.  There are no mechanized facilities so incoming bulk carriers merely deposit the coal on the dock.  Huge tractor-loaders, supported by a gang of hand shovelers, transfer it to trucks or nearby storage piles.
 
The area is fairly hilly, so the two lane road that was reasonably well paved, wound back and forth, following the contours.  As in most of India, trash was evident everywhere.  There were a few houses that clearly were owned by relatively successful people who cared for their property and enjoyed the BMWs, Mercedes, Lexus and even top of the line Tata, parked in their driveways.  However, the majority lived in conditions that were poor to squalid.  The people seem to prefer small villages, rather than scattered individual houses, and some of these abodes were well constructed, probably of tile and mortar with a stucco-like finish and metal roofing but most were very small, and simple.  Locally hand-made bricks, about three times the size of a standard U.S. brick, were widely used, but I couldn’t tell if they were essentially adobe or were actually fired into a vitrified block.  Thatched roofs were common.  Goats and “fiest dogs” (a N.C. term for a mixed breed mutt) were common.  Cows, sacred in at least parts of India, wandered the streets and countryside freely, even in the villages.  Our guide said that they quickly learned the routine to return to their owners at the end of the day.
 
The road followed the shoreline of a wide river and we saw at least six large boatyards actively constructing medium size ships and ore carrying motorized barges.  There is a large Molybdenum ore mine up-river and we saw a dozen barges in transit.  There were quite a few discarded hulls, in various states of decay or being dismantled for scrap, tied to the river bank near the yards.
 
Rice is a staple all over Asia and we passed hundreds of small terraced paddies, many of them flooded with muddy water, bright green shoots sticking above the surface.  There were several fields of ten or more acres.  The smaller fields are tilled with traditional water buffalo dragging a simple hand guided plow while more mechanized tractors are used in the big tracts.  The rice is started from seed in small incubator plots and, when about six inches tall, it is hand transplanted to the rice paddies.  The farmer must harvest, again all by hand, about ten days before the rice would “go to seed”.  
 
Our bus stopped in the large parking lot in front of a village, whose name was about twenty letters long.  The story is: The Portuguese were in the process of destroying all the Hindu temples in Goa as part of their attempt to convert the Indians to Catholicism.  A group of natives secured some of their sacred idols and moved them secretly about 30 miles into the countryside and hid them.  When the threat no longer existed, this temple was built to protect them.  We were led from the parking lot, along a dirt road with deep side gutters that wound between the village houses.  Some had front yards, mostly barren earth or with small gardens but most of the houses were a natural brown stucco over native brick, built with one blank wall right against the roadside.  There may have been rear yards but the houses were built so close together that we could not see beyond them.  I almost gouged my eye out by not being careful of the sharp edge of a corrugated roof that projected near a small pathway.  The temple itself was a long gray single story building with 30 foot ceilings in a central 20 foot wide corridor with lower wings each side.  At the far end there was sort of an altar with a central idol flanked by several other smaller ones.  In the side wings, there were additional niches with small idols.  All the inscriptions were indecipherable Hindi.  The massive front doors were entirely covered with pure silver panels inscribed with various scenes.
 
The next stop was a spice farm.  We were given the option to follow the guide through the demonstration area, a jungle of tall palm and Betel nut trees, and heavy underbrush, where various spice plants were identified.  I convinced Nancy to wait in the area where we were to be served lunch and joined one group.  I went back half-way through.  We are always leery of eating “native”, lest we acquire some bug to which we have no resistance, so our lunch was a couple of baked rolls and white rice.  Nancy had a coke, in a classic green bottle, and I had a local beer.  I learned in the Philippines, in 1974, that Coke’s quality control, world wide, made it a safe choice and the beer would be safe because it is boiled during brewing.  The brew was OK, nothing more, but I did have two of them.
 
The last port on the third segment was Mumbai (Bombay).  We’ve been there before and taken all the local tours, so we stayed on ship, excepting an excursion into the cruise terminal building for some shopping.  I bought a Royal Navy brass sextant, which a fellow passenger assures me is genuine, for less than the plastic training model I bought 40 years ago for my Power Squadron celestial navigation courses (no, I don’t have a use for it, I just wanted it).  Nancy found an embroidered Indian silk blouse that she liked. 
 
We sailed for Muscat, Oman, at midnight, having taken on several truckloads of supplies and two barges of heavy diesel.  We were told that 200 pax got off and slightly fewer got on.  It’s always difficult to discover the exact numbers. 
 
Duke and Nancy Harrison