Hi Guys

Well here we are in Port Blair the capital of the Andaman Islands.

Saturday 5th April

Today seems to have lasted forever I think partly because we were up at 1am, once we found a rickshaw driver that would wake up we haggled him to death and got a ride to the airport. Now i'm not saying that Indian airports have crazy systems but they are mental!!! We arrived at 2am and were told not to enter the airport at the correct entrance because the check in was not open so we had 30 minutes sat nowhere near where we needed to be. At 2.30am we waited at check in to be told that we first needed to screen our luggage so off we went, but the guy with a tie on said he couldn't start till the check in was open, which it was so he kept us and about 200 other people waiting in line to show his power while his mate slept at the side of him!!! The morning got better when we tried to clear security it was apparent that it wasn't open because they were all asleep over the xray machine, another guy in a tie told us they open at 3.30am, so the inevitable happened at 3.30 they had a stampede of people and they let people through without checking them!!!! I am pleased to say everything went OK with the flight till we were 40 miles from Port Blair, we had made good time and were 15 minutes early, it was then the captain came on the PA system and told us we would have to circle for a while not because the airport was busy but because it didn't open till 6.30am!!!!! It did give him time to tell us about the cannibals that still inhabit one of the islands here though which he seemed to enjoy.

Our first choice hotel turned out to be 55 quid a night so we drove around looking for somewhere a little cheaper which we eventually did but it is like an Indian Fawlty Towers and still 20 quid a night!!!!

After a few hours sleep we took a walk into town to find something to eat which proved a chore in itself. Our bodies have totally rejected anything remotely Indian now and trying to find something else here is tricky. By accident we ended up near the jetty to eat and noticed a boat was due to sail to Ross Island (old British administartive headquarters from 1850's) so we jumped aboard. Looking around was good fun although there was much damage from the 1941 eartquake and more recently from the 2004 tsunami it was surrendered to the Japanese in 1941 but taken back by the brits only 3 years later.

There are deer that live on the island and are curious but keep their distance from the humans, we got talking to a customs guy that told us Ian Botham had just been on holiday on a yacht close by for the last week which is spooky because when we collected our tickets in Leeds for the trip he was there doing one of his charity walks!!!!

We made a major faux pas last night and took a rickshaw to the other side of the island to a restaurant, it wasn't till we got 3/4 of the way there that we realised that it would be tricky to get a rickshaw back to Port Blair. The restaurant was on the beach but not that good and to get back our waiter wanted 3 times as much money to get us back as it cost to get there, we had no choice but to say yes. After waiting for over 40 minutes Mel was getting tetchy but as luck would have it a rickshaw showed up in the nick of time so we jumped in and sped off leaving the waiter high and dry!!!

Sunday 6th April

We did have grand plans to see some sights today but it is Sunday and everything is shut and when I say everthing I mean everything apart from this internet cafe where I am typing this and a few shops selling buckets, which we don't need!!!!!

Tomorrow we are hoping to take a ferry to Havelock Island and spend a week just relaxing and hopefully getting back on track with eating, it is pretty remote and i'm sure there aren't any cannibals but there may not be any internet cafes either so will be in touch when we can. If this island does not live up to it's hype we could be home a couple of weeks early!!!!

Lots of Love

M & M

xx