Nothing is every easy while traveling in India. For example, two days before we were scheduled to leave for the Andamans, the second leg of our flight was cancelled. And Sarah faithfully called every single person who could possibly have anything to do with the tickets we had purchased and not one of them could help arrange another flight from Chennai to Port Blaire. They told us our best bet was to get to the airport early and figure it out there. So at 3:30 in the morning on the 2nd we left for the airport, and arrived around 4:30am. In fact, we were so prompt, the ticket desk wasn't even open yet! So we waited till 5am and were first to the ticket desk, and after much deliberation it was determined that they couldn't help us either and that we should have called the airline and figured this out in advance (refer to previous bit to see how that didn't work). We finally just decided to get to Chennai, and then figure the rest out from there. We arrived in Chennai, picked up our luggage and ran to the supervisors desk, where we with some other unfortunate travelers followed the supervisor around like lost dogs waiting for him to get us on another flight. I have never been so happy to be issued a ticket in all of my life. I thought for sure we would be stuck in Chennai for the night, and I didn't want to miss out on any island time. If I had known then how cute my dive instructor was going to be, I wouldn't have wanted to miss out on any diving either but at this point I was still blissfully ignorant.
We arrived in Port Blaire, the entrance way to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Of the hundreds of islands in the chain, only 33 of them are inhabited, and foreigners were just allowed to enter the islands in 1995. The Nicobar islands are still off limits to tourists, and there are certain tribes that are so hostile to outsiders that they have practically no contact at all with the outside world. After the 2004 tsunami, the Indian government flew over one of these islands with a hellicopter to see if the natives were ok, and on the beach they looked down to find a group of men from the tribe, alive and well, wearing nothing but loin cloths and aiming their arrows at the hellicopter.
Anyways, so after our arrival in Port Blaire and all the customary paperwork, we caught the ferry to Havelock Island where our reservations were. After a few hours, we landed at the jetty, and took a rickshaw with us and our collective 50lbs of luggage to our resort. It was so incredibly beautiful! We were the first tourists of the season at this particular place, and it was so quiet and peaceful, just us and the caretakers, the two dogs Frodo and Sam (after the lord of the rings hobbits), and the aforementioned good-looking dive instructor, Vikas. The next morning Sarah and I started our dive classes, which involved getting over the initial instinctive fear of breathing under water, and learning other various skills that would be helpful to have if anything should happen under water like what to do if you run out of air, or if your air tube malfunctions. All of these things while you're thinking about them in shallow water have the potential to really freak you out...I mean, it's scary! But the minute you go on your first dive, and you are weightless (if a little clumsy) and surrounded by things you have only ever seen in National Geographic, all your fear dissappears and you are so enthralled with the magical world in front of you that time goes by at a different pace. You can be diving for an entire hour, and feel as if you just descended. It was beautiful....
But I must go, my time is up at the internet cafe...much much more to say later.
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