KOCHI MAY HAVE THE WORST PORT YET. To make up for its industrial impersonality and isolation, the town provides free shuttle buses for the 12 kilometer trip into town. It is still another mile walk from the shuttle stop through the Sunday market to Kochi Castle but it’s a trek well worth making.
Bonsai Guy Market Lady
Like its brethren, Kochi Castle has been rebuilt over the years, most recently in the mid-18th Century. Kochi-jo is more of a stately home than a castle and the hundreds of stone steps proved problematic to both the elderly and little kids on this hot humid day. Great views, shaded seating with mist-sprayers and ice cream were rewards for perseverance.
One of Three Triplets
A Girl and Her Dog
Kochi Market Scenes
We didn’t buy anything at the Obiyamachi shopping arcade or at the Sunday market — but then again, we never do. What would we do with a bonsai, I wonder. By the time we returned to the ship, the tide had gone out. The gangway that leads to Deck 3 which had been nearly level with the pier when we departed, now canted steeply downhill. One had to almost limbo on hands-and-knees to duck under the awning, a nearly impossible task for some of our less nimble compatriots.
