Vodafone... Vooodafoooone....

So you know how I wrote a while back about how these posts were getting fewer and farther between since I was out on the West Coast with little or no internet access or phone service? Here’s a funny picture for you all: me trying to send a text message to Savage from our hostel in Fox Glacier. That in and of itself isn’t so funny, but let me elaborate a bit, step back and paint the entire picture.

I was sitting in my room, typing in my message, finished up and hit send. It tried for 30 seconds or so and then came back with the message that the message sending had failed. I looked at my signal register and realized that I had exactly NO signal. So I figured I’d try my luck outside. I walked out in front of our hostel, hoping that maybe my phone would connect with a satellite or a tower or something somewhere. I admittedly looked a little ridiculous, walking back and forth, waving my phone in the air over my head, summoning the Vodafone gods (or satellites, whoever will listen), with my chants of “Vodafone… Vodafone… Vodafooooone…” I saw another girl out on the deck doing the same thing, although she wasn’t summoning the Vodafone gods as actively as I was. I kept walking down toward the main street, still waving my phone above my head, betting that if there was any signal to be found, it would be down along the main strip. As I reached the main street, I saw a girl coming out of a café. She looked like she worked there, so I figured she lived around here and might know where I could find some phone signal. She said that they get Telecom here, but for Vodafone, I’d have to go 25 kilometres up the road to Franz Josef.

What kind of service is this?! I guess I should revel in the fact that I’m in a place where you can’t get cell phone reception, but its spoiled a bit by the knowledge that there is some cell phone reception, just not my cell phone reception.