Beaches, Celebrations, and more beaches!

This is one of the homestays that I went to visit in a village on an island near the city of Cochin.

On the island I did one of the many activities that they offer which is to go and see a prawn farm (half of the year it's a rice paddy). I also learned how they catch the prawn and then how to cook them; I know how to eat them.

Some good size ones.
On a side note: you can buy coconuts everywhere on the street here. The people selling them will then hold it in one hand and wack at it with an extremely sharp, big knife with such precision that it amazes me everytime. after you drink the juice, they wack it again in half so that you can eat the meat of it from inside. they shot a sliver of the side of the coconut for you to use as a spoon. I will have to get a video of this.


After Cochin I headed south to the beaches. In Varkala I met up with Kiran and some of his friends who were over from England; one being "Stretch" who recently ran the London marathon in the borat speedo, in 3.5 hours. He also had a flag made that says "stretch club" that was easily spotted for our group (which grew) at the beach. A few days of beach time and some good fresh fish eating for dinner, along with sharing too small of a bed with Kiran before his wife Vibha came. After she came I decided just to sleep outside instead of getting a room.

Varkala sits up on a cliff above the beach which for this time period had way too many tourists.


That is stretch next to me and a new friend Karthik who we hung out with for the days.

For new years we decided to hire a big fishing boat to go on to watch the sun set which was great!!! The ride was a bit shakier than we had anticipated, but great fun.


After the boat trip we took over a restaurant, played our ipod, ordered loads of food and did the count down with our group before yelling and passing hugs all around.

The next morning I headed out of town before anyone woke and went down to Kovalam. After getting many buses and settling in I had a very lazy rest of the day. The folowing day I walked through villages and along the coast (where I saw this goat below) and went to visit resorts, homestays and specifically ayurvedic treatment centers/ayurvedic resorts. There are alot of these in this area.


That night I met the only other people staying in my little unlabeled place behind a restaurant on a hill above one of the more quiet beaches. It was an english family, Sally, Tony, and the daugthers, Rachel and Kate. Really a great family. I also had Sandra, my friend from Columbia that I had traveled with some weeks previously meet up for a couple of days. This group then hung out together for the next few days, resting on the beach, going into town, swimming in some great waves that just pounded us.
In general Indians are scared of the water because they can't swim. So at the beach, they tend to stay where they can stand, which is also where the waves break. They are fully clothed (this doesn't bother them) and in general I don't think have very good coordination (of course this is a broad generalization). So as they stand where these huge waves come down, they get taken out like bowling pins and to be honest it is extremely entertaining!!!
I was exhausted everyday after playing in these waves.

This is the view from where we would eat dinner every night at the restaurant where we stayed, absolutely stunning view and so peaceful.

It turned out that Tony and I share the same birthday and we got along well. Since he had been traveling with the 3 girls for a couple of weeks, his family thought he would appreciate "guy time", so they surprised us in the morning of our birthdays for a boat trip and some snorkeling. The water was moving pretty good and some areas would be completely murky and some we could see fine. As you may know, when you are snorkeling you have very little sense of where you are since you are looking under water. We would be looking down and then come to the very murky area and wouldn't be able to find where the good viewing was and so come up to ask the boat guy (who does this all the time) we would ask and he would say, here no good, you must go where you can see. (thanks buddy, please point us in that direction)
The rest of the day was more swimming and laying in the sun (also the last day before taking off again).
That night we enjoyed dinner on the hill one more time. (this is the family below)

After dinner, the staff, who we had gotten to know, brought out a cake with candles and everyone sang happy birthday to us. After blowing out the candles, all the power went out around us; the restaurant, the beach, the houses near to us. We were so used to power cuts in India at this point that it didn't surprise us....until there were huge, personal fire works going on from the beach below us that the staff put on for us. They had cut the power and for about 5 solid minutes we enjoyed a fireworks show...awww what a memorable birthday.

This was followed up with the cutting of the cake. In India, tradition is to feed the first bites to everyone else. This is a photo of Tony and I feeding each other at the same time.
You will notice the real light, comfortable, good looking shirt that Sandra got for me for my birthday. Thanks to all of you for making it such a wonderful birthday!!!!!

The next day I had a 10.5 hour train ride to Coimbatore which is the center for making cotton clothing and where I had scouted out to meet with people about making onelovetours.net t-shirts, which has turned out to be worth the trip and I can't wait to show them to you later one. Final talks to comfirm everything tomorrow. This is one of the shops where I met with to make the shirts.

I am now living the 30th year of my life. So far, so good.