Good journey arriving on time in Trivandrum at 4.30.
Walking out of the terminal into a throng, 5 deep, of waiting Indian families we saw a welcome and expected sign for “Mr Michael” …. our taxi ride from Varkala and the Hindustan Beach Resort was there.
An hour later after a hair rising taxi journey, mostly in the dark, where I think we must have nearly hit something a dozen times – mobile phone use, one handed driving, flashing main beam headlights and the odd beep of the horn we arrived some 20 minutes after dawn.
Having checked in we were shown our rooms – 201 and 202 – with lovely views of a beach already full of locals.
We decided to sleep for 2 1/2 hours and get breakfast before it ended at 10.30.
Breakfast was sitting on the balcony rooftop restaurant overlooking the sea watching the local fishermen in 2 boats catch fish. The local birds – big hawk like brown birds with white heads loved it!
We then had a walk down the beach and back before a lie by the pool.
Tour kick off 4pm!
The Eustances arrive at 3. Great to see them again like nothing has changed except we are all older!
The tour kick off was fine. All the families look like they are going to get on fine! One with 3 kids Carol & Swen – kids are 17,15,13? Tom ? and Eve from Chipping Norton the other family from Bath – Caroline and Malcolm with 2 kids ? and Adam aged 13&12.
The guide Eugine is local from Kochi and will look after us well! We ended up paying both our kitty deposit of 8000 and that of N&L as they has run out of cash!
Eugine arranged from us all to eat in the garden of the hotel by the pool and suggested we order so there is no delay at dinner – 4.30 for a 7.30 start!!! – but as it happened it work well after we decided to share soaked with N&L.
We then had another walk along the beach with N&L before getting changed for a pre dinner drink at the No1 Restaurant just along the beach from the hotel.
Dinner worked very well and we were finished by about 10.30. We decided to leave without signing not wanting to wait only for the waiting staff to come to our rooms to ask for us to sign. Poor Charlotte also had to sign!
