We have decided that in Kerala as it’s SO hot and humid the best time to do things is in the morning and then to go to ground until the evening. This provides opportunities for a late lunch and an afternoon nap which I think is an excellent idea when on holiday in a hot climate.

After breakfast we went for a walk on the beach; in the gardens which surround the villas there are lots of shrubs some of which have wonderfully colourful flowers.

The beach here is on the Andaman Sea which is part of the Arabian Sea, it is a very, very attractive sandy beach backed by palm trees and looks like something out of a holiday brochure

however great care needs to be taken as the sand slopes down very steeply below the water line and there is, apparently, a notoriously strong undertow. To counter this our hotel has warning signs up and fly a flag appropriate to the sea conditions although it seems to be permanently set to red however smoothe the sea appears. They also provide two lifeguards although they seem to spend their days sitting under the palm trees reading the paper. The hotel swimming pool is very popular.

There are local fishing communities at various places along the shore with their boats pulled well up the beach although there are generally a few boats out fishing

and at the appropriate time of the tide they also wade into the surf and cast hand nets out too. It was very interesting to watch the local birds of prey (eagles?) following the boats when they were hauling in their nets and grabbing whatever they could from the water. The shoreline was also very busy with wading birds busy after whatever it is they eat; there were plenty of small crabs which I suspect they like. You can see in the photorgaph that some birds just prefer to go out on the boat for a ride and see what they can get.

Anyway it was a lovely walk and not too hot on the beach so we retreated into the palm grove for a bit of a rest before it was time for lunch.

We had to get our best bib and tucker on as we had been invited to an pre-dinner drinks party and as I’ve never been known to turn down a party we presented ourselves at just after seven o’clock to meet the General Manager and some of his management team. This was a party by way of thanks for those residents who had come back to visit Marari Beach Resort and as we had been there four years ago we made the list. After a speech introducing himself and his team the GM asked us all to say a few words about ourselves (it was a bit like a training seession) and when the couple sitting next to us said that this was their seventeenth visit in nineteen years we felt like a pair of frauds. Anyway, everyone was very nice and we all chatted away about our experiences; the canapes were delicious and it must be said that the Indian wine they were serving was really rather good. The whole thing came to an end when somebody realised that if we didn’t get a shift on we’d miss our dinner. We all agreed that it had been a very nice gesture by the hotel and that we will probably be going back to Marari next time we’re in Kerala.

Tomorrow is our last day.

13 February 2019