Last days in Kerala

A morning walk along the back of the beach revealed village life. We had found it hard to believe that 10,000 people lived here in the village - we would call it a town. However the houses were close to each other and were at least 4 deep in the jungle fringe at the back of the beach. There were probably more behind lost in the palm trees. Judging by the number of boats on the beach nearly every house must have a boat. There were signs of increasing prosperity with new houses being built and the roads improved. Lines of women were carrying large basins of sand for what seemed to be a causeway building project. The men were mainly playing cards or mending nets, but we knew they had been out all night fishing. There were children looking for the usual pens, chocolate or money though they were not too persistent. This seems to happen most when there is a big difference between rich tourist projects and a poor area beside it. When local people were involved more in the tourism projects like the rice barges there was not the same problem. We came back to our own oasis of luxury and enjoyed a few hours of sun.

The next day we took a tuk-tuk to the fishing port of Vizhinjam a few miles away. It was quite a surprise as it had two very impressive mosques at one end of the harbour and a church at the other. The division between the moslem and Christian parts of the harbour was marked by a large police station. We had read that the two communities had only been separated a few years ago after some disturbances, but all seemed quiet when we were there. At least quiet in that sense - one of the mosques was blasting out music at deafening levels from a battery of speakers. There were dozens of small fishing boats in attractive colours all along the shore, a covered market, lots of women gutting fish on the beach, and men mending net. It really was very picturesque. We were able to walk from there to the lighthouse overlooking Kovalam beach, and down into the town. It was more tourist centred than anywhere else we have seen and was a pleasant place to walk around and have a snack before an hour or two on the beach and a tuk-tuk back to our hotel. You can see that by now we were quite chilled out and in fact spent the last day entirely in the hotel complex. Sadly we packed our bags after buying an extra one in the hotel shop to take all our purchases. Having checked in on line for our flight we were able to have a breakfast at 7.30 and set off at 8.00 for the airport.