Miles' Travel Blog: Day 44

We had to be up at the crack of dawn, a rickshaw would be arriving at the beach house at 07:00, it was a 35-40 minute joy ride through Vyppen main road, to the ferry crossing point to Fort Cochin where we could dump our bags at 'Toms old mansion', and get a tour of the backwaters. Laura wasn't feeling too good, we diagnosed the problem and came up with a combination of heat, random food and the crafty rum / wine combination, it is never a good idea, especially when you need to get up to sit on a non A/C boat for a few hours.

On arrival at Tom's Mansion we were shown the store room, and I was given a tour of the various rooms that the place had to offer, they were huge, one room had twin 4 poster beds. The place was built 300 years ago and was owned by the Portuguese when they were running the place. With the addition of a bunch of air conditioners and WiFi it was now a guest house / hotel. For about £20 a night you had a room about 30ft by 30ft with Air conditioning, en suite and rising damp. We dumped our bags and hopped on the bus to the tour.

The bus driver had a lead foot, which he used for accelerating, steering, and braking. I later found out that he raced motorbikes on the beach, probably still using his tour bus. As we crossed a bridge and attempted a right turn, a police officer informed him that a road was closed. This added about 45 minutes to the journey time, and Laura was looking more and more pale. I'll skip the journey and details, and get to the point where she got the driver to stop while she threw up next to the bus. What was interesting was that the wall she used to prop her self up was surrounding a farm that appeared to have mangos, bananas, and even nutmeg growing. After a tactical spew she was still feeling rough, and the driver now was paying less attention to the road as he kept one eye on Laura in case she spewed over his dashboard. We arrived about 1 hour late for the start of the tour, luckily they hadn't left without us, and everyone there was pretty relaxed. We were greeted by our tour guide with a cup of sweet tea and a gentle shove onto the boat to hurry us up.

The tour was nice, lots of interesting facts about how the fisherman harvest mussels for their meat but also use the shells for Calcium Hydroxide which is added to Calcium tablets, talcum powder and also as a fertiliser. We got off the boat on a small island where we were shown around and advised about the importance of Coconut palms to the local way of life, from the oil made from the nuts themselves to a beer like alcohol made from the sap of the flower. The husk of the coconut is also harvested and used for making mats, bags, and rope. I found all this very interesting, and asked more about the sappy beer thing. 50 rupees later I was the proud owner of a litre of the milky looking liquid. On opening it there was a gentle hiss, ahh, fermentation was still taking place. I took a sniff and regretted it. I may as well have smelt a tramps armpit, it honked. I'm not one to waste 50 rupees, so I took a swig and it wasn't bad, the smell did remain, as a bit of an after taste, however a few more litres and I doubt you'd even notice it. The tour continued and a second phase began.

We hopped off the house boat, and back onto the bus, Laura was a little better as lunch had been served on the boat, and this perked her up a bit. This phase was punting on a small local boat down some canals that were about 2 ft deep. It was nice and relaxing, and it gave us the opportunity to see some interesting plants, and animals. 2 hours was a little long to be honest and my bum had gone to sleep after about an hour, but we did get off the boat from time to time and this broke it up nicely. We stopped for a cuppa, and to watch some women walking back and forth making coconut husk rope. I made a small video of it click here.

We were all shattered when the boat returned to 'port' and we were all dropping off as the bus driver fought his way back through the rush hour of Cochin.