Day 44 - Backwater tour

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.

The entrance to a canal... these are often just 'driveways' to peoples houses.

A mussel fisherman having a race with our houseboat

 Someone's equivalent of an SUV parked up on the canal.

Sunrise over the backwaters behind the beach house

Taken while on the ferry crossing from Vyppen Island to Fort Cochin

An arty bike shot

 Sun rise picture taken from the beach house dining table

Picture taken from the smaller local boat of the canal (Phase two of the trip)

Day 43 - Beach bum day

As the name suggets the day was spent doing as little as possible. Being washed up on the beach by the big waves and during the hottest part of the day relaxing on the roof top room thing. The owner of the beach house introduced us to a game popular in India, the game uses a large board 2ft by 2 ft and some discs that you try to pot into holes in each corner of the playing board. It is like snooker but with discs. After each shot you grab the equivalent of the white ball and position it on your side of the square board. You flick the disc with your finger and if all goes well it hits one of the coloured discs and you pot it. Like snooker different coloured discs have different values. It seems im completely rubbish at the game, the stupid discs defy the laws of physics common sense and newtons third law of thermodynamics, and, for that reason Laura, a woman, was good. I potted two discs the owner (clearly an olympic champion at the sport) potted about 15 and Laura (clearly a complete cheat somehow) potted about 10. I think my side of the board needed talc'ing up as something was clearly wrong. I pretended I needed to upload a blog entryto save myself another round of humiliation and we all called it a draw (in my head). The owner agreed to take us into town with him to get some cash and some essentials. One of them being alcohol.
The town center is a roundabout. We are on the island of Vyppen next to Fort Kochin there is a bunch of villages one main road down the center of it and a few temples. We grab money, some snacks and, being a generally dry area we head to one of the government approved 'drink shops'. Like a dispensary for needles the lowest of the low are waiting outside queuing patiently in makeshift queue lanes made out of wire and old television cable. I blend in like a morris dancer in a reggae club unaware what the translation for a bottle of nice spiced dark rum,  and two bottles of red chianti is. I'd have settled for non spiced rum and even a dry white wine. Unfortunatly this shop was geared to homeless drinkers and the type of person that would pay for another bottle of alcohol over his insulin. I took the rum made from brent crude oil and some wine / port / paint stripper concoction.  All came in plastic bottles and cost a total of £10. So far so good. We hadnt tried it yet though.

Another swimming session in the sea and before long the sun was setting and we were heading for another home cooked meal. Curried prawns from the backwaters and an assortment of spicy vegetables and chutneys. 

That evening, we started on the 'wine'. I thought things like this were tested on animals,  clearly this one missed that stage of the development process. If a wine taster were to put this in their mouth they'd not say "Cheeky little number, delecate on the palate..." going on to describe the region the grapes and the chateau which made it famous. ..no they'd uppercut you in the chin and try to smash the plastic bottle over your head. It was offensive. Luckily, after a couple of rums it could have been Crystale. I lost at cards about 20 times to complete my streak for the day. Tomorrow was an early start. We were going on a tour, a backwater house boat ride then a canal ride. We needed to be up at 7.

Plodding through the mud and dead things round the backwaters of Vyppen island.

The open air upstairs of the beach house. Very chilled.