We left Friday from the hotel around 10am and things were trucking along... and then this happened:
The car we were driving in (Michael's, who is a super cool long-term expat here) decided to poop out on us about 6KM away from the airport. It was interesting sitting on the side of the road with people staring, honking and randomly offering assistance. It seems that the fan cut a hole in the radiator, and the air conditioning was making it worse, so Michael and his driver worked their manly magic and got it going long enough to sputter to the airport to drop us off. Even with the delay we managed to get through check in and security in less than 15 minutes. The airport here is brand new, and I find it interesting that men and woman have to be searched separately. Men just walk through a metal detector, but women have to go into a curtained room and get searched with one of those wand things.
The flight to Kerala was a little rough. It's less than 90 minutes really, but my rampant motion sickness plus a great dislike for airplanes still made the flight long... our descent looked something like this:
I'm not sure what happened there in the middle, but I was fairly certain that I wasn't going to be able to make it... but alas, we did, and when we entered the airport in Kochin (near Kerala), I really felt like I was on set at the Darjeeling Limited movie. The terminal is old and quaint. There are only two boarding gates and the times for departure and arrivals are manually changed.... I wish I could have taken pictures!! We walked on the tarmac from the plane to the tiny arrival area (that had Western toilets - thank you Portugal!) and set off to the houseboat.
The houseboat freaking ROCKED.
I think the boat was bigger than all of our apartments back at home - 3 bed, 3 bath, kitchen, dining and rec room. :P The scenery was just amazing, and pictures do not do the area justice. Palm trees, calm water, the breeze and on/off rain storms were simply perfect. We spent the weekend reading, napping, gazing lazily at the surroundings, drinking, doing sing-a-longs with various iPods worth of music and pretty much did a good job of entertaining ourselves. I think the most fun part of the trip was heading out in canoes into some smaller tributaries around the area and checking out the local homes and inhabitants.
Sunday we docked and toured Kochin a bit. Our driver seemed hell bent on taking us to handicraft shops when all we wanted were spices, so he got docked points on that. When we asked to go to a shop that is government regulated, we were told that is was closed. After several phone calls, we found the shop and it was magically open! Who'd a think it.... After more heckling, and lunch breather, we finally found a delightful spice shop on "Jew Street" (for reals). We toured around a bit more, and ended up at the airport 3 HOURS early. Hmph. Well, at least I was able to get into one of my books so that was good. We had a decent flight back and ended the night with room service and passing out at my first attempt at writing this entry. ;)
This week: Diwali, shopping and hopefully some local sightseeing.
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