Friday 24 January

Marari Beach

A quiet day at Marari Beach for us today with no travelling. Beginning with Matthew heading off to the yoga centre for an hour – we’ve both done yoga in the past and enjoyed it (sort of) and definitely felt that it did us good, but I’m nervous about damaging my already painful foot that I sprained about 6 weeks ago. I might risk it tomorrow. 

We also sent off some of our first week’s clothes to be laundered. After breakfast we went for a tour of the ‘compound’ that showed us some of the wildlife. The event was called ‘Owl Parliament’ (there are many species of owl on site), but we looked at butterflies and turtles, too. There were about 10 others in the Earth Lab building where the tour started.

Our guide was fantastic – I’ve no idea how he did it, but he could see all sorts of birds in the trees …. And even when he painstakingly described exactly where to look and what to look for I usually couldn’t see what he was pointing out. Fortunately, he had a super-powerful monocular on a tripod, which he’d set up and train on a particular bird and we could all take turns to look.

What we saw was truly astonishing and his next phenomenal skill was that he could focus our phone through the monocular and adjust light levels to produce some fantastic photographs … we are not responsible for these at all – but this is some what we looked at.

We chatted to some of the others – some from Manchester, some Yorkshire and also Plymouth. We all talked about missing our dogs! Some people are flying home tomorrow and there’s a storm hitting the UK – Storm Éowyn – thousands of flights have been cancelled … mostly in Northern Ireland and Scotland as far as we can tell – but it could move south I suppose and they might be delayed.

After the ‘Owl Parliament’ we went to reception to book some activities over the coming days. We wanted to spend some time on a houseboat – but there was no availability between now and when we leave (I’m starting to sense a theme emerging now). Instead we’re going a shorter boat tour, which is available the day after tomorrow. Also, Matthew wanted to tour the organic garden here and then the chef will cook us dinner using the produce that we harvest – so that’s booked for tomorrow, evening.

We spent a couple of hours in/by the pool and then went for a 5k run along the beach. Matthew has set himself a challenge to run every day (RED) in January  – he’s mostly done that in hotel gyms, or in their grounds while we’ve been in India. Today was my first run in India and it was lovely to run together – and by the Arabian Sea! There were a few stray dogs on the beach and I was a bit nervous that we might alarm them and be chased -,there were no major dog-incidents, although one did woof at Matthew. I wanted keep as far away as possible and ended up too close to the sea – a wave went over both of our  feet and we had to squelch along for 4.5k! Next time we’ll go barefoot.

Last night’s dinner was ordered from the a la carte menu … it was enormous and I could only eat about a quarter of it … a terrible waste of food and I felt guilty about it. So tonight we used the buffet so we could have smaller portions. They have a drummer and string player entertaining us with traditional Indian music while we dine – which is lovely. We were almost finished dinner when all the waiting staff paraded in with a cake and were clapping – the young couple at the next but one table were on their honeymoon – sweet – they seemed a little embarrassed.

After dinner we walked down to the beach bar for another drink (tonic for Matthew and a Mocktail for Mike). It was lovely sitting in the warm, the sound of the waves and pretty lights all around the bar. A nice end to another lovely day.