Kovalam to Airport and Farewell

 Fishermen dragging in their nets at dawn.

 A member of the coconut trimmers caste (yup) outside our balcony.

 Incredible really.

 Bargaining for a final gift for someone back home...

 and the successful purchase.

 How relaxed do we look after our two months together?

 One poor elephant.

 It started to rain!

The last rush to the right airport.

One last shot.

Monday, March 12^th.

John and I were very lazy this morning, with slightly thick heads. We spent the morning swapping photos, e-mailing and Skyping. We came to the conclusion that without Thoufeeq we don’t do anything.

Finally, we decided to head down to the beach at noon. We rented a couple of loungers and spent an hour in the water before laying in the sun. A lady who had approached us the last couple of days selling fruit came up to us again. She was complaining that there was not enough business. I quite liked her, so we ordered a couple of bananas and a mango. I asked how much and she said ‘you like, you pay what you think’. She brought them, we ate them and then she came back for the money. I gave her a 100 rupee and she said that wasn’t enough. So, I gave her another 100 and she still was not happy. I told her that she was not honest as she had said you pay what you think and refused to give her more money. Outwardly she was not happy, but probably she was.

After that we had another dip in the ocean, playing in the waves and trying to body surf, before heading back up to the hotel. We had a quick dip in pool to rinse off the salt. 

We walked back down to the Fussion restaurant and had another excellent meal there of calamari and John had fish. I took my little Canadian cut coin necklace and had it soldered so that it won’t fall off my necklace anymore.

We went up to the Tracy’s room to organize our stuff and then brought it down to the lobby to wait for the cab we had ordered for 4:45. While we were waiting I showed the two women my blog website and a few pictures from Ethiopia of the rock churches and the geladas. 

We had prepaid 1000 rupees to the hotel for the taxi to take us to the airport. The drive was about a half hour through the crazy traffic of India (at the beach resort we had temporarily felt removed from that chaos), and that is where we saw the elephant in the back of the truck.

The taxi dropped us off and while John was attempting unsuccessfully to get money from an ATM, I showed my e-ticket to the security guard at the door, and he told me we were at the wrong airport! He said we were at terminal 1 and needed to be at terminal 2, the international terminal. I said we are flying domestic to Delhi, and he said Air India flies out of terminal 2. Why the hotel did not know this, I have no idea, because we had told them where we were flying to. So, we grabbed our bags, a man saw us right away and asked if we needed a tuk tuk. I said yes and we settled for 250 rupees. He grabbed John’s bag and we followed past a group of taxi drivers and other tuk tuk drivers who were yapping away at him. I think he had grabbed us and jumped the queue. Anyway, we drove for another twenty minutes the six kilometres to terminal two. Check in was easy, we even managed to get seats together (as we had booked this flight separately), and we got through all the security stuff without problem.

The flight was 3 hours and 15 minutes and we just talked about our immediate future plans, the trips we had just taken and then typed up the day on our computers. When we disembarked, we had to go our separate ways, John to his transfer to London and me to the luggage carousel to pick up by bag and meet my Intrepid pickup. We hugged and had an airport guy take a last photo for us, said a couple of quick goodbyes and that was it. I will miss him a lot, he is such a good friend and so easy and fun to travel with. He is already talking about visiting in Canada again and hopefully we can find some time to travel together again in the future. So, this is not goodbye, just so long for now.

I was driven through the crazy traffic of Delhi to my new hotel where I arrived about midnight. I have missed the 6pm start up meeting because I opted to stay with John for the last day and catch the same flight as him to Delhi, but the tour starts first thing in the morning. John flies on to England from here and is in the air as I type.

The last tour was a comfort tour, which is the best level of travel for Intrepid. This tour is a basic tour and as the name implies it is the lowest. The difference was readily apparently when I arrived that this little shabby hotel. However, the room is clean and I have no room mate for the night. I was afraid I was going to wake someone up when I arrived. The internet is not working, so I am off to sleep.