December 26th Another relaxing day

We had another excellent breakfast and then decided to have a walk along the beach and have a look at the Marari Beach Resort. Andy had warned us that we would have difficulty getting into the resort and he was not wrong. We were intercepted shortly after we entered the grounds by the life guards. We explained that we lived in Bangalore and wanted to have a look round because we were likely to come back to Kerala in the future and might want to stay there.

Crabs on the beach

In contrast to other hotels we have visited and were warmly welcomed and shown round, the reception at the Marari Beach was decidedly chilly. Initially we were told that we couldn’t walk through the resort to reception but would have to enter via the road. After a phone call to someone in management we were permitted to walk through the resort to reception. Eventually they somewhat reluctantly gave us the Indian resident ratfor the resort! It seemed quite a pleasant resort but with 63 cottages compared to eight at The Beach at Pollethai it felt very cramped and crowded!

Bethan relaxing too!

In the afternoon, after Bethan had wached her VCD of Oliver and John and I had played Scrabble on our porch, we wandered for about a mile south of the resort and watched the fishermen preparing their boats for the night’s fishing.

We ordered the restaurant’s special Keralan dinner which was served on a huge banana leaf and was absolutely delicious. We plan to have at least one more of these before we leave.