Munnar Feb. 12

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I just remembered the little goat that followed us home in Kochi -- some cities have monkeys, some lots of cows, some squirrels, and Kochi has goats -- cute, little, white ones. Used for milk, I think. Anyway, one night on the way home, we had stayed a bit too late in the "bar" and walked home through completely deserted streets when suddenly we saw a little goat standing in the middle of the road, bleating it's cute little goat bleat and seemed to be lost. So we spoke to her and from that moment on she followed us and when we came to the hotel she followed us right through the front door and would have came up the stairs with us if the night watch man didn't shoo her away.

So we took a taxi up into the hills to Munnar. Munnar town is not very nice. Looks quite dirty and old but the scenery around Munnar is green and cool -- tea plantations, lakes, mountains, blue skies. We stayed about 5 kilometers out of the town in a room with a view of the mountains. On the first morning, as we sat on the verandah, eating breakfast, two eagles were hunting and one swooped down right in front of us and caught a mouse or something -- it was like national geographic, right in front of our eyes. I was standing with the camera in my hand and snapped a photo as this was happening ... I thought -- I did, but the frame was empty -- no eagles, too fast. We had a great day going around the tea plantations and up to the very highest peak where we were supposed to get a view from the top of the ghats into Tamil Nadu. Unfortunately, it was too late, about 11, the clouds had rolled in and we couldn't see anything. So we bought a bag of passion fruit to drown our sorrows ... not really, all the other scenery was beautiful and the weather was perfect -- hot in the middle of the day but with nice, crisp air and at night more of the same. Have been stuffing myself with bananas, passion fruit, cashew nuts. Also some homemade chocolate but luckily it's not very good so haven't eaten much. I wanted to stay more but after a few days we found ourselves in a taxi to Kumilly of which I will write next time. We have been here for 4 days now and will move on tomorrow. Will try and post some photos now and update the trip a bit more in another few days when we get to a bigger tourist town.

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