What did you get for Christmas ... bet it wasn't the same as me.

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Christmas Day dawned on a picture perfect calm sea with the dolphins making a festive return visit. We had spent all day Christmas eve on the beach and decided that it would be good to have a rotating "day on beach and day off beach" - to try to see some stuff round about, catch up on emails, book onward accommodation and to save on the old sun damage. Even though we spend all beach days until about 4pm under the shade it is still searing hot and you almost feel your legs sizzling when you go for a swim to cool off. The sea currents are changing the coastline and shaping the beaches around where we are staying.

On Christmas eve there were six pepole on our long strip of sand. It was lovely.

On Christmas Day we spent some time up loading pics from both cameras. This was proving very slow - terrible connection speeds. On the third internet cafe the bomb dropped! What I had got for Christmas was an infection of worms in both the camera cards. Nice.

It seems that the cliff area is overrun with computer viruses and I had unwittingly and probably naively compromised my pictures. AAARGH . I was so mad. This added to the battery charger issue mentioned last time has not made me a very happy snapper.
So no more photo uploads. You can wait till I get home and de worm the cards.

We booked an Auryvedic (sp?) full bady massage at a hospital close by. Bala introduced us to his practitioner and we felt assured that this was legit. There are plenty of charlatans practicing in the resorts. The massages from some of these amount to nothing more than "light" vegetable oil massages.

What we got from the hospital was incredible. Once you get over the slight discomfort of the warm oil poured over your very warm naked body, the treatment begins. Firstly the head massage takes about 15 minutes of your allotted 60. Then (almost) every square inch of your body is pummeled and stroked and manouvered into strange positions. In a word - Nirvana.

After a medicated shower to wash the very sticky but lovely scented oil slick, we booked a second consultation to schedcule more more more..... I slept so soundly and had no neck pain and my shoulders were loose for the first time in twelve months. The only massage that came close to it was the deep tissue massage we got from a guy who was 1/4 Native American Indian. That one was amazing - hurt like hell while it was being done but the result lasted weeks.
I never did find out what his other 3/4 was made up of. I think he traded on the NAI part of his gene pool - well wouldn't you. The best part about that massage was that it happened in Co Waterford just before a dinner party.

The other day I went for a walk behind the guesthouse to a paddy field. It was a pool of sunlight in the shaded forest of coconut palms. I had never seen rice growing and was busy taking pictures when it occurred to me that rice paddys are notorious snake territory! Yikes. No one knew I was at the feld, and I ran all the scenrios in my head. Would it be a Russells viper or a Cobra that would get to me first and how far was it to the anti venom clinic (I checked later: two hours - thats enough time to be seriously snakebitten) . Thankfully all that fretting was unnecessary and the only wild life I saw was a tethered cow and a mongoose. Come to think of it - the mongoose diet consists of snakes- so maybe I had a reason to be terrified!

We had a small safe experience with a snake. Fazil saw one in his headlights one evening. He wanted to drive back and kill it for our enjoyment. We declined and asked that if he wanted to kill it , could he please drop us to town first!

We moved apt , as planned on 26th and now have a lovely room in a Swedish run guest house. It is closer to the mosque so we now have morning (3.45 or 4.45 am) prayer calls to deal with. While this seemed lovely when it was in the distance of our last place, this time the speaker is located in a tree beside our room. It feels like we are sleeping inside the mosque. However the crows are not here so we manage to get back to sleep for a while.

The guest house has a great airy room complete with mosquito net and flying frogs! John pulled back the curtain and sort of froze yesterday morning. I had a look and in my best Steve Irwin impersonation said "what a beauty". The frog was stuck by its suckers to the side of the window. A bit of gentle persuasion got him into an old suncream box which we keep handy for "wildlife removal".

Where we are staying is full of wildlife. I went for a walk yesterday and saw a beautiful kingfisher sitting on the wire, a small flock of parakeets and some vivid acid green bee catchers. The cafe I'm in right now has similar green walls. It's the sort of headache inducing green which looks flourescent at home but here seems kinda dull. Its good the wall is not orange as then it would be impossble to keep an eye on the bright orange opalescent lizards who are zig zagging around.

There is a bit of a Brolly war going on at the beach. I really lost it yesterday when the "Brolly Wallah" gave away our brolly! I had struck a deal for the 18 days that we would be guaranteed a brolly and at a reduced price.

You have to picture the scene: One very slight five foot six teenage boy arguing the toss with all bulky six foot four of me and telling me he had no more umbrellas and that I would have to wait for some one to leave nd if i didn't like it he would fight me. Firstly I was astounded and then I was annoyed then I just laughed like Jack Nicholson right into his face and said very calmly that he must get me a brolly or else I would tell the police that I had seen him oogling western girls.
All this for a bit of shade that costs less than EUR1.50. They are very protective of the monopoly they have on the miniscule strip of sand.
My umbrella mysteriously appeared within five minutes.

Thats it for now. Sorry for no pics - but I will sort them out when I get home. I'm off now to talk to my worms and ask them nicely to please not eat my pictures.

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Comments

[liz & breda]

WOWEE
How amazing! We're loving your travelogue, beautiful writing and amazing adventures...please keep it up it's a lovely holiday for us! So glad you're in a warm and dazzling place...can't wait to see the photos - the ones you've posted are gorgeous xxx