Vypeen Island

They say a change is as good as a rest. Well, all we have been doing is resting, so in our case a change was a very good thing indeed. For Jude’s birthday we decided to head north to Vypeen Island and Cherai Beach. This involved a short ferry crossing from Fort Cochin and a crazy 45 minute auto-rickshaw ride with lunatic overtaking manoeuvres and single lane bridge first to flinch shenanigans.

Cherai Beach is billed in Lonely Planet as ‘Kochi’s best-kept secret’, cue high expectations and inevitable initial disappointment. Lot’s of rubbish, especially plastic bottles, and a handful of overpriced, distinctly average, resort type accommodation litter a strip of sand whose only remarkable feature seems to be it’s truly remarkable length. Those of you who have been to Tai Long Wan in Hong Kong will understand why we felt so robbed. When you have had your own personal slice of paradise complete with gourmet noodle shacks and ice cold Tsing Dao’s a stones throw from your house your yard stick for beach quality becomes skewed towards the perfect. Like a couple grumbling spoilt brats we ambled up and the down the strip before settling on “Baywatch Restaurant” for lunch. It was at this point, or perhaps a little later... after the four Kingfisher Premiums had taken effect… that we began to slip into the right gear. Joseph, our affable waiter, had that uncanny knack of making you feel like it would be rude not to accept ‘one more beer’, even though we were paying for them.

The following morning we felt much better about the world, aside from the slight hangovers that is. After breakfast we wandered bare foot down the beach before taking a side road across the backwater lagoons that separate the sand from the rest of the island. Kingfishers, cormorants, egrets, herons and the local people were all busy catching fish in the rising heat of the day. We caught a couple of “Thums Up” lemonades at a roadside store instead and then a helpful gent gave us good beta on the village restaurant scene, result. We devoured parotta, popadums, beef curry and other tasty yet unknown spicy things as Joysen, our friendly guide who had worked as a refrigeration engineer in the fish industry in Uganda for 7 years, gave us the lowdown on all the local festivals and much needed tips on the correct way to wear a Lungi, the garment of choice for all the dapper chaps of Kerala. We opted for an auto-rickshaw instead of the walk back and once again fell into a lazy and beery afternoon session in Baywatch whose elevated, open sided, beach view restaurant with super comfy chairs catches the finest sea breeze in the world, why bother thinking about doing anything else when that combination is so unbeatable, yes please Joseph, one more Fingkisher thanks...

As it was Jude’s birthday we decided to head to the Cherai Beach Resort for dinner. This swanky place would have cost us the same for two nights stay as our flat costs for the entire month, but the Tandoor BBQ was not to be missed. Sadly, places that try this hard to be this nice usually end up missing out some crucial details. First up, no alcohol (something of a norm in Kerala but certainly a surprise in a hotel catering for tourists), second up, Nescafe?! There should be regulations about this sort of thing, I mean, honestly, forget the exquisitely folded napkins and picture perfect palm leaf thatched restaurant roof and sort out the freeze dried, instantly unsatisfying situation that is Nescafe. Despite having to gulp down the sickly, creamy filth they even have the audacity to serve in a coffee pot however, it has been a magnificent day. Especially after a couple more moonlit Kingfishers back at Baywatch;-)

p.s. One of the pictures is a close up of the hull of a fishing boat. Notice how the planks are stitched together! No nails used at all.