After being screwed over on the jeep safari, we skipped the Tea Factory tour to go straight to Kovalam some eight hours of bus further down south (less than 250 km). Hail to the bus driver, seriously! There are two types of buses in Kerala, the private and public, and they compete in between them, which makes up for some crazy driving. I don't know in which type I was, but I can say I never been so scared in a bus before, at least for the 3 first hours. A grand prix is nothing after what experienced, a roller coaster doesn't even give you half of the rush I've had. Let me explain. First, I was sitting is the death seat, which is the first seat next to the driver, so if something goes wrong, you're the first one out of the windshield. Second, the bus is very old. Third, we're going through mountains most of the way. Fourth, they overtake at every opportunity they have. Fifth, there are SO MANY obstacle on the road : cows, kids, cars, scooters, dirt, rocks, construction sites, etc. Last but not least, the speed (you think 250 km in 8 hours is slow, that's because they stop a lot). Eventually I got used to it as all the other passengers and I fell asleep. The driver was unbelievable, in 8 hours, he never showed any signs of fatigue. I was quite happy to get to Kovalam safe and sound.
Kovalam is a small shore town in the south where many resorts have been erected in the last few years, the tourism here grows every year and the reason is obvious, it is simply a gorgeous beach with it's lucious green palm trees, black thin sand, its surfable waves (only in high season though, the lifeguards here won't let you do anything) and amazing sunsets. We spent a few days here to enjoy the beach, to get a huge sunburn and have day trip in Trivandrum. In our day trip to Trivandrum, we tried to attend an keralan martial art demonstration, it sucked; tried to get a free aryuvedic massage (Keralan therapy) at the Aryuvedic College, it was a hospital, so we go kicked out and went to the nicest zoo ever (at least for 10 rupees) where I finally saw up close my elephant, bengal tiger, lion, girafe, peacock, hippo and many more. Finally an investment to be proud of! After spending 3 nights in Kovalam and eating some good seafood, it was time to move on to Varkala, an other idyllic beach near by. It turned out to be better than Kovalam, since the town was much more mellow, I found Kovalam to be quite a hassle after seing Varkala. The whole village is on the side of a cliff and the beach was pretty much the same. We still had many problems with the lifeguards as they didn't let us go in the water saying it was too dangerous, such bullshit. The problem was that there were many indians around and god knows indians are such weak swimmers and by seeing us in the water they went too and the lifeguards just didn't want to have anything to look out for, obviously some of them had smoked... So we went anyways just ignoring the lifeguards, their whistles are no match to our hard heads. One of the funniest thing happened at this beach as a family of Indians were "amazed by us", they started chatting with us and asked us to take a picture with them (well with the young guys" but next one cute girl wanted also to be in the picture, I first thought she was 16 because she was so small, but it turned out she was 21 and had finished her degree in biochemestry and so as soon as our attention stared shifting to this girl, the father immediately came in and broke it up, shaking our hand saying thank you guys, have a good day, bye bye. We laughed for quite a while about it. The only other interesting thing we did in Varkala, besides relaxing and drinking with some people we met, is going on a backwater canoe ride. We spent probably 3 hours in the many canals through the lucious green palm trees. So relaxing!
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