Today was a quiet one of recovering from jet lag. We observed the fishermen out in the harbour this morning bringing in the day’s catch. We then went to have massages at the spa. The massage was incredible and a great way to relax. The weather has been hot but there is a beautiful breeze so hanging out on the beach for the afternoon reading books and swimming in the Arabian sea was a delight. Tomorrow will be more active. We are venturing out to where three seas meet.

The people here are amazingly kind and polite. There are probably seven times the number of people working at this hotel than you might find in any Canadian hotel. The jobs are pretty varied too. For example, there are a number of women groundskeepers who all wear beautiful purple saris as they tend to the lush greenery. There was also the guy who climbed the coconut tree outside our hotel room and dropped this day’s crop to the ground. Kerela is known for coconuts and we have tasted them in a number of ways already. Thank goodness for this guy’s agilit.

Look out for falling coconuts

Two seconds after this was taken, the woman chased a bird with the hose – lots of fun.

we weren’t sure what they were catching but the guys would dive off the edge of these boats and come up with something

I am writing this while looking out over the Arabian Sea. Our hotel, The Leela, Kovalum. The theme of this area is “Welcome to God’s Country”. It is worthy of the name. It is beautiful here. Our room overlooks the sea and we shall be lulled to sleep tonight by the sound of waves.

We left London Heathrow airport at 9:30 am and boarded our plane at 1:30. We arrived in Dubai airport @ 1:00 am Dubai time ( the clock moved 12 hours but our flit was only 8 hours long. We left 3.5 hours later and arrived in Trivandrum 4 hours later or 9:30 local time. We spent time today figuring out when we were. I will post pictures of where we are too.

We also had our 1st snack. What do you think about our choices. We don’t know what we are eating, but it was good

We are in the last two weeks of preparation for our trip to India. We had a big change to our plans when our guides and friends, Meenal and Sanjiv, decided not to go with us after all. Their dog is very ill and they couldn’t face leaving him when he is so sick. Therefore we are going to traverse the subcontinent on our own. We will be fine, I hope :). The adventure quotient on this trip has just gone up!

We visited the Art Gallery of Alberta on August 21, 2012 with our niece Nicole K. It was her first visit to an art gallery and it was fun exploring the AGA from her perspective. The feature exhibit was from the National Gallery of Canada collection. They had a full room of sculptures by Louise Bourgeois. The next week I was in Ottawa and had a chance to visit the NGC. As we walked up to the Gallery we were met by Bourgeois’ statue Maman, a huge statue of a pregnant spider. http://www.gallery.ca/en/see/collections/artwork.php?mkey=101000. It was fun to see work by the same artist in two different spaces.