VIII. Nature

Captain’s Log: Friday, 22 September 2017

Distance: Madurai – Kumily

The day started early again, since we had to make quite a distance. So we had a lot of bus driving today. At one point, we passed a river where people have been washing their clothes.

Later we finally arrived in the mountains. Well  for us, it is more like a hill chain, but there is a lot of nature, before it there were a lot of rice plantages, palms, and we even saw a flower field. The mountains were so green, and such an intensive green which was in such a high contrast to the cities.

After some short stops we arrived at a small spice plantage. The owner showed us around and told us a lof about his plants there.

Cacao plant;

Pepper plant. Do yiy see this small green balls?That is the pepper. It actually has to have a tree or something similar to grow around on.

This was some sort of Mimose. It was so cute, if you touched it, it closed its leaves!

I forgot the name of this one, but it just looked awesome. 

Afterwards we had time to buy some spices in his shop, what basically all of us did, since many spices are supposed to be very healthy and to have healing powers. 

The we continued driving to our next hotel, which lies on the top of the hills, right in the middle of the nature.

There we had time to relax a bit and eat a soup, before we continued our program with a boat tour through the National Park there. For that we had to drive to the entrance, where we had to change into a smaller jeep, which brought us to the lake. There we waited for the boat, and while waiting, we got visited by some monkeys.

Yes, I watched out thst they do not steal anything from me, but they seemed to be quite polite.

This was our boat then.

And just in case, so that my frog does not fall into the water, he got tucked into another pocket again.

And of course we all had to wear life jackets.

Unfortunately the quality of the pictures is not that good, bur I have better ones on the camera. The colours again were so intensive, and even though we have not seen many animals, it had been still a very nice and calming tour.

In the National Park are tigers and elephants as well, but they are very protected and often in an area where tourists are not allowed to go. Just sometimes, if they do not find enough water elsewhere, they come to the lake.

On the way back, I was one of the last to get onto the jeep. There have been no seats available anymore, so I decided to stand, when the driver told me I could sit down at a step right beside him.

Well, I did not complain.

It was already early evening, but we had still time to go around in the little town, searching for anotber spices or looking at clothes again.

Later we took a Tuctuc back to the Hotel, because our bus just let a few of us out for looking around in the town, and with the others he drove already up. We shared a Tuctuc with two others of our group then, so one of us had to sit in the front with the driver.

It was a bit of a bumpy ride, but fun.