The path from the Marina/Hotel complex to the ferry and the rest of the island.

Restaurant and Ice Cream Parlor now over grown.

All of the cruisers wish this place still existed because we all like ice cream and this marina has no small store like the one in Rebak where you could buy bread and eggs and Ice cream. We see many buildings half falling down; more than one would think of a BRIC country with good economic earnings projected for the future. It kind of reminds me of Olongapo in the Philippines.

This building, derelict and overgrown, reminds me of The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy.

Set partly in Cochin and partly just south of Ernakulam, it’s a look at an India that we as cruisers won’t see because we come and go and stay at a marina.

Little ferry terminal along the 5 minute path from the marina.

The ferry runs from about 7 am and returns last at 8 pm form Ernakulam. If you stay later, the resort will arrange a 12 passenger boat pick up for 56 rupee or you can take a tuk tuk across the bridge for 80 rupee. I took the bridge tuk tuk one time with bags of groceries. Randal had to go to the High Court building to get something notarized and we didn’t know how long that would take so I went back myself and the driver took me right to the door of the marina. In two trips I had all of the bags on the boat. Now we know that many of the small boats will take you from the Ernakulam side right to your boat for 50 rupee but we didn’t know that then and I needed a tuk tuk from the grocery store anyway. Learning all of the ins and outs takes time. Weather-wise we need to get going so we’ll maybe have to come back one day.

Many paths: one traveler; I started down this one first.

Just past the ferry is a whole warren of paths with walls or fences hiding homes or empty overgrown lots and each path looked very tempting. I just started walking and like Robert Frost said,

“And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.”

That’s why I went there yesterday afternoon because I knew it would probably be my only chance: we’ll be leaving soon and other things will come up.

Late afternoon light and shadow, but I never worried about going walking there alone.

More paths and secret gardens.

I never doubled back.

The areas seemed no larger than the Plymouth Street block where I grew up in New Bedford. But it probably was.

Some homes were tiny but some were large like this one you can see past the wall with the flowerpots. Behind the flowerpot wall was a large house too: but many were small, some medium. All interesting but hidden away.

I snuck this photo when she wasn’t looking.

At the dead-end of this path were cows grazing and I took several photos.

You always see egrets with the cows or water buffalo because they eat the bugs that pester the cows. While I was photographing the cows the neighborhood was watching me amused that I would think cows photo-worthy.

So I asked if I could take their photo.

They all wanted to be photographed!

Other folks at other houses were watched and seemed to enjoy my photo-taking. I probably could have taken that whole neighborhood. But I just said hello and waved and smiled and so did they.

A medium size house in their neighborhood.

This was a tiny hotel down from the ferry, or so the sign said, and it had a tiny store and what looked like a very tiny restaurant.

The lovely woman who works there.

Then I walked back to the marina and our “ho hum” boats.