On to Kerala

At 5:15 this morning, we (Dick, Barbie, Joel, Gavin, Braden, Lilly, and I) headed to the airport and flew into Cochin (Kochi). Then we all loaded up into a Toyota Innova, a car we would be spending WAY too much time in over the next few days and began our 4 hour drive from Kochi to our 1st destination, Thekkady. I knew it was a 4 hour ride when I got us into this. I did not know it was a 4 hour drive of hairpin turns. We all started out fine, but things went bad pretty quickly! The road was narrow and so windy. We stopped a few hours into the drive at a church to let the boys out, take a breather, and hope that Dick and Barbie would start feeling better since they were starting to get a little car sick. It was extremely hot but nice to be out of the car. They had a “toilet” we could use too. Dick, Joel, and I braved it. Barbie decided she would rather hold it for a few more hours than use a dirty squatty-Probably the better choice for her after I saw it! I handed out some car sickness pills and we piled back in. At this point we were starting to climb into the Ghats, or mountains. There were cows that we had to dodge and huge drop offs on one side of the road. The driver was going so fast on the corners that it made me nervous with such a sheer cliff on the one side. Gavin ended up vomiting but everyone else made it to our hotel ok. We had finally arrived at Spice Village in Thekkady. Barbie and Dick headed to bed to sleep off the car sickness. The rest of us enjoyed the beautiful grounds where the boys could just run and play! We did a little shopping that night and then had dinner. I don’t really care for South Indian food so it was too bad that that was Dick and Barbie’s first experience with Indian food. North Indian food is much, much better.