The Beautiful Andaman Islands

Monday – date unknown- lost track of time!

Its 7am in the morning and we’re sitting on our bamboo terrace overlooking the swaying coconut palms and the calm blue sea.  The smoker (aka the water boiler) has just been lit with the usual paraffin and health and safety issues have been  addressed , light a match and run!  Himself and I are taking bets on who will be first out with the bucket, my money’s on the Germans, Himself reckons the Japs, there are several of them who form an orderly line and swish it to the end where a tiny little girl struggles about 100 yards with it.

Our rickshaw driver Ammet took us to another beautiful beach yesterday, the contrast of the colours in the water is stunning. The sea is full of tropical fish and it really is like swimming in an aquarium.  Sadly we no longer scuba dive, but snorkelling is good enough.

We went out to Fat Martins for lunch (Masalla dosa) and himself had a dessert of a honey, banana & fresh coconut  all for 2.60.  In the evening we went to the Tandoori barbeque on the beach. Himself as usual,  had a chat with the chef who had worked in Newquay in the ‘80’s who told us tonights special was Roast Lamb with mint sauce, new potatoes , French beans and carrots.  I thought I’d died and gone to heaven!  The chef did insist we tried the Tandoori Chicken kebabs for starters and they nearly blew our socks off – another immense chilli rush.  We asked chef for some yoghourt to tone down the chilli and he nipped off on his Royal Enfield to get some for us.   When our mains arrived chef has slipped a couple of cheeky lamb chops on the side – delicious.

We have been given a hammock and todays challenge is for himself to find a couple of suitable trees to tie it to on a nice deserted beach.

A little penning from himself, after a super king prawn and fresh coconut curry and a very tasty grilled tuna steak (cost £5) Ammet our favourite trainee formula one rickshaw driver came to pick us up to go and see the sunset at Radha Nagar beach which is supposed to be one of the best in  India, ( if you have chance look it up on the net) well it lived up to our expectations we got some great photos which I will upload (if poss) sometime next week. The only way to describe it is like a great big orange ball sinking in to the sea, I think me and herself were the only white faces amongst around 200 people gathered to see a fantastic the sunset.

The beach itself is truly amazing, pure white sand which stretches for a couple of miles and the sea is just like getting into a warm bath, long time since we have had hot water!

On returning to the hotel I wandered over to the reception to settle our account, and at the front desk was the normal selection of nationalities all looking at a bath towel which one of the Germans had got. It had been torn in several places the Germans asked the manager what could have done it, he swerved the question saying that we are living in the jungle and could not be sure at which point the French said whatever it was  it would probably taste nice with some garlic butter, the Japanese had not got time to comment as the hot water boiler had just been lit and they needed to get on the water chain. I pointed out that I thought it was what we call in England a long tail AKA rat!. The manager agreed and put his vermin policy into action. We have three very friendly dogs that live at the hotel and we reckon they have trained them to see off any Indians and hippies  that try to come on to the property. Any way he got one of the dogs and sat him on guard outside the Germans hut ready to go on a rat catching mission, who needs all this fancy equipment when you have a feisty rat catching dog!, we can all now sleep easy as woof 1 is on the case.

We hope to try to upload some pics when we get back to the mainland in about 3 days time.  We leave Haverlock Island for Port Blair on Tuesday and fly from Port Blair to Chennai, then Chennai to Trivandrum in Kerela on Wednesday, but don’t arrive until late so it maybe Thursday before we get in touch again.

Bye for now - its not still raining is it !