Half moon

Yesterday the intrepid explorers, emily, lloyd and the dassie headed of to explore the unexplored, conquer the unconquered and just generally become heros. We set off to explore the less frequented beaches in gokarna which require quite a lot of hiking and scrambling over rocks, through jungles and across the path of snakes. But were we afraid? Maybe once, when a snake crossed our paths, with such a vicious look in its eyes my thoughts automatically jumped to ka (from the jungle book, you illiterates) and in terror we all shut our eyes and made a run for it, straight into the biggest spiders web you could ever imagine, which held us almost suspended as we fought to free our limbs before the probably giant spider returned! Ok I lied about the spiders web but it did make it seem more dramatic. Well while we were in this conundrum, deciding whether it was worth being hypnotised by ka-like snakes, a pleasant group of indians walked passed us and on hearing our dilemma and upon seeing the snake promptly informed us it was a completely harmless snake and we were all quite safe to cross its path.

And so the explorers continued, prepared to face anything, but slightly relieved the group of indians in front of us would have to face it first! After what seemed like hours, the sweat dripping into our eyes so that the horizon a appeared a blur before us, a mirage of sand and water appeared before us, not unlike those that wander through the desert see. But was it a mirage? Wiping the buckets of sweat from our eyes we focused and there before us lay a beach so beautiful it was hard to believe it wasn't fake. Our indian guides continued on but we lingered, over joyed at the thought that we had the whole beach to ourselves! No tourists, no pesky necklace sellers and no gaping locals as we stripped off and ran joyously into the slightly polluted so not so crystal clear arabian sea. A mere half an hours walk (through a dense, snake packed jungle) away from a tourist trap, lau this pristine beach, lined I must add with coconut trees. Lloyd (emily's boyfriend, and emily being a girl I met on the walk back from town) was designated the task of using a bamboo pole to knock down a coconut, which he successfully managed much to our surprise. He was then set the task of opening it with only a swiss army knife at his disposal, which he managed, much to our surprise. Lloyd doesn't like coconut so emily and I feasted on his hard work. Makes me think of the little red hen a bit, but the little red hen who didn't even get to eat her bread!