Varkala Beach (we got there eventually): Ocean, Dolphins, and Heckling

The Beach was stunningly beautiful, and in the water was the only place the temperature became bearable. Due to a sand bar, the waves and undertow were gentle. Being there in itself was enjoyable, and I was also quite excited by that fact that I would be able to come back and brag to all of you that: I have not only swam and watched the sun set on the ARABIAN SEA, but I have seen WILD DOLPHINS SWIMMING IN THE ARABIAN SEA. (Apologies for exotifying exotic-sounding place and exotically intelligent animals). Wooohooo. The sand was soft and there were little shells in it, and the ocean didn’t have hardly any seaweed or dangerous-looking creatures. Or stinkiness. We spent most of our vacation-time there. Sorry I don't really have any pictures of the dolphins. I do, but they just look like dark spots. In real life you could see them surfacing and stuff.

To counteract this pleasure was a whole line of tourist shops with professional hecklers out front. They were so obnoxious that I began to feel sorry for them because of their horrible lack of understanding of marketing and customer service. If it were a village, this would not seem like a problem, but these stores were built around the presence of tourists, and everything being sold is made for tourists. So what I really wanted to do was just explain to these people that their business would probably make a lot more profit if they didn’t insist on heckling people – in my case they were just chasing me away. But I knew if I tried to explain this they really would be hoping that I would buy something in the end, so that they could make some money that day, and I wasn’t going to buy anything because I can find any and all of the tourist things here in Nepal, so I couldn’t release this business ethnocentricity until writing this down. I had to just manage by ignoring and glaring, and once shaking my finger at a restaurant heckler and explaining (to the air) as we walked in that we didn’t choose that restaurant because he heckled at us, but because we liked the way the tables looked. Jessie berated me for this as well, which left me confused – I’m not allowed to be polite to hecklers, but I can’t chastise them either?

Well, anyways, the food was amazing at this beach. My favorite was coconut rice with a vegetable curry made with pineapple and cashews, along with a paratha of course. They also had amazing pineapple lassis (yoghurt fruit mixture that you drink) and cold coffee. Chocolate banana crepes weren’t bad either. It was great to just wake up and have breakfast, then go to the beach and lay in the sun and go swimming all day. I had to put on sunscreen like I was getting paid for it, but I got burned anyways. Did I mention how HOT it is in southern India?