The trip to Periyer

After leaving the Home stay we took a boat back out onto the waterways of the Backwaters and traveled down beautiful canals and through large open 'lakes' of water, passing though areas of wide open paddy field and then dense forest areas where many of the people lived in houses which butted right up to the canals. life just carried on as normal with barges of goods and supplies passing us often loaded to the gunnel's so that barely an inch of the boat stood proud of the water line. After about an hour or so we pulled into the shore of one of the lakes and stopped at a 'Toddy Shop' These little shacks are spread all over the Backwaters are like little bar/cafes that support the field workers with Toddy and food. Toddy is an alcoholic drink which is made from the liquid found only in the flower of the Coconut tree. The liquor is removed very early in the morning by slicing the flower head and immediately starts to ferment. By 10am they reckon the liquid is 3-4% and head a taste of Quantre-Tres (Liquor 43, a Spanish Banana liquor), By early evening the alcohol content is approaching that of a strong wine but the taste is that of foul eggs! They also served us with freshly caught (literally out the back door of the kitchen) freshwater king prawns or languestines deep fried in a spicy flavoring. We continued along the canals for about another hour and then transferred to 2 Taverna's, these are 7 seater SUV type vehicles which have all the looks but very little grunt. The Taverna's took us up to Peri yer National Park. On the way we climbed and climbed up into the mountains the scenery changed and we stopped part way at first a rubber tree plantation where they still draw the rubber from the trees then at Mr Abraham's Spice Garden (as featured on Monty Don's Around the World in 80 Gardens) We spent a hour or so wandering the garden sampling the various spices and plants which grow here from black pepper to super hot chillies (I refrained, however those that did try them were speechless for about 30 minutes and cried!) to bananas and custard apples and passion fruit. Following the tour we had an evening meal in Mr Abraham's house of produce all grown on the site, whilst it was nice I was not feeling 100% for some reason and only ate a little, some days you just don't fancy the big meals that seem to get presented to you on these organised tours.
We were now in tea county and the landscape was dominated by what appears to be fields of privet hedges, in fact we did stop at a church at the top of one hill to have a look around and I plucked a tea leaf from the tip of a bush and crushed it and it smelt just like privet!
We arrived late in Kumily the small town at the entrance to the park and checked into the Hotel for the night. I comprised a series of separate buildings each with about 4-6 rooms accessible from a series of pathways around the rear of the blocks. The room we had was OK but a little dark as the whole thing was constructed from dark wood and had very small windows however we did have a nice balcony which overlooked the rest of the complex.