Kobus & Teresa In India

Monday, April 4, 2011

Where to next?

I am going to start off by apologizing for my bad use of the English language. I started saving all my blog entries in a separate document and I noticed all the mistakes I made. In my defense, English is not my first language.

Nothing spectacular happened the past week, we were still on a high from our dream trip to the Maldives and we just appreciate the fact that we have all these opportunities to experience these kind of things.

It was pretty much just cricket the whole week with India starting the week with a good win against Pakistan in the Semi Finals for the Cricket World Cup that is being hosted in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Everyone had cricket fever and everywhere you went was all cricket. India did go through and beat Sri Lanka in the final on Saturday with yet another convincing win. I always did think they had a good chance of winning and would certainly be in the final but I did hope that it would have been against South Africa. But history repeated itself and South Africa lived up to their reputation of being World Cup Chokers and lost against New Zealand. A game they would have normally won 9 out of 10 times. It was a bitter pill to swallow for me and still is, being in India and being vocal about our victory against India not too long ago. It does make me feel good to see what the win meant to our driver who is ecstatic about the win and the fact that us as South Africans can take a little pride from this win since the India Cricket team is being coached by a South African.

We decided to spend our Sunday afternoon at the Ista Hotel again for lunch and as before we were not disappointed. The food is delicious and the hotel has got an unique ambience to it. It is one of the smaller hotels in the area and they cater for much less people than the other hotels do in the area that also offers the Sunday Lunch specials. The reason why we prefer them over the other: They have a sushi bar, cold meats, salads, breads, cheese, local dishes, stir fry and a BBQ option that is outside. Drinks are also included and we decided to try some local Indian Sparkling Wine which turned out to be really good.

Ever since we returned from the Maldives we knew we had to fit in one last foreign holiday before our one year in India comes to an end. This is the part that our family and friends in South Africa will not like, we originally decided to visit South Africa in June but decided against it. We always go to South Africa and we should rather use our time in India to visit places that we would normally not get to visit. We thought about going to the Maldives again but this time for a longer period but decided against it. The holiday in the Maldives was really something special and it makes for nice memories and we are scared if we go again so soon it might spoil that for us. We have been to Singapore over New Years but also only for a couple of days, there are still lots that we did not get to do or see and we loved Singapore. We are thinking about going to Singapore again for that reason. We don't have dates yet but we are thinking about the end of May beginning June and it would be for a week. We will know in the next week or so and do our booking, at this stage I am reading up on different hotels and Teresa is looking at her work schedule. Stay tuned for more on this in the next week or so.

The pictures was all taken Sunday, during our lunch at the Ista Hotel. I also added a couple of Youtube video's from the Maldives and our previous Singapore trip.

Teresa at our outside table. Most people opted for the indoor seats but we loved the weather and thought it would be a waste to sit inside.

Part of the outside area.

Some of the water features at the hotel.

The whole hotel setting is around big boulders like this.

And beautiful gardens.

Stunning view....oh the background too.

A local reptile came to say "Hello"

The BBQ station, smelled yummy!

Just another view of the outside sitting area.

Some of the food, this came from the BBQ station. Mushrooms and chicken kebab.

The delicious local Sparkling Wine.

This was something Teresa had, she liked it a lot.

This guy was also there.

A view of the garden area next to the eating area.

My desert, it had a pink filling of some sorts inside, was yummy!

Monday, March 28, 2011

MALDIVES

Disclaimer: We do NOT accept any responsibility for any Maldivian holidays that was caused from reading this blog.

We waited nearly two months for our trip to the Maldives and it was all over in two minutes!! The time just flashed by, before we knew it we were back at our apartment in Hyderabad. Our experience, for what still feel like it was just a dream was one of the best times in our life, something I think is impossible to explain to someone in words.

We left early on Thursday morning to catch our flight to Bangalore from where we would fly to the Maldives. After arriving at Male Airport we quickly zipped through immigration, got our luggage and as we left the airport we got greeted by one of the lodge representatives that escorted us to the boat that took us to Kandooma Island. The boat ride to Kandooma Island was about forty five minutes and we were supplied with a cold damp towels that smelled of pure peppermint and cold bottle water. We were greeted at Kandooma Island by our first names and a nice refreshing cocktail cold drink that had mint, ginger, lime and Sprite in. We were taken to our beach villa were we did not waste any time unpacking and started exploring the island.

We arrived nice and early on Thursday just after midday and still had lots of time to explore and take it all in. The island is nice and small and it is just large enough for a nice relaxing walk around. We walked and took pictures enjoying all the marine life activity in the shallow clear water. For a late lunch/early dinner we shared a seafood pizza and it was one of the nicest seafood pizza's we have had. I am not normally a big seafood pizza fan but this was enjoyable. The food over all during our stay was good especially our Saturday evening dinner we had at the main restaurant of the lodge. This was fine dining as you only see on television and we loved every bite of it.

We spend most of our Friday walking, swimming and relaxing in the sun. On Friday evening we went on the night fishing cruise. The boat leaves just as the sun is about to set and it made for a stunning sunset. We tried one spot for a while and after about ten minutes the crew decided to try another spot that turned out a success. Teresa caught the first fish between the two of us and after that I caught another three. There was a total of nine guests that went and everybody had some luck. After we returned to the island they wanted to divide the fish between all the guests that went on the night fishing and we decided to donate our fish to the rest. You had a choice for them to cook the fish for you or they would have provided you with a Weber grill and you could cook it yourself.

Saturday was more busy as we went on a Dolphin Cruise at 10am that turned out to be just a cruise as we they did not find any dolphins for us. As they normally have a good success rate they offered us another cruise and we chose to take the cruise later that afternoon. We were the only two that chose to go on that cruise and they took us out on a small speed boat that was much more fun. We did end up finding dolphins and as soon as the internet connection in India allows me I will post the video clips of the dolphins. There is just something about watching these animals in mother nature rather than in captivity. We were also taken out on a catamaran after the earlier dolphin cruise and we sailed around the area for close to a hour. The quietness and slower pace of the sailing just brought you closer to nature. We could also ride over more shallow water.

Sunday came too quickly and before we could find ourselves we were on the airplane heading for India. This was just one magical weekend and we really would love to go again just to make sure it was not a dream.