A day and a half in Chennai

The last post on this trip is here...

Have to start becoming a live blogger to catch up on travels these days. New sights, new people.. 

So tend to forget things with a photo/video overload.

We landed in Chennai late on Thursday night and left Chennai Saturday afternoon. 

Within that time frame, we managed to spend a few hours with my parents, San's 95 year old grandma, visit three temples, eat out twice and meet a lot of relatives (leaving out the blog shy ones in the post)

The most special relative we met was the latest addition to the extended family. It has been a long time since I held a baby in my hands. We showed the picture to someone later in the trip and were asked why we decided to have a baby so late.

My father who is not his usual self saw us fall at his feet for blessings and wished us a boy child. We said something about our 25th wedding anniversary and maybe he heard things partly and automatically blessed. Somehow in his mind, us not having a boy is still a "lacking" thing, at least he used to keep telling me that according to my horoscope I am supposed to have female and male children. He would keep asking me how that horoscope could be wrong? We know the time and age he is from where male children are considered the representation of the gene pool. He always means well. 

My dad turned 85 that morning and he was not aware of his birthday. I seem to be the best at playing dumb charades with him and sadly am not close by. We both realized that, in the hour we communicated. He said bye to me as though he was losing his translator or least that was my perception. My only thought was "If by some karma, I end up in this same state with parkinson's, need to train San and some folks around me to play dumb charades regularly, starting now!"

If only Tantra shastra was spread to the masses, things would be different on this boy child business.. that is multiple topics all colliding in my head right now. So that discussion will be sidebared. When my dad finished his blessing in bits and pieces, we just thanked him for it. Told my mom that we are almost ready to have grandkids in a few years.. one topic led to another and we fished out the kids horoscope which my mom had saved all these years! 

Given the short time in Chennai, did I mention how my mom told me to go sit and do parayanam at the local Saradhambaal temple? She prioritized my praying for two out of the three hours! In any case, the goal was to make her happy, so I just went and met with all the familiar folks in the recitation group. They were all happy to see me. Many of them have seen me as a teenager. One thing I miss is this recitation group. Seriously thinking of starting one in Cupertino every Saturday morning. One of the folks even took a photo and sent it to my mom! The mama's are better insta bloggers than me.. and my mom was beaming with happiness that they had good things to say about me. Mamas happy, Mom happy, me happy..

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The nights food at Geetham was still backed up with Upma my mom made me in the morning and still had to eat at Kamakshi mess... India trips are an exercise in stretching your stomach muscles way past what you think you can. 

then there was the first train ride of the trip.. on Rameshwaram express.. brought back so many memories of long train journeys in India.

"Kamalahasanukku porai eri irukkum!" was the thought as we saw this while standing at the door

we were going to see Ramanadhaswamy.. One picture from my aunt's place that stayed with me.. loved this .. all the stores in Mylapore which did framing were still not open when we went to the area.. so could not find it. Maybe on the next trip, will get a print of this!

Will continue the write up of Rameshwaram in a day, the next chance I get..

Wrapping up 2019- A trip to Costa Rica

We wrapped up 2019 with an amazing trip to Costa Rica with friends. San and Padma got this trip with an amazing tour company called Desafio. United and my 1K status got us there. Given the chances of getting tickets during the break, we left on Christmas morning and came back on New Years.

The entire Christmas day was spent in traveling to San Jose, Costa Rica. We got to a local hotel 10 minutes from the airport and promptly dozed off. The next morning we had a nice breakfast at the hotel and a van took all eight of us to the first stop, La Paz waterfalls and butterfly garden. Our first photo session outside the hotel in San Jose. My refurbished 5D Mark ii has officially turned 10 years old. It is showing signs of strain just as I am showing signs of strain lugging it around! This was taken on the iPhone 11, which came in quite handy for many a rainy day. 

It was raining heavily and we were given an hour to 90 minutes before the next drive. So we made the falls the priority instead of all the other exhibits there. We did a quick run through the butterflies but skipped the reptiles, hummingbirds and wild cats etc. Given the communication barrier with the driver, we did not know that we could have spent more time.

This one is a Blue Morpho butterfly.. you can see the blue through the cut in its wings. I could not get a single shot of this one in any butterfly garden to show the blue side. There may be a video somewhere.. it is an amazing butteflly the size of my palm, but it flies real fast. 

big butterfly, big caterpillar....

 

I did not get what they were doing with the coccoons hung like this on a line...will have to find out!

We made a dash for the falls, all 5 of them and got soaked from the rain and the mist. This was our first intro to the rain forest in Costa Rica. Rain from the outside, sweat from the inside.. a poncho to cover the camera that made things awkward. The pictures and video will show you what it was like... It was a good intro that prepped us for what was to come.

After hiking through all 5 falls (climbing back up to the exit is not trivial and pretty steep), we were picked up by a shuttle bus from the La Paz fountain to the parking lot. That bus took 30 minutes to show up. Eventually we drove back in our van through that exact same pick up point. If only we had known, we would have asked the driver to just meet us down there and saved ourselves 30 minutes. The three kids in the Van who were learning Spanish in school kept freezing up when we asked them to talk to the driver!!! I gave the little one a lecture on "skills" vs. "grades" which did not go well.  Jr. escaped because she has been on Mandarin for the last 3 1/2 years. Her turn will come when I ask her to translate. 

Where were we? The drive to the next stop, Serapiqui river white water rafting. We got to a rest stop 20 minutes from the river, which was the last restroom on the route. Do NOT skip this. Get some fresh water, take the minute, change into wet clothes and wet shoes. You can thank me later.

Once you go to the river, there is you, the helmet, lifejacket and paddle. A quick lesson and you are off on the rapids. The river had amazing local birds large and small everywhere! The older girls and the two men got the brunt of the river on either raft. It was an amazing experience.

After what seemed like an entire day on the river going through rapids named ay caramaba, ouch, etc., we got to haul the rubber dinghy up the bank. They had towels for us and a shower area and once done, were fed a really nice fresh made lunch by the local Desafio team. There was a photographer on a kayak who was ahead of us and he showed us the pictures. We loved it and bought them (you still need to edit them and these are .jpg not .raw, but great starting points). 

did not know I was taking the wettest seat in the boat... the funny thing is San always knows where the camera is, even on that rapid to smile!!! Amazing camera awareness, while I was practically underwater..

I skipped the egg and the avocado.. there was no shortage of vegetarian food in Costa Rica.  A lot of folks there are vegetarian and sugar conscious and there seems to be no obesity there yet. There is banana in everything. The banana chips (actually nendranga chips here are amazing.. true Kerala feel). Hope it stays that way.

We said bye to the rafting team and started driving to Arenal Volcano. It was a long drive and given most people were sore from the rafting, it was a quiet trip.

We saw some Coatis that were being fed by someone from a car. It clearly said do not feed animals in the route. Felt bad for these creatures. Once they get used to food from cars, they are on a downward spiral..

 

Once we reached Arenal Paraiso resort, we realized that there was no point in trying to go out anywhere for the night. They had the hot springs right there, so we put our bags in the room and sat in the springs for an hour.

Then they had dinner served in the restaurant right in the resort. A full vegetarian dinner with icecream and Chocolate cake! 

Day 2 (or rather day 1 of actual touring) was hectic and fun. 

On a side note, the only time we saw the volcano was when we checked into the rooms and were about to go to the hot springs. It was almost sunset and the coulds were moving fast. The entire next day, it was raining and foggy to the point that the volcano was not visible at all. Was glad to have these pictures..

Given this is the first post in this series, would strongly recommend Desafio and United Airlines if you are planning a trip to Costa Rica. Most of the drivers and guides from Desafio speak English and are very courteous and everyone shows up on the dot. 

Day 3 post when I get done with editing photos and videos.. it pretty much took me all day to do this blog post and get the pictures and video. It is my sincere hope that friends and family will find this useful when they make plans to visit Costa Rica.

When life takes you on strange Arcs..

Day 9 on our Europe trip had already seen the Louvre, Eiffel Tower, Sienne boat cruise, Notre Dame cathedral and we found ourselves at a boat stop ready to hail an Uber to go back to the Air B&B for a quick rest, wash and maybe something to eat.. before going on to the next stop I had been planning.

The previous post on this series is here..

The Montmartre area where we were supposed to go up the steps to another unique piece of architecture, watch street painters do their caricatures, art etc. and watch the sun set over Paris and see the Eiffel tower and all of Paris light up.. 

Many a friend had recommended this to me as a not to miss.. 

However, after all those staircases, sun in the face and head on open boats, walking through museums as fast as your legs could carry, wandering around cathedrals.. the family had.. how to say it? "HAD IT!"

So my plan to go to the hill was not materializing. If you are a photographer, you want to see the Eiffel tower light up .. not see it as just a steel monster towering above Paris.. but there we were, no one talking to anyone else, quietly sitting in an Uber and almost at the Air B&B. Was taking pictures of interesting streets and corner buildings on the way..

We went, sat in the Air B&B for a few minutes and decided to get out and do "something".. but first food!

When I am tired, hungry and cranky (if you lug a 30lb camera bag around your back the entire day you might be too.. especially with a corn in your foot that is getting worse by the day and you are practically hobbling), I usually gravitate towards Indian food.. no surprises there..

Even San, who works very hard to steer me away didn't argue. She had a slight cold and thought a milagu rasam would do her a world of good. The kids, were not for it. They wanted to have Crepes or anything French... given French food wasn't exactly the top on a Vegetarian families choice we had a conflict. 

By the time we decided what to eat (I had already given up on Saravana Bhavan although we were not that far away from it) we just stopped the discussion and walked into the first restaurant that came our way. It was an empty but newly renovated Pakistani restaurant. 

The kids stopped talking to us, we stopped talking to each other and with enough hate to go around the table for years to come, we ordered a biriyani, nan and two side dishes. Except for one of the side dishes, the rest of the items were below par. The price was way cheaper than any other place though and we thought we got what we paid for. There was more silence as we walked out. It wasn't exactly dinner time yet and we were probably early and the fact that some food had gone inside and the family was willing to walk again was a plus. 

Then I suggested that we walk around the Champs Elysses as that was one thing we were planning to do on our last day in Paris. So there were some silent approving nods and shoulder shrugs and the Uber was hailed again. 

It so happened that we had to cross the Arc to go to the shopping part, so I asked the driver to just stop before we reached the roundabout in front of the Arc de Triumphe. The driver said "thanks" and I didn't know why he was thanking me..

History has failed to teach me in all its repetitive glory that when I dig my self a hole, I dig really well. The god Saturn was probably dancing at the tip of my tongue (at least my Grandma would have concurred with that statement) when I said "how about we just go up the Arc and see if we can catch the Eiffel tower light up from there?"

The silent approvals and shoulder shrugs that had gotten us that far evaporated and turned into "I hate you!" stares. Was pretty sure the family was putting silent curses on me. 

Then they realized that daddy was not going leave Paris without taking photos of the Eiffel Tower by night. There was deliberate shoe shuffling, feet dragging noises but we went through the tunnel and ended up at the entrance to the Arc's stairs. There was a freaking line to buy tickets for climbing the stairs and no one was at the counter!  

This was not helping my cause. After standing there for a good 20 minutes and going through security, we came across a board that clearly indicated how narrow the stairs were and how many steps had to be climbed to go to the top. That was not helping my cause either! 

Basilisks would have been scared of San and the kids after seeing them stare in my direction. We climbed, slowly and just before we started, the little one decided to turn all her anger at her mom. Sparks were flying and then silence. No one talks to anyone anymore. Given it was Paris and if there was one time I HAD to take my wifes side, I said something nice and at least the two of us walked together.  Jr. was trying to mediate with minimal results. 

Everyone was right and everyone was wrong at the same time for all the same reasons. It was 8:45 PM and we had reached the top of the Arc. The views from the top of the Arc were spectacular and we could see the Montmartre area and the hill from the Arc. This would top anything from that hill hands down, is what we all realized and there were some smiles. The family was together again, realizing that this was more comfortable and closer to the Air B&B and we could see the tower up close!

There was a lively crowd all jostling for space to catch the lights and we parked ourselves. Got a lot of pano shots from the top including the sun that was about to set..

We saw a glorious sunset at 9:54 PM and the lights were to come on in 6 minutes.

They did come on slowly. Unfortunately the lights were not making an impression as it was still pretty bright outside. 

Also the lights did not do the twinkling thing that was advertised earier in the day. We had to wait till 11 PM for that.. but the Arc kicks out people before 11 as it closed around that time. So we stayed there till 10:20 in the museum area..

Some photos from the 2 hours we spent up there..

Then something happened again.. no one knows what, maybe because the kids decided to go down without telling us and we kept searching for them between the two levels.. and silence returned. The kids would not sit with us to watch the little video that was on auto play at the gift shop level below the open terrace..

Again, by some strange miracle, we patched up and decided to walk around the Champs Elysses.. hunger it must have been.. the big golden arches were spotted and we ran in for some fries and Ice cream cones.. It was midnight at McDonalds and we had refueled to get back to the Air B&B...

Everyone was glad to be back on an Uber. Without saying much except "don't bother waking me up in the morning" , "me neither", "me neither" to me from different locations within that small apartment, the lights went out.. 

Day 9 came to an end! I was actually glad it did..