Jan 5th
This was lazy day with a morning trip to a spice garden, reinforcing some of what we’d learnt before about plants like black pepper and vanilla - see photos - but also introducing the periwinkle – source of the cancer therapy drug, Vencristin, which was used on my HL 16 years ago, and the banana flower (see photo), which looks like a pointed cabbage, and can be cooked in a similar way.
After lunch we spent the afternoon in our room or on the balcony reading until a sudden afternoon rain storm, which made the dirt road outside the hotel a quagmire through which we picked our way to see an hour’s demonstration of Kalari (this is a martial art, perhaps the first one, but certainly one of the oldest). Here is a short video of it - no sound.
