After a bit of work, we took a rickshaw south to a fishing collective we’d been recommended, there to have lunch. I do like this way of travelling around: just amble out and in less than a minute a rickshaw will arrive and take you off. We undoubtedly get overcharged, but it’s worth it for the ease.
Anyway, the fishing collective has a small shack with a tiny view of the sea. We drank some (bottled) mango juice and had a very nice, simple grilled fish and charred prawns, both well cooked and tasty though the accompaniments (coconut rice, roasted potatoes and a coconut chutney) were nothing special. Still, a good meal. We then walked down to the beach which is very fine white sand. Less beautiful than the Zanzibar beaches, but with much less hassle. Another downside is that it’s not always straightforward how to access the beach, as many of the ways down are private roads and locked. But here we could go down, and so we walked along for a kilometre or so till we got to one of the fancy restaurants where we’d thought to have deseert and coffee. This turned out to not have a table available, but this was no biggie as the space to sit wasn’t all that nice – it was a sort of cabana next to a pool instead of a terrace with a view of the sea.
So we walked on, and evnetually came to a public access point to the beach. We stopped for a pair of fairly inferior coconuts and then walked up the path to the road. It was a dusty path lined with bushes that hid it from both the road and the beach, and we passed several young men along the way, so I was rather inclined to walk quickly. In any case, we eventually got to the road and found a rickshaw immediately to take us to the cafe near us. The GF, who lives in hope, had a coffee while I had tea. The surprise hit was the tiramisu. It looked extremely unpromising, very white cream and dry-looking crumbled cake packed into a tall jamjar, but turned out to be genuine tiramisu.
Then we came back.
Someone I know in Pakistan is currently snowed in in Murree. He mentioned he was stuck, but it wasn’t till I looked at the news that I realised how bad it was.