Today was always going to be our lazy day and we started as we meant to continue with a 9am breakfast!
Each day the eggs have been different, and the fresh bread/pancake/crumpet has been different. They arrived wrapped in clingfilm as the kitchen is on the other side of the site and the kitchen ladies do not hurry! This morning our coffee arrived as normal and I poured it and topped it up with milk for both of us. Keith threw his back about ten minutes later and then choked. It transpired that the mesh on the cafetière had broken so his last mouthful was solid grounds!! Made me laugh and avoid my last mouthful obviously!
We went back to the room after breakfast so I could get changed… yoga on the roof terrace was my plan for the morning. I borrowed a mat, grabbed my phone and went to see if I could find any muscles! I lasted about 10 minutes in the sun before I had to find some shade to finish my practice… even at that time of the day it was too hot.
Next was chilling by the bar with reading books and the dogs. A gynae surgeon we had met the day before came to join us for a chat and we talked about their path from Norfolk to Cornwall, her husband’s journey from a search and rescue pilot to a gin distillery manager and the choice between nursery and live in nanny. Same old conversation really!
We STILL managed to be late for lunch when we hadn’t even been anywhere, but fortunately the ladies didn’t look too cross. Amusingly, my roasted pepper and feta bruschetta was missing the feta, so I had to ask the day manager for some. She didn’t sound very polite when she asked one of the ladies to fetch me some. The delicious soft white cheese that then appeared was clearly sheep/goat’s cheese, but not at all salty. Not my definition of feta but better than nothing.
After lunch, Keith went back to his chilling and I went to get changed, ready for my Hammam and massage experience. The day manager wasn’t desperately helpful when I asked what I needed to take/wear, so I went for my bikini and hotel provided dressing gown.
I was a little apprehensive, but the lady that greeted me was friendly and smiled constantly. It is a little unnerving to have all of your clothes (apart from your bikini bottoms) tugged from your body, but I was open to this new experience and determined to comply as much as possible! She took my glasses and asked me to lie down on a covered bench in a very steamy room with a large metal sink in the corner full of boiling water. She left me briefly and then when she came back, I got a good idea of what to expect from the next hour and a half. There were four metal buckets of varying size and she proceeded to crash them all into the metal sink in an attempt to retrieve some of the hot water. The first three didn’t fit but the cacophony that resulted from the crashing about made it hard for me not to giggle. The whale song normally present at this point in the UK was missing.
She clearly scalded herself on the first bucket she brought out, but fortunately, before she threw it at me, she added a lot of cold water from the tap on the wall. To get a good idea of what this experience was like, just add the noise of water falling a foot into a metal bucket to the soothing sounds I have already described.
I have never been water-boarded, but having an entire bucket of water thrown along my body while lying on my back felt pretty close when my nose filled up! Again, I was very tempted to start giggling. Three buckets thrown at my front and two at my back, once she had tugged me to turn over and I was definitely wet.
She spread some black soap all over me – modesty was not encouraged at this point, no tentative gentle gestures of European masseurs. She was firm and thorough. Then she left. I started to wonder what was in the soap and how long before it started to burn my skin, but I shouldn’t have worried because it didn’t even tingle before she came back.
My only warning that she was going to try and drown me again was the crashing of the buckets and the roar of the water from the tap. It was quite exciting as I didn’t know whether it was going to be a hotter bucket or a cooler bucket… there was a wondrous variety to keep me from relaxing too much.
Soap removed, she donned a wicker glove and started to try and remove the skin from my feet, legs, hands etc. Blimey that made me glow. I particularly liked when she made me sit up so she could show me the products of her work – 7 years it took me to grow all that!
Gently rinsed again and tugged upright and into a different room. This time she motioned for me to get dry and lie face up on the massage table. She was soaked through and sign language implied she was off to get changed. She crashed about in the other room for a bit, so I presume she rinsed off before and washed the room down before she put dry clothes on.
When she came back, she put some generic massage music on her phone and got to work with some oil. This part of the treatment was genuinely relaxing and she clearly knew what she was doing, finding knots in my upper back and working them free.
After the massage she dressed me, took my hair bobble off my wrist and put my oily hair up in a pony tail and then fed me sweet mint tea before waving in a very clear gesture of dismissal. You will be relieved to hear that there is no photographic evidence of any of the above.
The rest of the afternoon was spent dozing in the shade by the pool and reading the book I stupidly started from the hotel library (The Affair – Jack Reacher). It was surprisingly pleasant to do nothing and even Keith seemed to enjoy it. It was even nice to listen to other people’s children playing in the pool as they were nothing to do with us and we did not need to react to their giggles or screams. Everyone else in the hotel is travelling with nursery/primary aged kids and we are getting used to the envious looks they throw in our childless direction!
Keith spent a little time taking photos around the hotel before we scurried obediently off for showers before our allotted dinner time. The shower in the mud hut/ecolodge can only be described as unsatisfactory. Not only is the water that comes out of it potentially lethal to our gut, it also dribbles out the side of the shower head and is reluctant to provide any kind of consistency of temperature. I quite enjoyed watching Keith’s first shower as he skipped in and out of the flow with little yelps of alarm, but it was less fun to experience it first hand. Needless to say it made it very hard to remove large quantities of massage oil from hair or body
We had entertainment at dinner that evening… the next door table (parents and two boys: 7 and 9) were on their main courses when they arrived and the score was 5:7 to Mummy. We weren’t very good at the question of sport round… neither of us scored more than 1 point. We were more successful when the younger boy moved on to general knowledge with a bit of celebrity thrown in. We were not even slightly subtle about joining in their game, but in fairness, when there are only two tables in a restaurant that is otherwise silent, what else is there to do but gracefully concede! They didn’t seem to mind but clearly we were paying more attention than them because at one point the question was about expectations at a Roman funeral: did mourners a)…. b)…. or c) drink wine with the ashes of the diseased sprinkled on it? The parents did not sufficiently compensate for the reading age of the quiz master and were as horrified as you can be while reading Facebook on your phone at the same time at the idea of c). It was clear he meant to say deceased not diseased. I suppose there are scenarios where the two are synonymous, but it did make us giggle
We couldn’t sleep after dinner as I had to finish the book I had borrowed and pack ready for an early departure the following day. I am proud to say that I used my time very wisely and finished my book at 11.30pm. Needless to say, I was a tad grumpy being woken up at about 6.50am by the first call to prayer.