Another great day!

Hello Andrew Cardinal here;

On Thursday we traveled into the hills of Ooty (from our luxurious hotel) to spend the morning leaning about tea at the tea museum and tea factory. We watched as the tea leaves were dried and then fed into the long conveyor belt which moves the tea through various stages of preparation. At the end of our tea tour we bought many large bags of different tea to bring home, the taste of India in Masala tea form. We then drove into the city of Ooty to do some shopping and eat some PIZZA!!! The afternoon of shopping started as a few of us found a magician selling magic tricks. We were amused for minutes before getting suckered in to buying his tricks. After the magic tricks we walked around and went in lots more shops.

There was one very interesting shop that I feel is worth mentioning. WARNING: if you are easily shocked do not read after this point. A group of us was walking down the road with the chilly breeze of Ooty that ripples through our clothes. I see a little shop that is at the bottom of stairs going down on the side of the road. As I peer down to see what is being sold, I see a little black and white tiled little room at the bottom of the stairs. I notice that there are some red marks on the tiles and that the tiles are not clean at all. On the only shelf down there sits four white severed goat heads with their eyes open. I tell the rest of the group and a few look but others stay very clear of looking at the heads.

Then we shopped some more and met back at the café and went back to the hotel. We hung out at the hotel for the rest of the day playing some hacky sack and showing each other our magic tricks. We decided to go to bed very early because the next morning we were to be out the door at 5 am. So yes we were at the door at pitch black 5 am driving down the steep hairpin turns. No one was awake enough to understand exactly how terrifying that drive was. We drove to the animal sanctuary to see elephants and some other wild animals. During the chartered tour we saw some elephants and peacocks at the beginning but then after about 10 minutes it was just a lot of trees and bushes.

The real fun started when eating breakfast. We decided it would be nice to walk down to the river which the elephants were being washed. We pulled out our bread and nutella and started to spread the nutella on the bread. We looked over to a creature that was moving towards our bread and to our surprise it was a group of monkeys. They ran after our bread but Jordan picked it up before they could run off with it. Then most people ran up the hill to eat their breakfast in peace, but a few of us stayed back. We tried to taunt the monkeys by making loud noises and jumping around. This only excited them more. We got scared and ran up the hill. After eating half of their nutella sandwich, Jordan and Graeme worked up the nerve to go back down. The monkeys looked as if they were just hanging out and gave up on the food, but they started to run at the two boys. The boys turned and booked up the hill as fast as they could. So did the monkeys. The monkeys were now among us all with our sandwiches. We were surrounded and they wanted blood, or nutella. Our bus driver came to save the day by picking up a stick and waving off the blood or nutella thirsty monkeys. We got back in the bus and continued our drive back to Coimbatore.

On the trip back, we decided to take a train for about an hour. It was a nice scenic trip that was thoroughly enjoyed by all. After the ride we were met by our AMAZING bus driver again who was already waiting at the station for us. When we arrived back at our house we decided to take the night easy after having got up so early. We went to bed and then had splendid dreams of the day that had past.

Andrew Cardinal