In Goa

Hi everyone,

It was observed that my post was shorter than Deb's so I'll try to make this a little longer to even it out. :) Goa - it's amazing. We both feel that we've been here longer than we have because it has this ability to just slow a person down and force them to relax and enjoy the surroundings. We woke up yesterday morning early, and surprisingly with no jet lag at all. We chilled on our front porch, reading, listening to the ocean, and eating chocolate :) and it was wonderful. When we finally got ourselves motivated by the smells of the wonderful food wafting up from the cliffside restaurants, we dropped into our local restaurant, just below us. We sat on their lower patio, just above the rocks, ordered our masala tea and some fruit juice smoothies (so good), and watched local fishermen fishing off the rocks just in front of us. After breakfast, we headed off the other direction from our hostel to a beach on the other side of Arambol. Took 5 minutes and we were on a much more secluded beach with a neat lake tucked in the far corner of the mountainside. From there we took off and over the small mountain to see where this path led us and ended up on a 45 minute hike to another beach, even more secluded which was our unexpected adventure for the day. Our hike took us literally walking paths that were on the edge of the cliff, and we didn't find the path we were supposed to take so ended up getting "lost" and got creative. We tried one rockclimbing option that didn't work and Deb was able to back out easily butI wasn't so I had to pull out a few rockclimbing skills from my memory to get me out without scrapes and bruises. :) We finally got to the beach, got ourselves some drinks from the local illegal beach restaurant (as we found out later), and rented two reclining chairs under a straw sunshade hut. It was picturesque...Deb chilled out and fell asleep under the shade while I tried to get some colour so I'm not so obviously white. :) Sitting there listening to the waves, lying in the sun, with no agenda, it was unbelievably relaxing. Also, it helped there were probabyl fewer than 30 people on the entire beach so it wasn't the scene some can be. We got some fresh pan fried calamari that was served with "cheeps" :) and for our after snack compliment, we were offered weed. lol We were also offered pot while we were hiking on the trail earlier..."hi, do you want some marijuana?". I had to find a washroom and the restaurant guy told me to follow him...and he takes off on this 10 minute walk off into the bushes..have to admit - it seemed a little sketch but in the end it's where he informed me that the restaurants were illegal and that's why they can't have toilets attached. I was led to a hippy community with a typical Indian toilet (dirty and gross but still...something. :) We caught a taxi from there back to Arambol and realized that Holi celebration had been in a town just near the beach we were at (Kerim). So everyone we passed was all covered in festive coloured face powder. It's been great people watching in the taxis as we go through towns and just are able to observe the local life...on our way, there were two "road blocks". It was odd - still don't know what they were but these local kids blocked the road for the taxi and demanded payment to cross. It seemed sort of cute until he had to pay, then it seemed like they were little mini guerrillas, or a little local gang. Punks. :) We got back, I unknowingly entered into bartering for henna and agreed on a price not realizing that I agreed to purchase something. So I now have henna on both my hands. It's gorgeous - took over an hour and a half for the detail. Deb wandered off while I was getting it done and made friends with a local silver guy. Once my henna was done, I went to check out her potential purchase and in the end, I ended up practicing my bargaining again. I bought a bracelet and combined with Deb's purchase, we were chatting away with occasional discussions on price (it seems that's how it works..discuss price, suggest cost, counter with another cost, then discuss life again without acknowledgement of the countered price, then back to the price discussion and repeat). So all that to say, I got a ring thrown in with our stuff for the original price he suggested (which was apparently a friends discount). :) We stopped at a local fruit stand after to buy a lemon from a kid who quite enjoyed our adventures in my robot arms due to the henna drying (I couldn't move them - henna on hands and fingers halfway up my arms!). So he cut us a lemon and deb poured it all over my arms (sticky!) and he laughed at us. We laughed too. :) I got more attention with the henna than I have so far being blonde. Funny. :) This morning, we woke up and there was cracked tile on the floor that had fallen during the night from the roof. We were told there was a monkey on our roof and trying to get coconuts from the trees above so they were there replacing our tiles. Such a cool experience. :)

So far - I love the smell of the incense here...and I love Goan hospitality. And Deb's hospitality. :) She's paying for everything since I don't have cash yet so it's nice to turn to the BOD (Bank of Deb) and get free access to money. :) I don't feel on my guard here, and everyone is so friendly, from our local travel guide Tilou, to the silver guy who we're going to go have tea with later today, Amin. We're in Mapusa today, checking out the city here so will experience a bigger city in Northern Goa. that's it for me - think my internet time is running out...

ttyl - mel

I forgot to add. :) I'm officially the person who barters between the two of us, so I'm learning slowly but surely. yesterday while getting henna done, I was trying to give Deb the few tips I know on how to barter a price and since you never know how much english is spoken here..we switched into spanish to talk about it. :) It was hilarious. We had a great conversation in spanish, understood each other and it was such fun to pull that out here, in India. :) Tips on bartering? Anyone anyone? usually I'm dividing in half and working from there but in some cases it's still highly inflated. However, comparatively to Canada...still cheap and not a bad price..but for here most likely really expensive. I'm trying to come to a place of knowing how much I'm comfortable to pay here, even if it's expensive, if it's still cheap to me. although, my bartering yesterday...still makes me smile. to have gotten my ring thrown in for free essentially. So great. :)