Follow the Sun

I’ve posted pictures to my flickr site…just click the link on the right of your screen.

To pick up where I left off…I left Candolim for Anjuna.  At first I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the place but it soon turned around.  I ended up staying at a place called the Ocean Pearl…right on the beach with a fantastic sunset view.  As I was sitting on the wall looking out at the ocean a woman walks up from the beach all smiles and says, “Hello.”  Her name is Ida and she was on a 2 week holiday from Sweden with her boyfriend Fredrik and his brother Peter.  The trip was Peter’s 25th birthday present from Fredrik.  We spent the next week hanging out together (along with others that were staying at OP…Sebastien, a German teaching German and cello in Rajasthan, Jen a sex columnist from LA, 2 Danish girls, Steena another Swede, and Tina and Heinrich (I think) from Finland).

At the beach in Anjuna (as with most of the beaches in Goa) there were women who walked up and down the beach all day selling fruit (bananas, watermelon, papya, passion fruit, pineapples) from a huge heavy basket carried on their heads.  Our particular fruit seller was Susie.  She had the brightest spirit around, always laughing, always smiling.  During the tourist season she sells fruit on the beach and during the monsoons she works in the rice paddys in order to send her kids to school so they could get better jobs.  “This job not important…they’ll get important jobs.”

Towards the beginning of the following week we (the Swedish trio and I) decided to head down to south Goa to Palolem Beach (which took 4 buses and an autorickshaw ride).  It was beautiful!  We played in the water like we were kids and even went out at night to body surf and what Peter and I dubbed the washing machine (crouching down in the water where the waves broke and holding on to your toes just letting the ocean do with you what it wanted…we swallowed a lot of sea water that way).

On our second day there we went explored the south end of the beach and the cliffs.  We came across a little cove with beach huts and a restaraunt looked after by men from Nepal who come down to work for the season.  It was so peaceful I never wanted to leave and we ended up booking a couple of huts for our last night.

I parted ways with the Swedes (by that time the guts were almost like brothers to me)back in Candolim where I stopped for a few days while I figured out my next move…I felt my time in Goa was coming to an end and I was ready to get to Mysore for a month long Astanga course.  I decided to head up to Arambol before I left…spent one night there and then came to Calangute.  I left Arambol for 2 reason.  #1 I found the other travellers there quite rude (one guy telling a local boy to fuck off…very loudly) and #2 Calangute would be a better place to make onward travel plans.  I’ve spent about a week here and leave later today.  Most of my time here has been spent reading (finally got around to reading ‘Cold Mountain’ which made me miss biscuits and the mountains of western NC)…in all I think I’ve read through 7 or 8 books (what else is there to do at the beach and when the dreaded Delhi Belly finally hits?)

I’ve been ready to leave Goa for over a week now so, onto to Mysore and Astanga Yoga.

 

Still in Goa, still at the beach, still as white as paper.  Ive been very good about slathering on the sunscreen and staying under the umbrellas at the beach. I spent all last week in Candolim where I met several travellers ... [Continue reading this entry]